Nice

The trip to Nice took only 5 hours door-to-door and was uneventful other than a confiscated can of Nutella at the security (I swear I read somewhere that for travel inside France the no-liquids restrictions do not apply), but free gourmet sandwiches served on board of our one hour flight more than compensated for the bust.

Large top floor 2 bedroom seafront apartment, french door terrace, two bathrooms, huge living room, and wonderful sea breeze throughout. Of course, the moment we set out, clouds covered the sky and it started to drizzle. We stopped by the bike shop and yes, the last roadbikes were just rented out. Still - the air is warm, sea - beautiful, and Max, so far, reasonably content.

We hid from the rain at a bistro - same place where we had our "last supper" in November. Then we crossed the town to a supermarket which we used back then. There were great many other shops, but for some reason, "we" wanted to go to that particular one. In the supermarket, the line was long and I swear I heard more Russian then French. All the Russian speaking in the store seemingly gravitated to the same route: колбаса - сыр - помидоры - яйца. Just to be different, I also picked up a case of strawberries and some whipped cream. A bit later, at the register, Leon carefully packed the strawberries at the bottom of the bag and just to make sure it stays put, he placed a 16-can pack of coke on top.

The way back was long and the plastic bags were heavy (in addition to coke, Leon also picked up a gallon of orange juice). All of that - the line in the store, Russian language spoken in the shop and on the streets, the heavy bags and long schlep home brought back some memories. But not for long. Max wanted some food and we quickly surrendered and bought him Le Big Mac et Frites.

Back home, we relaxed on the balcony stealing fries from Max's and having Compote a la Fresh Strawberries.

Sunday

We slept late, had some peaceful lazy breakfast at home and set out to finish off the last of Paris obligatory attractions - Bastille and such.

Just to warm up, we lost Irene while boarding the train. Miraculously, we met at the next station and arrived at Bastille otherwise intact. From there, we followed a guidebook to Carnavalet - a small but excellent museum of history of Paris. Obscure but full of great paintings and other artifacts spanning the city's entire art history it was especially good for two reasons: it was free and empty. The room attendants were visibly bored, so the view of Max in his hat greatly entertained them. One of the attendants thought that Max was wearing the "Michael Jackson" hat in the memory of the late pop-idol. The guy turned some music on his cell phone and taught Max the moonwalk, the hand and other Jackson's classics. In return, Max showed him some provocative hip and pelvis moves. We pretended that the kid was not ours.

After the museum, the book directed us through "Jews and Gays" quarters (first the Jews, then the Gays). Some world-famous shaurma and falafel stand in the Jewish quarter had a 50-people deep line. It felt good than neither of us liked none of this food. But it made Max remember that he hadn't eaten in a couple of hours, so soon thereafter we stopped for lunch.

Strategizing what to do next, Leon suggested that we should rent bikes (the municipal bike rent stands are all over the city, but you need some preregistered card). We found only one bike shop on the other side of the city, went there and saw the last two bikes rented by people walking into the place right in front of us. Poor Leon - it was like he knew it was going to happen - he tried to speed us up all alone. We didn't even give Leon a luxury of saying "I told you so", because Max started to get cranky again and we had to hassle to get him into a shade and give him some soda.

While Leon and I were in a rush to take care of Max we lost Irene again. Another $5 transatlantic call reunited the family. And Max wanted to pee again. This time, after considerable walking around, we found no bathroom and had to surrender and park for lunch-and-pee at a bistro.

From there, we took a metro to La Defense - Paris business district with Grand Arch and some outdoor Jazz Festival in progress. I liked its clean and wide open space and streamlined modern design. But clean wide open spaces means more walking, which was not how Max envisioned the evening. Back on the metro to a dirty and crowded Champs-Elysees, picked up a burger and some provisions for breakfast and came back home.

Tomorrow morning we are departing Paris for Nice.

Pacifying Max, contn'd

Continuing from yesterday...

Art leads to ... yes, more food. On the way from Pompidou to Louvre, Max got very cranky, so we had to stop for more food. Lunch #3, I think. This bought us just enough good will for a 5 minute walk to Tuileries with its traditional mile-long summer kids carnival (rides and all). We did see Louvre but only as a backdrop to Max's joyous jumps on a trampouline (see picture).
After that he started to whine about going with him on other rides until Leon relented (but not without calling Max a b***g d***e a***e (with my full formal approval) and went with him into some labyrinth of physical challenges. Evidently unlike American half-hearted handicaped-friendly attractions, this one was not for wusses. Max got his ego handed back to him when we had to evacuate him through the fence (the last challenge involved puffs of compressed air and violently shaking ground). But little did we know that meanwhile he had prepared the next challenge for us. We were about done with a mile-long walk through Tuileries, when he said that he wanted to pee. Badly. Long story short - looking for the bathroom involved criss-crossing Tuileries four times, a heated, laced with trilingual profanities dispute with a maitre'd of a nearby restaurant, losing Irene, a $5 call to her cell to find her, and, finally, oh joy, a 40 cents peeeeeeee.
While Max, Leon and I were running through the park, Irene was courted by some local gigolo (well, I think he was a gigolo), which she enjoyed very much - I felt quite a bit of hesitation in her answering the phone and re-unification with the family. After the pee emergency, to cool off we went on a boat ride along Seine (uneventful) and finished the day with a midnight dinner at some third-rate Chinese restaurant not far from home.

Pacifying Max

Saturday started with going to a local supermarket (a little hole in the wall like C-town) and getting some breakfast supplies. "Cooked" breakfast (fried some eggs) at home, yelled at Max for dropping half of it on the floor, and, on the wrong foot, head out for the day.

After about 40 minutes getting lost in Metro, we emerged from underground at the foot of Notre Dame. The mass was in progress with huge TV screen showing how inside the cathedral a bunch of young people in circus cloth getting blessed by the main clown-in-charge (sorry). The sound system was broadcasting some singning (quite beautiful). A crowd of people was sitting on the chairs (fenced up from the public) in front of the cathedral. We walked about, bought Max his homburg hat - black, polyester - we did try to talk him out of the idea, but he insisted (as expected, I ended up carrying it later in the day). Buying the hat started first of many tricks we employed to pacify Max throughout the day. He lost his yesterday's cool, got pissy early and stayed that way...

From Notre Dame, we walked to Luxemburg Gardens, where we had picnic of some street French food and, yay!, McDonald's (chalk it off to Max).

Thus fortified, we did a tad more walking and arrived at Center of Pompidu (museum of Modern Art), where some of us (wink-wink, Max), ran out of juice again. We sat at nice cafe, front row seats (suspiciously empty), in front of the museum. We ordered two cokes and a coffee and a tea... A street artist performed in front of us. Tourists of all sorts walked by... The waiter came with our order and announced the total - it was 20 (twenty) euro for four non-alcoholic drinks. Which explained the empty seats. But who cares - Max was happy again and we went into museum. Some shocking exhibits nonwithstanding (a nude woman exercising with hoola-hoop), a couple (parts of a couple) having graphical sex on 12 by 12 (feet) canvas (we somehow saved Max from seeing that) but you are welcome, Leon, the visit was a big success. Max was so inspired by a video exhibit of artist-puppeteer Alexander Calder (do yourself a favor and see this video), that he wanted immediately to stop by an art supply shop, get some clay, wire, fuzzy wire (huh?) and start sculpting... He insisted that I use my Blackberry (duh, Dad) to locate the closest such shop. So, the rest of the way was spent "looking" for art supply shop.

... I'll stop for now here.... More, and the pictures, later... It is Sunday now (the Internet was not working yesterday when we came home) and we need to get going...

JFK => Eiffel Tower

While at JFK waiting for our flight (which was delayed by an hour), saw the Michael Jackson news. Experienced no any particular sentiments...

On American Airlines flight we got the shittiest seats in the house - last row next to the bathroom. The food and service on the plane is not nearly as good as Air France, but the space between the seats is a wee more. On the communal TV on the plane, saw "Last Chance Harvey" (Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson) - great acting, especially by Hoffman, but overall quite predictable and not exciting. We slept through the rest of the flight interrupted only by especially noisy restroom patrons and by toilet flushes.

At Charles De Gaulle airport - power outage (how?!). Jet bridges are out - had to use an old-fashion stairs to the tarmac. Walking next to Boeing 767 makes you appreciate its large size better. The passport controls and baggage, despite the outage went quick and we were on the way to our apartment withing 30 minutes of arrival.

We met our "landlady" Yetunde at the apartment (transfer from the airport was like 70E). The flat is smalling but immaculately maintained with great many detailed instructions.

After a quick break, we went through a good number of usual tourist traps to get it out our system. Walking tour of Montmartre, Place Piggale, formule lunch. Then we took a hot and overcrowded metro to Arch de Triumph and from there walked to Eiffel Tower. Despite today being a workday, there was a long line of people trying to get on top using the elevator. Instead of waiting, we climbed the stairs - there was no line and the entrance fee was much smaller. At the end, the climb didn't feel like much at all... It is only 110 meters (to the second level) or about, what?, 30 standard flights?

Max was a great trooper - his only complain the entire day was that he wanted to buy a hat - fedora style.... He saw it in one of the little stores in Montmartre, I said - "no", and he is whining about it still...

Since Paris is much more to the North than where we live, the sun stays up much longer. It was almost ten o'clock when we finished our climb to the tower, but the sun was still out.

From the tower, we took a cab home and called it a day. From Montmartre to Eiffel Tower in one day - not bad. I'll post some pictures later.

This Blog

This blog is so that you, Friends and Family, can keep track of our whereabouts, stay in touch, etc.

I tried Twitter first, but the 128 character limit is just ridiculous.

I am starting this while in Paris, using someone else's computer without Cyrillic keyboard. In the future, I will try to keep this blog as bilingual as possible.

Also, for now, I'm keeping this blog open to public (so that you don't have to log in to see it), but if I see too many strangers, I'll restrict the viewership to selected ones and ask you to login with your Google credentials.