day3-unknown ancient civilization of the Meditteranea

There are certain things we expect to see in France: towering cathedrals with rose windows, winding narrow streets paved with time-smoothed stones (maybe with an obstinate and contemplative herd of cows on them, if we're lucky), and of course, lots o' induldgent bakeries. French culture doesn't usually connote a massive ancient shrine made of limestone, gleaming under the splash of cascade that falls down its surface. But that was exactly what we found on the little hill overlooking the town of Nice. The rain made the pine trees look like a thick growth of a tropical rain forest. Then it turned to an impressive downpour that soaked us from head to toe, nothing short of a floodening downpour of Peruvian rainy season. The spotlights lit the stone structure through the curtain of vapor, magnifying the oh-I-must-be-sleepwalking-in-a-Mayan-jungle feel. I've had hard time imagining the possible reasons for the Nicoise to build it on top of the hill, instead of a fancy, overdecorated chateau, which would be the first thing to come to one's mind as a tourist attraction in any French town, but at least it is a surprise, and isn't a surprise one of the reasons we take a trip despite of all the tiresome things--starting from the tightened security and ending with the same?
impossible shrine in tropical forest in Nice
Originally uploaded by uBookworm.

day3-ode to old town Nice

(Photo courtesy of Patrick; mine came out all blurry...)

We resumed our stroll in the recently gentrified old district of Nice after our fabulous meal at McDonald's, which led us to a switchback stairs among pastel-painted houses heaped on top of each other. Strips of slanted land alongside the stairs were partially overgrown. There were pinky tiny European cars parked on the streets. At the foot of the stairs was a metal dumpster with two smiling faces graffitied on it. (Patrick took a revealing picture of me crouching in front of the dumpster to take a close-up photo of the two happy faces.) There were laundered shirts and jeans still damp and heavy on ropes that sagged in the middle.

The signs of real people actually living in the quarter were abundant. People probably of working class, living their miniscule, unpretentious lives. People of no great means, but not numb in desperation nor in blood-shot ambition. It was pleasing to see that the historic old town has not been converted to neither a dead, curio-shop-studded tourist area where everything is geared toward tourists (no laundry outside! It looks bad.) nor an expensive fancy district where no ordinary local can afford to reside. A quaint town without real life going on in it has lost half the charm. Such a town is no better than the creepy illusion of the Disney World. To see an old woman almost smothered in a coat from her youth drop bags of grocery at her door and fumble for the key is an indispensable part of traveler’s delight. A window with its age-old paint peeling off and a pot of withering plant with a real family living behind it is far better than a row of windows with perpetually blooming plants with empty rooms behind the calculated drapes of lily-white lace curtains. Old town Nice is such a town with vivid reality of local life.

The rain, which had stopped for a while, started to drizzle again. We climbed up the stairs to the low-lying hill above the quaint apartment buildings. There was a panoramic viewpoint where you can feel who you really are—a tourist. The entire town of Nice, new and old, and the Mediterranean, spread under our gaze in a bluish hue of the rainy evening just before the lights flickered themselves on. Behind it was a small, terracotta-colored chapel with a dome, decorated with a mosaic of green and white tiles, and a cemetery, lined with cypress, quite reminiscent of its Spanish cousins where a family of a jet-haired Andalucian might be mourning for him, who fell in the endless acts of vengeance. Ahead of us was a mass of pine trees, illuminated by strong spotlights, as if the night had forgotten to caress the woods into the comfort of darkness.


panoramic view Nice
Originally uploaded by uBookworm.

day 3-the most delicious meal in McDonald's I have ever had

Tired of not knowing what to do, we (or I, single-handedly?) decided to grab sandwiches from a bakery we saw earlier in one of the narrow winding streets. With them in a bag, we were back where we were: we didn't know where to eat them. There wasn't an inch of dry space in this downpour, and we needed fluid to smooth the crusty bread down our throat. Going back to the hotel twenty minutes away seemed ridiculous, and it wouldn't solve the fluid problem. Still not knowing exactly where to eat them, we headed toward the bus terminal, next to which I remembered seeing a McDonald's, a bright hope for two steaming cups of American coffee.

After some clumsy hustle in French, the "cafe' americaine" showed up. The cups were significantly larger than those of their espresso cousins, but they were only slightly larger than an American yogurt cup for babies. Intuition took us to an obscure table in a corner. I sipped my coffee. And glanced around. "Let's have them here. Nobody's going to notice." I said. Patrick seemed anxious. "The sandwiches are about the same size as their burgers, and they are wrapped in paper. And obviously they don't walk around the place to clean up the tables or anything." I pushed. Indeed, many of the tables were loaded with wrappings and greasy napkins from someone's Christmas feasts. I picked up one from the bag, and handed it to Patrick, who managed to stretch his facial muscles into something that remotely looked like an accomplice's smile. I picked up the other for myself, unwrapped it, and took a bite.

It was the unbeatable best meal that I have ever had in McDonald's.

Between the halves of a crusty bread was the local specialty: salad nicoise with boiled eggs, anything-but-greasy chunks of tuna, absolutely fresh tomatoes, and green peppers, tossed in dressing with a refreshing acid edge. The sandwich once again proved our suspicion: in France, even a snacky meal bought in haste can be, and indeed tends to be, extremely tasty and satisfying. It wasn't anywhere near what could be called a real meal, which we were craving for after more than a day of on-the-go type meals and skipped meals, but it did contribute to improving our mood and spirit. Of course caffeine did its work as well.
monster fish
Originally uploaded by uBookworm.

day3-downpour, odd nativity scene

We ventured into old quarter of the town for a belated lunch with high spirits. But our high spirits were soon to be lying on the wet pavement, soggy and defeated.

Nice's old town occupies a small area to the east of the city, at the foot of a hill called "le chateau," though there is and has been no chateau on top of it. Right next to the Mediterranean, one could expect some decent seafood restaurants there, according to the travel guide. In summer, that was. There was no restaurants open, other than the overly-priced ones along the tree-lined boulvard, open for helpless tourists trapped in the hybernating city on this Christmas day. Nearly identical appearance of the restaurants with outdoor seatings covered with transparent plastic sheets for warmth, invariable menues in exactly the same price range, and horrible pieces of background music that were cousins to each other didn't tempt our taste buds. One would not expect anything spectacular from those tourist traps. There was one, however, unique-looking restaurant along the same boulvard, with roughly constructed wooden tables and benches and appetizing smell of herbs and spices. It was bustling with diners--way too bustling. There seemed to be no table available next hour at least. Hunger was gone by now, and the mist-like rain has turned to a serious downpour. We took refuge under an awning of a closed restaurant. I didn't want lunch any more, but I wanted to decide what to do next. I was tired of this desperate wander. Charged silence took over the void between us, as if it had been sealed from the continuous noise of the rain hitting the already flooding alleyway.

Bad mood entails irrational compulsion. Now I was fed up with being stuck under the awning. I wanted to be doing something. Anything other than just staring at the rain. I walked to the edge of the awning, pulled out my camera and tried as many compositions possible in the confinement. Some seemed to be interesting, but it didn't kill much time. Partly as a childish gesture of protest to Patrick, who seemed to be determined to stay there until the cloud had dried up entirely, which I suspected would never happen in a million years, I put the hood of over the head and went into the rain, securing the camera under the jacket. Feeling the common pleasure of defiance, I crossed a street to see a small church and a plaza. There was a strange nativity scene set up there, with mannequins--not the commonplace resin figures-- dressed in traditional Coat d'Azul clothing. Their faces--probably fine for a storefront display--were not conveying the holy joy they were supposed to convey. The originality of the nativity scene, though, didn't end there. There was odd smell of maneur floating in the air.

I had a second look at the scene. There was, in front of the mannequins, an area encircled with makeshift fences and filled with once-dried, now-drenched straws. Several wooden wine boxes were placed upside down here and there, and on top of them were roosters and hens, next to which lied a couple of sheep, with their wool coat grey with wet dust. There was even a sleepy-eyed goat, complete with a goaty and a brass bell hanging from its neck. A nativity scene with real animals! That's new, I smiled to myself. The animals looked slightly confused to be taken out of their usual farm, to be placed in such a strange place, and next to some mysterious mannequins, to make matters worse. Probably the mannequins, too, for whom this must have been the very first time to stay outdoor for so long. I went back to Patrick with the discovery, in a little improved mood.


Old town Nice in rain
Originally uploaded by uBookworm.

day3-energy burst

pink and glitter
Originally uploaded by uBookworm.

Our cheap hostel was on the third floor of a residential building, strangely located in the midst of a high-end shopping street with Hollywood-movie-premier-style red carpets sprawled on both sides. On the Christmas day, the street was deserted with only one brasserie and a Chinese takeout restaurant open, drenched in the intermittent light rain. There was virtually nobody out on the streets as we walked down from the station. Everything, from the colonial style apartment buildings to the grand Place Macena, was wet and dead. We stepped on the red carpet from which rain and mud surfaced under our weight, and went into the obscure stairwell of the building. To the left, there were mailboxes with French names of residents. As we climbed up, panting, it became noticeable that white marble steps were worn in the middle, and that brass handrail had lost its paint here and there, indicating the long history of the building.

On the third floor, we found the door of the hostel. We also found a notice taped to the door, saying that the owner of the hotel will not be back for four hours. The weather was not favorable for an aimless walk, to say the least, and we had backpacks, which were relatively small for an 18-day trip, but bothersome nonetheless. Plus, four hours would be too long to waste away sitting in a cafe', if there was any open on this deadly silent Christmas day. "What!? So we can't get in until 5!? That's unbelievable!" The exclamation escaped out of my mouse before I could contain it, making me instantly feel like an unappreciative old lady who so easily finds all sorts of things to complain endlessly about in a squeaky, high-pitched voice that drives everybody nuts.

I gave out a sigh and turned my back, not knowing where to go but knowing we couldn't wait for the owner to come back in the dark stairwell when the door sprung open from inside. There was a miniscule woman behind it, with a clipboard in her hand, her eyes busily scanning us, then the paper on the clipboard. Uncontainable energy radiated from all over her body. "You must be XXXX (some unfamiliar French name)?" She was confident who we were. But we were not whoever she thought we were, and Patrick told her his name. She ran her eyes on the list again, presumably found his name on it, and waved her arm to let us in, with so much vigor that I feared she might knock off something from the low shelf just inside of the door.

"I'm going to a Christmas dinner at my mother's. You are lucky, because I was just about to leave." She explained excitedly, as she rolled her big, round eyes. "I don't love to be there, but it's a family ritual--my mother, brothers, all their kids, you know. Always a mess." She added with a mischievous wink, before she started to explain how to use the keys, which ones are the better places to eat, and so on. "Oh, I should be running!" Glancing at her tiny watch on her bony wrist, she said, and fled, leaving a flush of smile to us. She was like a small typhoon in the shape of a human. We had to sit on the bed for a while to recover from the flood of information she gave us and from the sudden exposure to such an amount of sheer vitality.

"Wow. Guess we're lucky." "Yeah, and she's really nice to let us know so much when she was about to leave." We said after a while, and got up to explore the town without the heavy packs on our shoulder.

day3-monkey talk

I brought a monkey with me to the trip. I thought that including him in some of the touristy pictures will help minimize the painful touristiness of them to some extent, and it probably did. I originally found him on a list of kids’ little gifties that came with a kid’s meal from a Japanese McDonald’s several years ago, and got the meal just for the sake of this smiling, crimson monkey with a bunch of crest hair sticking out from his forehead. Now he has something to tell you after his first and great journey in the Old World.

Ahem, is it my turn now? Ah, okay…ahem, I’m the aforementioned monkey. Obviously. Do you like my scarf? Isn’t that nice and colorful? My master made it for me right after I was adopted. I think it fits me really well…without that, I’m pretty plain-looking, you know. Well, I guess I should start talking about the trip now. My master’s nudging me by the elbow.

Well, I’m quite proud of the fact that I’m a monkey who has actually traveled in France. It’s pretty rare in our society of the tailed creatures as you can easily imagine. But, regretfully, most of the places I can clearly recall are either in a train or in a restaurant, because in other places my master was too busy looking at things to pull me out of her shoulder bag where I was cramped together with a travel guide, a water bottle, her camera, her passport, and various other stuff that she carried around with her all the time. It was pretty humiliating and somewhat saddening to see the camera guy being pulled out to the blinding light a second after I saw her hand come in from the opening and hastily expected that she was pulling ME out. Oh, no, I’m not complaining…that is fortunate enough for a monkey (and a plush monkey, on that matter) to be traveling around. But anyway, it’s the trains and restaurants that I can describe to you.

The train to Nice, called TGV, which doesn’t stand for what which should stand for: Tropical Gymnastic Vertebrate (me), ran so smoothly without a single jolt or sway that it felt like it was hovering an inch from the rail, and I didn’t feel any exhaustion after the 6 hour trip. Not that I feel ANY exhaustion—but my master says it didn’t tire her, either. The TGV passed Aix En Provence and Marseille on the way, and arrived at the Nice Ville station around 2pm. Above the rails arched a huge, high glass ceiling with numerous metal supports, which gave the station the feel of a classic greenhouse of a metropolitan London of the 19th century. Not that I’m old enough to have seen it myself, folks—I am pretty well read for a monkey. I hope my keen self-awareness is not tiring you, or is it?

Outside of the station, palm trees and warm, moist air of the seaside greeted us. With its rotary adorned with flowerbed, which probably boasts tropical flora in the right seasons, it looked awfully similar to the coastal resort towns with hot springs in Izu Peninsula, Japan. I can tell you this time that the comparison is based on my own first-handed experience—I have been to one of those resort towns myself…I knew better than, though, to hop thoughtlessly into the supposedly therapeutic water of the hot spring, which could ruin the exceptionally fine touch of my fur. Hmm, where were we? Oh, yeah, the station. Okay, well, that is about all I can tell you about Nice right now, sadly. My master put me back into the shoulder bag, because it was rainy and she didn’t want to get me wet. Considerate, isn’t she? So from now on all I could sense was the sound and the smell of the town. It smelled like rain, with occasional tint of sandwiches and coffee, and it sounded like there was not much going on, which should be a right observation, for it was the Christmas day and almost all the shops should have been closed. Then I heard my master pant, and say in a loud voice, “What!? Be back at five!? So we have to wander around town with nowhere to go and with these heavy backpacks!? No way!!” That got me worried, but my master is tugging me at the tail…looks like she wants to take over the talk. Very well, I suppose I could let her talk—I’m getting thirsty. So long, folks!

Well, that was my monkey. He’s quite eloquent, and he has an ego of the corresponding size. My exclamation that he was talking about at the last moment was when we found a sign on the door of our hostel, saying that the owner will be gone until 5pm and we will not be able to get in to unload ourselves. But it should be in the next chapter(?).


monkey the cafe' lover
Originally uploaded by uBookworm.

day3-TGV flies to Nice

Now I am writing this journal on the world-renowned TGV to the southern town of Nice, warm and ocean-scented in my imagination. Occasional farm houses with red roof tiles fly by outside of the window, as well as cattle herds in a distance, grazing on the hilly lush field, under the grey, hazy sky of French December. The ample seat is exceptionally comfortable, the TGV almost never sways as it runs 250 km an hour, as if it is an inch afloat. The folding table between the seats facing each other is stable enough to scribble on this fast-running train, making passengers around me all puzzled, at least the ones who are awake, for I converse with Patrick in English and write the journal in some obscure Asian-looking language. The coach is quiet with many of the passengers sunk in their private slumber, for it left Paris a few minutes past 7, when pre-dawn darkness still encased the capital city. The only exception is the group of four occupying the seats across the aisle from ours. The little girl in a pink corduroy skirt has been quietly playing most of the time, with her creepy-looking doll and her drawing set in a big plastic box, despite my initial concern. Instead, her mother has been engaged in an endless conversation with a man who seems to be her husband, in a voice just loud enough to be heard probably by all the passengers in this otherwise silent car. Another man of the group, who seems to be a brother of either the mother or the father, is fast asleep, with his leather jacket tucked between the window and his head overgrown with his exuberant curly hair. Being curly-haired, chubby, and looking content in a worn-out tee-shirts, he seems to be an odd member of this family of skinny parents with an ambiguous sorrow floating on their faces. Patrick is also asleep in front of me, trying to rehabilitate from his jet lag. I slept a deep sleep soon after the train left Paris, and now am filled with fresh energy.

The alarm of my wrist watch woke us up this morning at 6:30, which should have been early enough to get to the Gare de Lyon after letting Patrick find the Christmas gift I had hidden under the small writing table last night. It did give us enough time to play the little "where did the Santa leave the present?" game, but did not grant us enough time to get ready, for some mysterious reason. Well, to be honest, it was not mysterious--it was simple--Patrick was not paying attention to his watch, and I did not know that he wasn't. Therefore, by the time he came down to the small lobby where I was nervously waiting for him after taking care of the check-out business, it was too late to take the Metro to the station. 20 minutes was all we had. Flinging our backpacks on the shoulders, we hurried to the closest possible place to find a cab, the Place de Republique. There were two cabs parked on the other side of the plaza, to which we dashed as the light turned red without flickering, as is the norm in France. There was nobody in the cabs. Desperate, we stepped on to the road from the sidewalk and glanced around, and found one making a turn toward us. Thankfully the cab was empty, and pulled up in response to my hysteric motion. We threw the backpacks in the trunk, and ourselves in the back seats. The driver must have sensed our desperate hurry, for he sped along the road, wet jet-black with midnight rain and pre-dawn fog, reflecting the orange glow of the street lamps. The digital clock on the dashboard cruelly eroded into what little time left before our train would leave us behind. I almost gave up, finding a strange relief in the somewhat graceful act of giving up. But when the cab driver dropped us at the station, right in front of the 12-track platform, it was still 7 minutes before the departure. The long line in front of the coffee stand and my chicken heart didn't allow me to grab our caffeine fix for the morning, but we did get on the train, which seems almost miraculous. The TGV smoothly pulled out of the station into the surburbs of Paris, still fast asleep, complete with graffiti on the soundproof walls along the rail, obscured in the indigo darkness before dawn. Soon irresistible waves of sleepiness attacked me, to which I succumbed.

Soft, grey light of the overcast morning awakened me some forty minutes later. The train was running through a hilly field with lines of trees along unpaved roads, connecting barns, farm houses, small churches, and probably some general stores and post offices in neighboring villages. Were it not for the moist green of the plants that covers the ocean-like field, it would be similar to Spanish Extremadura where an imitation of TGV carries Spanish ladies with black feather fans and men with bags under their eyes from noble and proud Madrid to affectionate and vengeful Andalucia. I went to the snack stand several cars apart and came back with two cups of espresso, longing for a big mug full of American coffee, which seems nonexistent in this part of the world. The pastries we bought yesterday soothed our hunger. The satisfaction they provided, however, far exceeded the mere stuffing up of our stomachs. The tartlette au Citron had a flaky crust and rich, flan-like filling with a strong, refreshing orange flavor. The quiche Provencale, which Patrick picked, was filled with roasted vegetables, of which the red pepper, with its pleasing bitterness, was the best. My quiche with mushrooms was the least impressive of the three, yet excellent with succulent mushrooms swarming in the buttery pie crust. It was just a random bakery closest to our hotel, and it's traumatizingly good! We exclaimed in hushed voices, happily licking our fingers. After a while Patrick went back to sleep. I opened the journal, and started recording yesterday's journey of ours, before it blurs in the light of new experiences ahead of us.

day2-Montmartre feast market

Narrow winding slopes of hilly Montmartre was starting to sink into the bottom of dark-indigo evening. At the foot of the hill, the main street where the Metro station gargled out an intermittent flow of people was studded with cheap clothing stores lit with fluorescent lights and small stands selling sandwiches and Kabobs. To the east of the station, the street led to a suddenly flashy entertainment district of the 9th district, illuminated by evocative neon signs, with mysterious women dressed in black and feathers standing in the shadows of doorways of adult theaters. The big red sign of windmill of the Moulin Rouge shone in its deceptive innocence and joy, across the street from a seductive facade of a Musee' d'Elotique.

A brief ascent among brasseries and peep shows took us to a quiet, sophisticated residential area of Montmartre so close yet so distant from the light trap of the neighboring district. The distinct domes of Sacre Couer on the hilltop floated white above the roofs of four-and-five-story apartments. A turn on a corner suddenly opened up another busy street, this time with delicatessens, fish markets, butcher shops, produce stands, fromageries, bakeries and pattisseries, adorned with wreathes and swinging large shiny balls hung across the street. Older women with woven baskets, men and women still in their business attire, a boy carefully holding a big box of a decorated cake like a proud bearer of an immense wedding ring--it seemed as if all the people deserted their houses to gather in this festive street in preparation for their Christmas dinner. Shops along the street had set up makeshift stands under floodlights to accommodate all the foods more in quantity and better in quality than usual. An wooden stand with bed of crashed ice held crates after crates of different kinds of oysters and wedges of lemon in front of a fish market. Next to it was a table filled with beautifully decorated plates of pate's, cold cuts, salads, and olives from a delicatessen. Chocolate, coffee, orange, pistachio, praline, tastefully decorated Bush de Noel's were neatly arranged in the windows of bakeries, waiting to be picked up by a tempted customer. Totally envious of the abundance of fresh produce and the amazing variety of absolutely beautiful seafood available, we wandered and peeked through the thick walls of Christmas shoppers into almost every stands and stores, pledging to come back to pick up and try some when we were back in Paris two weeks later.

The contagious excitement of shopping for a feast of a special occasion released us at the end of the market street. Suddenly more tired than hungry, we dragged ourselves onto the Metro, heading back to the hotel. At the hotel, we climbed into the bed and lost consciousness in a matter of seconds, but thankfully without forgetting to set the alarm clock for tomorrow, when we had a train to catch in the early morning to Nice.
lobster in Montmartre market
Originally uploaded by uBookworm.

day2-admiration, frustration, and due gratitude

A heavy wooden door, with a tarnished copper frame and a knocker in the shape of a lion's head, gleaming smooth and golden at its forehead where hundreds of thousands of believers and non-believers touched, separates the secular, bright outside and the sacred inside with scarce light, intentionally scarce to gently guide your gaze toward the crucifix above the alter. Upon opening one of the heavy doors, you are swallowed into an immense space with a ceiling almost as high as the sky itself, as if standing on the deep bottom of an abandoned mother ship stripped of all the layers of its decks, gargantuan and silent. Instead of rust and barnacles, mosaic work, stained glass, statues and paintings of saints adorn the high walls. On the low handrail of the niches along the walls, with small alters and a few rows of pews, are intricate mosaic works of stylized plants and animals, reminiscent of those in Islamic architecture. Turquoise of exuberant wisteria, lapislazuli of proud aster, and gold of gnarled grape vines--pieces of tiles of different hues come to ephemeral life in turns, in the flickering light of the candles lit by pious parishioners. Looking high, high up, on one of the top domes you see surprisingly modern stained glasses one might expect in homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, above more traditional, busily designed ones that decorate the lower windows. It brings home the almost counterintuitive fact that the basilica didn't see its completion well into the 20th century, a century evocative of space-age science and avant-garde, not usually of religious zeal and gloomy paintings of tortured saints.

Nearly overcome by the irresistible urge to photograph the rich beauty of the inside of the basilica (which is rightly prohibited to respect the parishioners for whom it is still a place of prayer, rather than a piece of art), you walk around and admire. Before long, you realize that you should be grateful to the parishioners who have generously opened their intimate place of prayer to us intrusive tourists, when they have all the right in the world to shut us out. They are not keeping the artistically and architectually valuable to themselves, but only asking us to respect their attachment to the statues and paintings, which, for them, are more sacred than beautiful. Not that the realization completely wipes out the feeling of frustration and despair of not being able to record the breathtaking beauty in front of you, which will take only a few hours to blur in memory without a photograph.

When you get outside, the late-afternoon light has succumbed to the evening dim. Yet, it still pierces your irises dilated to the maximum to see in the extreme low light of the inside. From above, gargoyles and bronze statues of kings, with their swords raised in triumph, keep their silent vigil over the front plaza of the basilica, where most of the tourists have gone to their next destination, probably to warm dinner, and parishioners attending the midnight Christmas Eve mass are yet to come. Staggered by the amount of work poured into the building and the zealous determination that must have backed the work, you head back down, speechless for a while, stopping several times to look back at the beautifully curved domes which, after seeing the far more delicately decorated inside, seems less impressive yet still pleasing to the eyes. You are glad you decided to see the Sacre Couer yourself, despite your former suspicion of the iconized basilica being only painfully touristic.

day2-unwelcome welcomes at Sacre Couer

Patrick was already awake on the bed. With the weak winter light already starting to dim, we decided to head for the Sacre Couer, which shouldn't be too far away to reach and too huge to see it all. The underperforming aesthetic appreciation of Patrick, resulting from the jet lag, also played a key role here, for the Sacre Couer was not something he wanted to see with all his faculty perfectly tuned. The Metro, which became elevated at some point to reveal the largest graffiti of the "Obey" giant that Patrick had ever seen, took us to the station at the foot of the basilica. Upon leaving the station we were in the super-touristic approach up to the basilica, lined with kitsch souvenir shops and cafe's for tourists, just like the ones stud the sides of the approach of Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto. Following the flow of the crowd, the iconized three domes of the basilica revealed themselves between the roofs of the three-story buildings along the narrow slope. Two mysterious stains of two different shadows of magenta on the smaller dome on the right side caught us wondering. The large stains with unintentional drippings did add some surprise and interesting change to the otherwise too perfectly symmetrical basilica, but pink and magenta didn't seem to be the likely colors they choose to decorate their religious architecture, let alone smearing it permanently with paint. Could it be somebody's bad joke, or could it be some form of protest from some unknown cultural terrorists?

A carousel with strands of light bulbs and a pack of black gangs pressure-selling strands of some mysterious merit to helpless tourists roughly greeted us at the end of the approach. One tugged at my arm and threw a barrage of sales talk as I tried to free myself from his intrusively friendliness, without looking into his eyes some 12 inches from mine. I clumsily struggled to circumvent his sly blockage of my way, totally unprepared for this kind of aggression preying on tourists, which one might (rightly) expect in Tanger, Morocco, but not in France. Patrick peeled me off from him, but the rough ritual of initiation to tourists sites wasn't over yet.

About five steps ahead, where the never-ending stairs climbing up to the basilica starts, there was a man sitting on the side of the steps and another with a crutch, standing leisurely about a yard from him. Smile on their face, moving their hands liberally as they talk, they seemed to be the kind of people who enjoy chitchat with random strangers at parks and public plazas. As we approached, however, the man on foot blocked our way up by placing his crutch across the way, as if poking the sitting man with it, which appeared to me to be a natural part of their playful conversation. Patrick shoved him in a rough movement so unlike his usual gentleness, and we made it through them. Having noticed unfamiliar tension on his face, I questioned Patrick if that was such a critical situation where we might have had our valuables pickpocketed if things turned out the other way. The man with the crutch was not looking at the seated man, he was looking at Patrick with his uncanny eyes, with an obvious intent to cause trouble, he said, which I didn't notice, being too busy picking myself up after the previous encounter.

The physical challenge of the long stairs soon stripped me of the ability to ponder on the incident. Feeble as we were, we stopped at the lower terrace, trying to conceal our humiliating pant, pretending to be interested in the sprawling city below. The city with an ordinance banning skyscrapers lay as low as any medieval manor village with towers of churches piercing the sky. The smoky grey of the cloudy late afternoon blurred the boundary of the city, making it appear deceptively larger than it really is. With our legs and lungs in a somewhat shape, we resumed our ascent.

Seen from the upper terrace, the mysterious twin stains on the roof took the shape of two people, one slightly lighter in tone and smaller in size than the other, almost like two lovers leaning against each other's shoulders. Patrick pulled out his zoom lens and started to take some pictures of the city below, whereas I wandered off to the side of the terrace, looking for a good angle to capture the pink stains when an womanizer Frenchman approached me. He looked decent in his charcoal-grey wool coat and matching light grey scarf around his neck, and his claim that he used to work in a small Japanese town, which I wouldn't imagine to be internationally well-known by any means, gave him some credibility, but I was defensive after all the previous rough welcomes. I told him that I was leaving the next day and drove him away. "I will cry for you," he said jokingly as he dissolved into the crowd entering the basilica. Half drunk with this unexpected petting on my insecure ego, yet half ashamed of the stupid excitement it brought to me, I trotted back to Patrick and didn't tell him what happened. We resumed walking toward the pillared and dome-ceilinged entrance of the now-towering basilica.

Originally uploaded by uBookworm.

day2-lone wanderer in the 10th district

First I headed toward the Place de Republique with a tall scaffolded statue in the center and cafe's and boutiques around. It was amusing to see McDonalds' and KFC dressed up a bit chicer to suit the French taste, with dark red walls and less flashy logos, finely camouflaged as independent restaurants. I took one of the main streets radiating from the plaza and aimed at a Gate Saint Martin, which revealed its sooted cream-yellow figure among cheap clothing stores studding the littered sidewalk. With shadowy men loitering in doorways in twos and threes and faded posters barely clinging to dusty glass windows of closed stores, the neighborhood definitely didn't seem to be the best in Paris. The typical feel of chilling desertedness blew up and down the street with the grey, late-afternoon wind. I took a right turn onto Rue de Strasbourg, heading northeast, hoping that it would take me away from the piercing stares from the loitering men, which might or might not have been a creation of my nervous imagination.

Thankfully, the new street led me to a more enjoyable part of Paris, which now appeared to be fairly segregated, judging from the patches of neighborhood with distinct ethnic faces along the route of my stroll. Feeling more secure, I enjoyed looking at economically impossible number of bakeries, cute but sick and twisted graffiti on the walls of alleyways, barber shops packed with and sometimes with overflow of, chattering African-Parisians, and a large church with overly decorated facade, not listed on my guide book, for there are just too many of them to list each and every one of them. Simple and modern ironwork of the front gate added a strange twist to the otherwise traditional-looking church architecture with sandstone gargoyles and angels looking over the street. At the sight of the grand Gare de Est with statues of several gods and goddesses on the roof, apparently celebrating something unfathomable to a stranger, I went back to the Boulevard Magenta, wondering if in France it is required by law that every building over a certain size have at least one triumphantly grand statue on it. Stopping here at a flower shop and there at a cute boutique, to photograph random things that caught my fancy, I walked back to the hotel to keep the promise of coming back in an hour.

day2-how to eat what you want when you are verbally disabled

Streets in Paris are mischievous, crossing diagonally, merging here and diverging there, never on a tamed grid like the ones in the New World. But at least they are named, unlike nameless streets in the floating country in the Far East where I am from, so once we found the Boulevard Magenta, it took us to the Place Republique, from which a roofed alleyway winds out to our cheap hotel bearing the same grand name as the plaza. We lowered our backpack in our third-floor room balmy with a hissing radiator and damp with Paris winter air trapped in for too long. Having examined the tiny bathroom that barely accommodates Patrick, peeked out of the lace-curtained window giving to the alleyway, and performed other rituals expected of tourists just arrived at a hotel, we headed out for something to eat, not knowing whether it should be called a breakfast or lunch, after a prolonged lethargic day up in the sky.

A twenty minutes walk from the station to the hotel was more than enough to convince us that almost anything we grab from almost anywhere should be good, indeed considerably better than American average. Showcases of cheap yet fresh sandwiches with simple ingredients like lettuce, tomato, ham and cheese on baguette, trays after trays of golden pastries with all kinds of fillings, tables in roadside cafe's with plates of omelets and sassy little cups of espresso along with a cigarette slowly turning to ashes in an ashtray. Paris seemed promising. At least when it comes to food.

Skipping the nearest eatery from the hotel, which was a Chinese takeout place on a triangular corner, we settled down in a cafe' with red awnings and large glass windows. To my awkward murmur of "Bonjour" appeared a young, comical-looking waiter with a monk-shaven head and big, brown, friendly eyes. There were a young man nibbling on a long baguette with butter and jam, an older couple sipping their cafe' au lait and hot chocolate, and an Asian woman endlessly puffing her cigarette as she flipped a paperback, with a long dried-up cup of espresso next to the ashtray. We gave up on deciphering the French menu after about half an hour of vain struggle with the better-than-nothing aid of our phrase book, and decided to have the "natural omelets," whatever its difference from just the plain "omelets" may be. But it was too early for a sigh of relief. The waiter nodded, and proceed to the question of what ingredients we wanted in the omelets. With a visible effort to fumble around for words stored somewhere in his brain, he kindly went out of his way to translate the ingredients on the list for us, which turned out to be bacon, ham, cheese, potatoes, and herbs de Provence. Patrick picked ham, cheese, and potatoes, whereas I jumped on cheese, potatoes, and herbs de Provence just because they were on the tip of my tongue. After a short while, along with small bottles of Lipton's peach ice tea and apricot nectar we had ordered appeared a mysterious wine bottle with transparent liquid, but without any label. It took us another short while, with glances at other tables, undereducated guesses and some secretive discussion, to convince us that it was not an expensive white wine brought to our table by mistake but chilled tap water free to drink.

Outside of the window, tiny cars swarmed a busy intersection, their muzzles literally touching the rears of the cars in the front, with other cars parked anywhere they choose, even on sidewalks and IN the intersection. A nightmare. To our delight, there was no sign of commercialized Christmas Eve around, except for a scarved old lady with fresh twigs of holly purchased in a nearby marche'. No speakers blasting with holiday music, no inflatable Santa Claus, no one overloaded with bulky shopping bags sprinkled with worn-out Christmas images. The omelets were huge and heavy with potatoes inside them and French French fries on the side, almost huge enough to give me an illusion of still being in Chicago, the capital of too generous servings, had it not been for the absence of the flood of so-called holiday spirit. We forgot to check the menu if tip was included in the price or not when we ordered our food, which might or might not be, according to Patrick's guide. Not wanting to hurt the kind waiter's feeling, Patrick decided to leave two euros. It of course required some more sneaky glances and hushed but heated discussion. In an unfamiliar place, getting two simple omelets can be a complicated task if it were to be performed perfectly. We gave out sighs, and went out, with our sincere "merci" barely making it out of our larynges.

On our way back to the hotel, we dropped by at a bustling bakery/pastry shop to stuck up on some food, for fear of not finding any store open on the Christmas day. A quiche with Provence vegetables, another with mushrooms, a pain au chocolat, a tartlette au citron, and a tiny bag of chocolate macarons cost us a little more than 7 euros. (And they all turned out to be super-tasty.) I wished we hadn't had the language barrier that hampered us from trying more unfamiliar food, or food with unpronounceable name in a show case way too far away from the store clerk to ask her to fetch one by simply pointing at it. Being barbarian is quite humiliating. We need to be thick-skinned and full of compensatory smile when we are travelers abroad.

Spacy Patrick stayed at the hotel for a short nap, while I went out for a stroll, as I often did during other trips with my previous traveling buddy.

day2 - UFO-looking airport, awesome graffiti, whimsical ticket machines

The elevated highway that stretches out from the center of the cylinder-shaped, 70's-sci-fi-flavored Charles DeGaule airport is filled with pinky European cars swiftly changing lanes like clever insects. The efficiently small, but incredibly ugly Smart Cars are everywhere, but they do not stand out as one might think, for almost 90% of all the other cars are similar hatchbacks, only slightly larger than the Smart Cars. Partly due to the absolute ease with which we entered France (the immigration officer only glanced at our passports, and there wasn't even a single personnel at the custom), and partly due to the jet lag, the fact that we are in France does not come home to me. The gloomy grey sky without any sense of time, visible from the windows of the airport bus, further accentuates the surrealness of the situation. The bus dropped us at a station of RER train, which connects Paris suburbs to the center of the city, and is expected to take us to the city.

Having quickly found out that the automatic ticket machines do not necessarily like our foreign-issued credit cards, though one machine did accept Patrick's on a whim, we joined the crowd at a line in front of the man-powered ticket office. The ticket lady, who obviously was used to tourists murmuring some gibberish not even remotely reminiscent of the renowned beauty of French language, gave us the two over-priced tickets to the center of the city where our hotel for the first night is located. Tasting the bitterness of our first of the many linguistic defeats, we boarded on the train.

Under the grey, misty sky, the train flew through unexploited fields of odd green, leafless bushes of thin, smoky red branches, and breathtakingly elaborate and bold graffiti that throng on every space available---on the walls of houses and stores, inside of dimly lit tunnels, abandoned buses, train cars rusting on sidings. According to Patrick the walking encyclopedia, those graffiti date back to the 17th century when retainers of noble lords in rivalry boasted the lord of their side by leaving their marks in towns and fields. Ambiguous history aside, it was exciting to see the mysterious rises and falls of the quality of the rail side graffiti as the train proceeded to Paris. Counterintuitively, as the city approached, the overall quality of graffiti noticeably dropped. Does it mean that diligent and skilled street-artists venture into the further wilderness of the suburbs, whereas lazy ones satisfy themselves with the already cramped walls close to their urban homes? In any case, after having seen so many jauntily spray-painted walls and trains, spotlessly clean Chicago streets started to seem strange to me. True it is clean and feels safe, but doesn't it feel dead as well?The train silently pulled into the final tunnel before the Gare de Nord (North Station), with us on board, half dazzled by the plants we were so unfamiliar with (hence the oddness to our eyes of the green of the grass), all the assertive graffiti, and unfathomable French conversation being had in low voices around us, so hard to distinguish from the buzz and squeaks of the train.

Gare de Nord was a large station with TGVs, several lines of Metro, and the RER in which we arrived. Sniffing the tempting smell of buttery pastries and fresh espresso sold in stands, we set out for a quest to claim the tickets we had reserved before we left. After several conversations in broken English, which was far better than our horrible RosettaStone French consisting of only a few useless words and phrases such as "the horse jumps" "a boy under a ball" and "a girl in a white shirt and another in a polka-dot shirt," we found another of the whimsical automatic ticket machines. Of course it spat out my credit card in disgust, possibly because it didn't have the little metal chip that is a standard feature of European credit cards. We joined the line for the human ticket booth again. Judging from the perplexed faces of the French customers in front of the ticket machines and occasional curses (or something that sounded like one) drifting from where they are located, the automatic ticket machines seemed to be fairly hard to please even for the locals. Long lines for the man-operated ticket booths and almost neglected automatic ticket machines puzzled us at first, but now all that had fallen into place. We successfully claimed our tickets to Nice and Strasbourg from a partially English-speaking African-Parisian, and stepped out of the grand station, relieved. It was eleven o'clock local time, about two and a half hours after we arrived at the airport.

day1-shockingly pleasant hours at an American airport

The backpack and the shoulder bag are sitting on the living room floor, all packed up, waiting to be picked up and go. I sit at my desk, filling out the final paperwork required for the college applications I have been meaning to finish before I leave. I write a couple of letters to the schools I attended in the past, asking them to send out my records, address and seal the envelopes. I make a cab reservation at one o'clock on their web site. At eleven thirty, I go downstairs with the envelopes and the notes I have written for my father about how to obtain financial documents from his bank, which is also required from the colleges curious of my financial standing. Patrick is expected around noon. I fix some Japanese lunch of rice balls, miss soup, and marinated sashimi-leftover from last night, thinking that I'll miss the kind of food for a while.

Around noon, Patrick's green Honda pulls up into our driveway and he appears from the passenger's door, smiling, for the smashed driver's door refuses to open. He drags out his backpack from the trunk, so compactly packed but heavy as mercury with all the camera lenses and a laptop. We have lunch, have some Japanese tea, and on spotting the cab waiting at the driveway, pick up our backpacks and set out. Mom reads to Patrick an English sentence wishing us a fun trip, which she has prepared and written down beforehand. Waiving hands from behind the tinted window of the cab, we start our journey, which still doesn't feel real after all the last-minute paperwork and chores that kept us from focusing on France for several days. Excitement and disbelief seize me alternatingly as we approach the airport, which a radio report said is dealing with its heaviest-traffic day of the year.

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For Patrick had a load of taxable tech gadgets (and I one) if a custom officer decided to be anal retentive, we paid a visit to the custom office. The first visit to the custom office in my life turned out to be pleasant, thanks to the laissez-faire, almost friendly officer who took care of our paperwork. Patrick even had a brief conversation with him about the PowerBook, after which the officer turned to a confused Middle Eastern guy going back to his country for the new year from the U.S. where he is a graduate student. It seemed to be an exceptionally good start of our journey. We headed toward the United's ticket counter in a separate terminal, where we found ourselves behind a young couple with a baby, totally disabled by an incredible number of huge suitcases which they had to come back and force to push forward every time the line moved. When our turn came, a jaunty middle-aged guy from Philippine greeted us at the counter, with jabs of jokes, and made sure we'll get seats next to each other by writing down "newly-weds" on our tickets, which considerably accelerated the blood flow in my cheeks. Despite our concern, we passed the security check without a long wait or an annoying open-your-bag-please inspection, where a "please" cannot sound more hollow. I even saw a security personnel smile a big, heartfelt smile for the first time in my life when I desperately nodded to his prompt to proceed with my passport and boarding pass held between my lips as I busied my hands taking off the jacket and placing the small metal belongings in the provided tray. The busiest day of the year at an American airport under a perpetual terror alert is never high on my list of places to encounter a friendly treatment with a human face, but it turned out to be so. I hoped it would remain so during the entire trip, but little did I know what excitement was waiting for us in our trip back to the U.S...

We drunk the last big cup of American coffee as we chatted away the unexpectedly long wait for the boarding time (thanks to everything that went so smoothly to our surprise). In the airplane, we stretched our legs in the luxury of the exit seats, delighted ourselves with a surprisingly high-quality meal of chicken in tomato sauce and creamed spinach and tortellini in marinara sauce, ridiculed some the Signally magazine that proudly presents their newest silly gadgets (loser's stuff, as Patrick put it), and slept the rest. Patrick found the live mapping system that shows the whereabout of our airplane quite amusing.

departure is still ahead

After drawing up the tentative itinerary (and after some ten days of not even flipping the pages of the guide) comes the daunting task of figuring out which train to take and which hotel to unlace our shoes at. Internet comes in handy, but it can also be a curse. As for trains, the SNCF, which covers the entire France by rail, has one of the most user-unfriendly web site that demands you to fill out a form after another, clicking the same damned button again and again, before finally finding the right train for you, almost by chance. But probably we should be grateful, rather than hateful, for their kindness to have actually put up an English version of their booking system. When it comes to booking a hotel, a perfectionist will never come out of the process alive. France is a country of tourism, among many other things, of course. Therefore it has an astronomical number of hotels, either excellent, good, mediocre, or to avoid at any cost. In this internet era, it seems almost criminal to pick one randomly from the recommended hotels listed in the guide you have. You feel obliged to exploit the thousands of comments posted on tens of trip advising sites concerning how wonderful or disastrous your predecessors' stay in a particular hotel. Once you have made up your mind on one, after days of tiresome research, it may turn out that the hotel doesn't have a vacancy on the desired date. Or it might have one luxurious room looking down the Mediterranean that you don't even dream of affording. Or it might not be reachable via the internet, which entails some dozen trials of sending an international fax or hours of waiting on hold for some French travel agency only through which reservation is available. The treat here is the painfully cute English with French accent the girl at the reservation center speaks with the ends of every other word jumping up like a startled hummingbird. Anyway, you have reserved the hotels and the critical trains for your trip. Congratulations. Making arrangement with your family and friends for your cat to be sat and fed, finishing the college applications you've been working on (as much as you can), packing, running a last-minute errand for a toothpaste, they all seem trivial compared to what you have done now. You're ready for the flight at last.

And so began our journey.