Our trip to France and Barcelona was wonderful and went off without a hitch; amazing for the multitude of things that could have gone wrong on such an
undertaking that involved taxis, trains, buses, planes, subways, a
rental car, and our own feet. There were seven destinations of consequence, not
including six hours at the Shanghai Airport and two hours at the Beijing
Airport: Paris, Marseilles, Aix-en-Provence, Monaco, Nice, Uzes, and Barcelona.
Each destination has its everlasting flavors and memories in points of interest
we visited and the excellent restaurants in which we ate. We slept
nine nights in four cities at five different hotels, each with its romance and
quirks.
Remarkably, despite our full schedule, because
I planned for it well, I can speak for Leona and myself: we never felt hurried.
Only at a few junctures did we feel lost, mostly because the Jaguar's GPS was a challenge to follow with directions in French, distance measured in meters and kilometers, and roads with detours. The most challenging city to negotiate was Marseilles with a highway entrance closed one night and an access road to the hotel under construction another night. I made two brief wrong
turns, one approaching the Basse Corniche (Low Coast) Road – Highway 98 between
Monaco and Nice, and another approaching Marseilles from the west. The first night’s
drive from Marseilles to Aix-en-Provence was a challenge for Leona who had to keep scrolling the map down to keep the
route in view. Miraculously, we found the hotel in the end.
This photo essay of our trip cannot convey the exhilaration we experienced every day, but it tells the story of our enjoyment, mostly in chronological order.
On the twelve hour Air China (not to be confused with China Airlines from Taiwan) flight from Shanghai to Paris, this man standing continually changed seats to open five overhead bins he claimed for himself, sometimes removing a sports jacket sometimes just looking in. The passengers ignored him but not Leona who clued me in to his strange behavior; I had thought he was a flight attendant until she pointed out his erratic behavior.
When the landing procedure was announced and we were told to straighten our seats and fasten our seat belts, this man stood up with two cans of aerosol spray (see can in his hands), and commenced to walking up and down the fuselage spraying into the air vents over the overhead compartments; no one stopped him but put masks on their faces. I took his picture and he leered at me. In Mandarin, he told me not to photograph him. We had a fifteen second stand-off. Later, when I alerted the head flight attendant, she made short shrift of him. When I asked if he worked for the airline she said he did. When I asked where his ID badge was she was silent.
Because of the lack of security,airplane condition, and harassment in China towards passengers from Taiwan, we will not fly this airline or transit through China again.
The Hotel Eden Opera is in a gentrified red light district of Paris which now sports a lot of trendy youthful clubs. The Bd. Hausmann shopping district and Larnier Opera House are within walking distance and the #67 bus terminal up the road at the half moon, can be taken to the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, and a slew of other wonderful places in the Latin Quarter, as you can see below:
The elevator fits two people, at most. A tiny lobby and private patio would be nothing without helpful desk clerk, Simon, bilingual and down to earth. A small restaurant in front is a good place to start the day.
The #67 bus passes by the Louvre Museum but we didn't get off to look; we had been there for two days marching around in 2000 and had other plans for the day.
Another back angle of The Louvre
The focus is not the church, but the cars parked at the electric curbside car battery recharging posts. You plug your car in and you're good to go.
Along the River Seine, used book stalls are open for blocks along the banks. Of course, all the books are in French.
Notre Dame Cathedral from the back. We stopped in a cafe for crapes and cappuccino, then, we walked around the beautiful cathedral without bothering to go inside; we had seen inside it in 2000; it's a church inside but a building outside.
This Pont des Arts bridge and others across The Seine, are famous for lovers attaching their locks to the grates along the sides, however, the weight of the thousands of locks was making the bridge sink; they had to remove them. The locks on one side of this bridge had been removed.
Recueil d'estampes coloriees de Nicolas Huet: vue, La Serre temperee Vue du Jardin des Plantes a Paris doesn't look like it did in 1805, but the building are still there. We walked through on our route from Notre Dame Cathedral to the Latin Quarter and stopped in Museum National D'Hist. Many families, on that dreary drizzling Saturday, were there to debunk creation theory. I was there to use the restroom.
Recueil d'estampes coloriees de Nicolas Huet: vue, Le Cabinet d'histoire naturelle
Recueil d'estampes coloriees de Nicolas Huet: vue, LAmphitheatre
We indulged for a few days on cheese from this shop Simon from Hotel Eden L'Opera recommended. It is on Rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire near the Natural History Museum and a block away from...
Le Mosquee, the entrance into the restaurant and cafe where sweets like baklava were for sale with mint tea in little glasses, two Euros each.
"Leona said , "How can you eat those sweets? They're too sweet!" Tout de suite, I replied, "Not as sweet as you."
After leaving La Mosquee, we passed Paris-Sorbonne University, which was established after the cultural revolution of May 1968, and this cheese shop, to reach Boulevard Saint Germain for our dinner reservation.
A taxidermy curio shop near Chez Rene, the restaurant where we had dinner. My dinner, veal head and tongue, could have come straight from the shop before they added formaldehyde. You will notice that we took no photos of dishes in restaurants; only an occasional photo of us sitting at tables. We were adamant about enjoying our food in the moment and not creating a scene disturbing other diners.
To Rue des Martyrs we walked, a few block from Hotel Opera, Sunday morning, our second day in Paris. Here is Sebastien Gaudard bakery, across from a cafe that had just opened. The proprietor of the restaurant offered to go across the street to this bakery to get croissants for us but I just got it myself to augment their omelette and cappuccino.
Rue des Martyrs was a one street shopping village for locals with cheese, wine, bakery, butcher, flower shop and all, in addition to a few cafes, one of which was L'Ariel, more of a lottery hang-out, but bearing my son's name. We had breakfast a block away before heading directly to Palas Garnier opera house for out 10 am tour.
The Palas Garnier had just been closed for renovation in Feb. 2000 the first time we visited Paris. Four years later, the renovation was complete, and what an undertaking it was! We walked twenty minutes from our breakfast spot to get there, Our tour was well worth the price and our guide was wonderful and knowledgeable. Here are our favorite photos:
In the basement directly under the theater, where the season ticket holders entered the opera, we waited for the tour to begin. One entrance in the basement remained bare and unadorned; it was where the emperor, if he hadn't been overthrown in the revolution, would have entered.
The famous Medusa statue.
The grand staircase up to the theater. Read about it in a book much better than I can describe here. We were flabbergasted by the opulence.
Leona taking a photo of the staircase. We walked through this musical palace in awe of the architecture and adornments.
Our tour guide explaining the workings of the opera company, how tutus and other props were either stored for future productions or discarded. It seems like they could have been sold to raise funds instead.
The opera's open lending library of musical scores and such.
Stage-set mock-ups in the Palas museum
They rent out this hall for high-brow parties when it isn't being a place to see and be seen by other aristocrats during intermission.
Outside, Paris drizzled most of the time we were there.
The bust of Garnier, the 35-year-old architect of this incredible theater.
The Phantom of the Opera reserved box 5 for himself and unbeknownst guests. To our tour guide's chagrin, I asked questions regarding the novel. "No" she said, "there is no lake under the theater, though there is a large cistern. And there are four box 5's, one on each level, so which one was in the novel is irrelevant," she said.
We left Paris for the bulk of our time in southern France and Barcelona from Gare De Lyon. The SNCF double-decker bullet train reached speeds of 315 k.p.h. It took 3 1/2 hours to reach Marseilles.
When we arrived in Marseilles, we went to get our rental car. The clerk suggested we leave the car there, for the time being, and take the subway to get around; it wouldn't be easier than trying to park the car. We took the subway from Gare St. Charles to get our first glimpse of Marseilles.
The orange color of the Marseilles subway car really woke us up.
The first day in Marseilles, we walked along the harbor on the west side of Vieux Port not realizing that most of the exclusive restaurants were on the east side of the harbor. That steeple over my head was is the Notre Dame De La Garde we were to visit later that day.
Notre Dame De La Garde
From the hillside of Notre Dame De La Garde, you can see Marseilles and the Isle of If in the Mediterranean. It was the prison where The Count of Monte Cristo was incarcerated and escaped from to get his revenge on his tormentors. Visiting the island would have been a torment for Leona who gets seasick easily so we avoided the 25 minute ride there.
Don't tell anyone the secret, but we left Marseilles that evening after dinner, took the subway back to Gare St. Charles, picked up our rental car, and drove to Aix-en-Provence. It is no secret that I drove a Jaguar XE during our stay in Southern France and Barcelona, but no one knows the real reason; truth is, the Jaguar was the only car available with GPS.
The Notre Dame at dusk
Marseilles at night.
We left Marseilles that evening, not to return there for four days. The next day, from our hotel Saint Christophe in Aix-en-Provence, thirty minutes north of Marseilles by car, we walked to the open market mall for breakfast and then the farmers' market (see separate folder.) In the afternoon, we got on the highway and drove east along the French Riviera until we reached Monaco.
We didn't spend that much time in Monaco; perhaps two hour; just enough time to pick up David Bowie's last CD in a shopping mall and take a few photos. The main reason we went to Monaco was to pick up the coastal route back west through Nice. The views along the Moyenne Corniche were fabulous, especially at sunset.
Leona looks like she's in a Jaguar car advertisement; right?
Eze, on the French Riviera
Our first look at Vieux Port, Nice.
Nice was a bit disappointing at first, with nowhere to park and, at 6:00, all the restaurants closed, including La Vigna. We walked around in vein looking for an open restaurant to have dinner in. Leona's feet were killing here. We started to walk back to the car and I promised to stop in the first open restaurant. Lo and behold, the restaurant with the great menu, La Vigna, which was closed at 6:00, was open at 8:00; we had arrived too early. We went in and had a great dinner with fine locally grown wine.
We had cappuccino in this restaurant when we first arrived in Marseilles, but these following photos are from our last night and morning in Marseilles after three nights in Barcelona.
After finally finding the parking garage for the Radisson Hotel resting up in our room, we stepped out for dinner. We had gotten lost because the street outside the hotel was under construction. Ironically, while getting lost in west Port Vieux, we found the little nondescript shop introduced in Leona's tour book where she picked up the famous, overpriced Marseilles soap, at a local price.
Up this mall on the east side of Vieux Port, we had a fine seafood dinner at La Daurade that evening; sea-salt encrusted baked sea bass, six assorted raw clams, escargot, local wine. After finally finding the parking garage for the Radisson Hotel resting up in our room, we stepped out for dinner.
The cork from Chateau Simone we were given in La Daurade restaurant didn't match the wine we had with dinner. The same waitress almost gave us the wrong bill until the English speaking waiter corrected her. The meal was a fine end to our stay around the Mediterranean in southern France and Barcelona.
Au revoir Marseilles. At 10:30 am we were back on the SNCF double-decker bullet train. By 2:00 pm that Sunday, we were back at Gare De Lyon in Paris for two more days and a night.
