A 5th Anniversary in Paris and the Wiebes Sign off From Dublin

As this will be my last post from our whirlwind tour of Ireland and Western Europe, and because our trip this weekend included a TON of different stuff, this post will probably not be a short one. For those of you who don’t want to know what I eat for breakfast, ok. I will not be describing any of our breakfast fare. As to what else I will include, you’ll just have to take your chances and read on.

As of last night at 10pm, Amy and I have now made our last official flight back into Dublin Internation Airport before heading back to the good ole’ US this coming Thursday morning, August 11th. Amy and I were married in Dallas on August 5, 2000, so this last Friday was our 5th Anniversary. Being a significant event, we wanted to do something really fun to celebrate. So, we got up very early Friday morning and headed to the airport to fly to Paris, France. Our flight left Dublin around 6:40 and we landed Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris at around 9:30, France time. We headed directly for the trains and after standing in a ridiculously long line to get tickets (since their automated machines wouldn’t take our low-tech credit cards – they don’t have the smart chips that are in all the cards here) were allowed to board. We rode the hour train into the old-town part of Paris. Despite not speaking French and not having very good directions as to how to get to the stop closest to our hotel, Amy had very little trouble getting us there. Procuring subway tickets was a little tricky the first couple of times, but we figured it out.
We had the great fortune of having a guy here in Dublin that Amy works with who is from Paris. His name is Arnaud, and if he weren’t a consultant on the same project as Amy, he could be a tour-guide director in Paris. He spent what must have been a considerable amount of time writing us out a site-by-site itinerary of what we were to go see and when. He even had a map with each site listed and arrows to go along with his already very detailed instructions. Having grown up there, he knew many tricks to getting around, what to see when, good restaurants, and many other excellent suggestions for our trip. (Thank you very much Arnaud! You made our weekend trip a phenomenal success.)

We made our way to the correct stop and walked the quarter-mile or so to the Hotel de Opera which is less than a half mile from the River Seine. We arrived there at around noon only to find out that we weren’t allowed to check into our room until after 2:30. So, we left all of our luggage in a storage room and headed right back out the door. We whipped out our trusty itinerary and got started. We walked a little ways and grabbed some lunch at a great sandwich shop. The ladies inside gave us our first taste of only speaking very limited English. Amy and I had prepared ourselves for this to a certain extent by learning some of the more important touristy French words and phrases. However, as we expected, there is no good way to communicate complex concepts such as what you do and do not want on a sandwich equipped with only par le vous ingles (do you speak English?), bon jour (good morning), bon sois (good evening), ovuai (good bye), merci (thank you), bou quou (very much), o au (where is), toilettes (duh..), jambon (ham), formagge (cheese), a few numbers and almost nothing else. Eventually we got what we needed but only after some not minor confusion. For those of you who don’t already know this (or who don’t care J ) the French make very good bread (example: croissants, baguettes, etc.) and consequently, their sandwiches are also very good.

This is really where we began using Arnaud’s itinerary (please, if you are able, pretend that you can hear the accent of a Frenchman with great English speaking the words of this itinerary), so I’m going to simply paste it in. (I’m also posting this here in case any of you ever visit Paris with a short amount of time to spend and want to use the same plan. It worked wonderfully.)

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Here is a suggestion of programme:Friday:From the 1. Hotel, go west to the 1b.Place Vendome, then west again to 1c.La Madeleine and reach the 2. Place de la Concorde (Concorde Square) viathe Street called La Rue Royale, with the Egyptian monument. From there,take the 3. Avenue de Champs Elysees and walk (this will be a bit long butworth it) until you reach the 4. Arc de Triomphe. I would give you theadvice to go at the top of this monument, instead of going up the EiffelTower. You'll have a great view from there. Then, take the Kleber Avenueand walk until 5. Place du Trocadero. Across the Square, you will gobetween the two big museums and go down the stairs where you will cross theSeine and be at the 6.Eiffel Tower. You go up or not, and then, you shoudgo to the 6b. Hotel des Invalides. It's not that far from where you are, soi suggest you walk, but please make sure you know where that is on yourmap. Inthis building is the grave of Napoleon.Then, take a cab to 7.EgliseSaint Germain des Pres, on the boulevard of the same name (or not far fromit). You will be in what we call the 8.Quartier Latin (Latin Quarter, easyone).This is where you should spend the rest of the afternoon and the evening.In your guide, you will see a lot of things, but do not go south of theBoulevard Saint Germain, this is for Sunday morning. I would recommend towalk in the pedestrian area. The restaurant will be the oldest "brasserie"of Paris, called the Procope (http://www.welcometoparis.it/06/Ristoranti/Procope/index.fr.html, 13 rue de l'ancienne comedie, paris 06, the subway station is Odeon). Booking is madefor you two under the name of Wiebe at 8pm. Tel number of the restaurant(just in case) : 00 33 1 40 46 79 00 (if from a french phone, 01 40 46 7900)

Saturday:From the 1. Hotel, go south to the Seine and reach the 2. Place de laConcorde (Concorde Square), with the Egyptian monument. From there, enterin the 3. Jardin des Tuileries, and go through it until you arrive at the4. Louvre. Take your time to walk outside the Louvre on its different sides(south, north and west). Then, go east on the Seine border and reach the
5. Pont Neuf (that's a bridge). Via this bridge, you will get to the 6. Ile dela Cite, which is the heart of the old Paris. On this island, there is the7. Cathedrale Notre Dame, which is a magnificent monument. Then you go backto the left side of the Seine and go to the City Hall: 8. Hotel de Ville.Then you go further east on the other island of Paris, called 9.Ile SaintLouis, where you can have lunch and the ice cream we talked about,
10. Berthillon. It is sold in many places on the island, you can't miss it. My advice would be wild strawberry, melon, extra bitter cocoa, peach. Youshould stick to the fruits. Then go back again to the left side of theSeine, and take the Boulevard Henri IV, and reach the 11. Bastille Square,where was the old prison that was destroyed at the French Revolution andwhere the modern Opera is. Cross the square and go directly to theBoulevard Beaumarchais, the second on the left to reach the 12. Place desVosges. Once there, you will go west and enter what is called 13. Le Marais(litterally the swamp). You should spend some time here, there are somehidden monuments in almost every street. You won't be far from the Picassomuseum, if you wanna see it (use your map, it will be marked). After havingspent some time in this area, you have to go to the 14. Opera Garnier (holdyour breath, it's marvelous). From there, go to the 15. Galeries Lafayette( you can ask somebody, it's very close to where you are) and spend sometime in the building, which i beleive is worth it. If you want to buystuff, i think you will find everything there, even if it's slightly moreexpensive than the other shops. Once you come out, go to the subway station"Saint Lazare", where you will take the subway line number 12, to"Abbesses" (direction Porte de La Chapelle). Arrived at Abbesses, YOU HAVETO take the elevator, otherwise you will suffer. Once out, you will be atthe center of the 16. Butte Montmartre, which is a hill from where you willhave a great view on Paris. It is also the stage of the movie Amelie and isa great representation of the old Paris. You should spend the eveningthere, it's fun, you have a lot of bars and restaurants.

Sunday:If your feet are still alive, i suggest you go to the Pantheon, where allmajor people of the French history (besides Napoleon, because you saw hisgrave on friday). From the Opera, take subway line 7 to "Jussieu", and thenfollow your map until you arrive to the 1. Pantheon. Next to it is theuniversity 2. La Sorbonne, which you should take a look at. Then walk tothe 3. Jardin du Luxembourg, in which there is in particular the palacehosts 4. The French Senate (i honestly don't know if you can visit it, butyou should try). Spend some time in the garden, and then take the RER atLuxembourg (that's the name of the station) and go to 5. St Michel station.You will arrive where Heather used to stay with her silent girlfriend. Itis a very nice walk to go along the Seine in this area. Go east, yourobjective is to go back to the Cathedral Notre dame, because this is whereyou're gonna take the boat for an english (you deserved it) tour on theSeine. Departure is 6. Quai de Montebello, departure every hour from 11amto 11 pm. You'll get some rest on the boat.
Have a nice week end
Arnaud
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So, you can see at this point, that his plan for us was wonderful. If I went through and covered every single place we saw it would take twenty pages, so I will give a brief summary:

During the day, we got a great view of the city after climbing the 286 stairs of a spiral staircase to get to the top of the Arc de Triomph, not to mention that the monument itself was incredible. We saw the Eiffel Tower, and it was clearly amazing, but it was incredibly busy there as you may be able to see in the pictures, so we took some pictures and continued on. The estate on which Napoleon is buried is phenomenal, although by the time we reached this point in the day, we were pooped. We walked around for a little while after this stop and tried to shop a little (unsuccessfully) and then went back to the hotel to change before going to eat dinner. We had a fantastic anniversary dinner Friday night after seeing all the places for that day. We sat out on a skinny patio on this restaurant/"brasserie" called the Procope that was built in 1689 and has been running ever since. Amy had the idea that it might be less busy at the Eiffel Tower at night so we went back over there after our dinner and arrived at around 10:30. Plus we thought the idea of spending the late evening of our anniversary on the Eiffel Tower was pretty cool. We stood in line to get tickets, then in another to get on the first elevator, in a REALLY long one to get on the second elevator to the top. We walked around for about 10-15 minutes and the view was really good, although our camera doesn’t do night photos all that well, not doing the view justice. We then got back in two more lines to get back to the bottom. By the time we hit the ground again it was 12:30 and we finally crawled into bed around 1:30.

The next morning we slept in until 9:30 or so, and then headed out, grabbing some food on the way to the Jardin (Garden) des Tuileries that is next to the Louvre Museum. We walked through this at around 11am and were stunned at how few people were out. They had all apparently had later nights than we had. We got to the Louvre in about twenty minutes, and briefly debated going in. However, the draw of being that close to some of the most amazing art in the world, combined with the fact that it seemed that it might possibly not be CRAMMED with people won us over. We went through the parts of the Louvre that we wanted to see in a little over an hour. Not only was the art on the walls amazing, the entire building was crafted exquisitely. Everything from the antique fireplaces in some of the rooms, to the entire ceilings of painting that had been moved from other places in the world, to the enormous sculptures, and everything else. We of course squeezed through the crowd to get a picture of the Mona Lisa, and then promptly continued on our way. We couldn’t believe we had seen so much in only an hour. After a couple of other stops, we arrived at Notre Dame. We didn’t feel like paying the 12Euro entrance fee, so we got our picture of the outside and then went directly to find lunch. We had lunch at an outdoor café, and then found what Arnaud called Berthillon. Berthillon is a kind of ice cream, at least for the fruit flavors, that is sort of a combination of a gelato and a fruit smoothie. I had peach and cherry on a waffle cone. It SERIOUSLY tasted like I was eating peach pie – Fantastic.

We went around and saw the items for the rest of the afternoon including the Picasso Museum, and the Opera Garnier, which were both also incredible, and then went back to the hotel to shower and change for dinner. We went back out to Montmarte via the subway only to find that the connection that we needed in order to get close was closed. So, we hiked a good little ways but eventually arrived, plus we got to see the Moulin Rouge along the way, which is one of Amy’s favorite movies. Why, you may ask? Well, once again, I must contend with one Mr. Ewan McGregor. We had some pizza and wine for dinner and then climbed up another million stairs to get to the peak of Montmarte, on top of which is an old church or mosque. But the view was again amazing. There is one last wide set of stairs to walk up to get to the church. Saturday evening, on these steps were congregated a few hundred people, watching a guy down below us who was, as it turned out, one of the funniest and creative street performers I have ever seen. There was a small street at the top of Montmarte just below this last set of stairs up to the church and so people were crossing it between the few cars, buses, and motorcycles that were passing by. This performer was acting like a crossing guard of sorts, but was sneaking around behind people, imitating them, rubbing bald men’s heads, goosing people, stopping cars randomly and pulling passengers out, opening trunk lids on a few cars rummaging through their things, and just having a good time of it. The victims were all very gracious. All the while, this huge crowd had gathered on these steps above the street to watch, and this guy was awesome. We then headed back to the hotel after stopping for banana splits on the way.

Sunday morning we had breakfast at another café and headed for the Pantheon. After that we made it to the Jardin du Luxembourg. Again, the gardens in Europe are just huge parks, with lakes, hedges, benches, trees, etc. So, we sat on the grass for awhile and read books in the sun. After awhile we headed back toward the River Seine and the boat tour. We had some extra time after getting close so we decided to take an extra half-hour walk along the river down to the Musee’ d’Orsay, which is supposed to have one of the best sculpture collections in the world. After arriving and seeing the absolutely thousands of people in the square outside waiting in line to get in, we turned around and walked back down to the boat tour area just in time to catch the 3 o’clock tour. The boat goes up and down the river as you can imagine with a tour guide pointing out and describing the various points of interest. We were one of the last to board so our seats weren’t great in the back of the boat and we couldn’t really hear what was being said. However, we had already seen many of the places she pointed out and were more than content to just be sitting on a boat in the river relaxing in the sun of Paris. After the hour boat ride, we headed back over toward the Notre Dame to get lunch and because we had to have some more of the Berthillon before we left. After getting our last taste of that deliciousness, we headed back to the hotel to get our things and went to the airport to fly back into Ireland for what may be the last time.

All in all our stay in Paris, was one of the most unforgettable trips I’ve ever been on. Part of this was because of the sites, but the biggest part was being there with my best friend, Amy. We had an absolutely marvelous time for our 5th anniversary weekend. It was great.

Well friends and family, this is where our journey must end, as all journeys eventually do. For us though, the end of this adventure is merely the beginning of another. The next few days will be very busy as I attempt to figure out how to fit all the stuff we’ve acquired over the last two months into what were already fairly full suitcases. We are here for three more days in Dublin until Thursday morning, at which time we leave to fly to Dallas for a friend’s wedding. We’ll be in Dallas three days and then fly back to Seattle on Sunday. Amy turns around the next morning to fly to Boise, Idaho for four days. She’s home for a little over a week, as we are watching some good friends’ children while they take a much-deserved 10th Anniversary trip down to San Diego for a long weekend. Then Amy will go back to Boise for a few days. The movers pick up all of our stuff on August 31st from the storage shed in Bothell. We then leave Seattle on September 4th. We are driving from Seattle down the Oregon coast, down through the Redwood National forest in northern California, down through San Francisco, to Los Angeles, where we are going to attempt to see Bob Barker and the (COME ON DOWN….YOU’RE THE NEXT CONTESTANT ON THE) Price is Right. From there we’re going across the desert to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon, down through New Mexico to Carlsbad, and then back over to Abilene, Texas where we hope to stop and see my brother Mark and sister-in-law Jocelyn on our way to Dallas.

Then over the course of the next few months, as we will be living much to our delight with Amy’s parents during this time, we’ll be looking at buying a house, finding a church, checking out schools and neighborhoods, and purchasing at least one dependable car (assuming of course that our 1990 over-200,000 mile Honda makes it to Texas at all.) I’ll be looking for a job and an internship, and Amy will be starting to work in a new office with PWC. We have so much to be grateful for. God has blessed us richly.

We have had a most wonderful time in Seattle with all of our many friends. We have seen some of the most beautiful and amazing places in the world: Washington, Vancouver, Oregon, Ireland, Scotland, London, Paris, Edinburgh, as well as all places we’ll see on our trip to Texas. We will miss our time in Seattle very much, as well as the many wonderful, deeply-valued relationships we’ve formed in our time there. (Yes Paul, this even includes you, despite your roasting of my publishings on this blog.) The rest of you Seattleites know who you are. You will be remembered always, hopefully visited often, and always carried in our prayers. We love you all and thank you so very much for going along with us through our trips here across the ocean and our adventures with you in Seattle. Peace to you all.

Much love and signing off from Ireland,
James and Amy Wiebe