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London... it's not the city of love, light or any of that stuff but my first trip across the channel (thank you Ryanair and your cheap tickets!) was wonderful! I met up with Anna again, who has become quite the Londoner herself living and working among the masses and being proficient in tube navigation. it was so fun getting to meet all the people she's living with and hearing about her amazing job at Westminster Archives.
needless to say there are a million and a half things to see and do in London and my expert guide and I did almost a million of them, trekking halfway across the city (I know we clocked in at at least 6 miles of walking on Sunday alone) to make it to the Victoria and Albert Museum, Big Ben and Parliament, Regents Street, Liberty of London (I'm so in love with this store it's ridiculous!), Tate Modern, National Gallery, Olympia Antiques Fair, Notting Hill and the Queen's birthday parade!
word to the wise - if you're ever in London for the queen's parade, don't bother going early because you won't be able to see anything. give it an hour or so until she comes back down the road after ceremonial procedures and you can have a front row view:
Queenie looking so chipper in her blue (way to call it, Anna!) at 81. her birthday's really in April, but due to terrible British weather conditions she has consistently celebrated on the 2nd Saturday in June.
the princes and Camilla Parker Bowles (who I will claim no relation to once Wills and I are married). whoever let that woman out of the palace in that hat really needs to be shot. I mean, honestly...
such antiquated pomp and circumstance all for one woman, and you have to wonder if she actually really enjoys it all. it's definitely a sight with all the horses, soldiers and formal tradition about it. part of me was in awe of all the show while another side of me was so confused as to what year it was. do heads of state really ride in open carriages in 2008?
so to make up for the lack of photos in the last post - let me go ahead and post this one from a couple of weekends ago. I hope you all find it as humorous as we did!
and voila - there you have it - my little brother backed the car into the lavender and roses... and here's where he stopped in relation to the house:
about 3 feet from the laundry room wall! (my mom wanted to lower that window anyways) he was only supposed to back the car up so people could park in the driveway, right? next thing we know he's flying down the driveway in reverse, my dad nearly had a coronary and my mom and I were seized up laughing. luckily the car stalled out just in time - pretty clutch - or lack thereof... yuk, yuk, yuk.
needless to say W. hasn't been behind the wheel of the mighty Silver Bullet recently and the lavender has yet to recover.
So the amount of rain has almost reached Biblical proportions... we calculated and it has been raining almost non-stop since May 17. yep, you read correctly - May 17. I feel like we either live under a black cloud or I just need to go home so the sun can reemerge. our plants are rotting in the ground and we've resorted to taking family trips to the dechetterie (the dump) just to get out of the house. Les Sullivans vont au dechetterie!!! (SIDENOTE: it's amazing what people throw out... if I didn't have baggage restrictions I would have come back with an entire set of pots and pans.)
anyways - in these oh-so-many rainy days I've been doing a lot of reading so I decided to create a list of good rainy day (or sunny day) reads I've blasted through so far - so here goes:
1. Kite Runner - I'm only like 3 years behind in reading this but it's well worth all the hype that it got. I had to fore-go watching the movie on the plane on my way over so I could read the book first.
2. My Life in France - a biography of Julia Child! I knew essentially nothing about her apart from her crazy accent and her TV show. the book chronicles her culinary beginnings in Paris at the Cordon Bleu. I'm not going to lie I skipped the last 100 pages because I really didn't care about what she did after leaving France, it was the France part that interested me. from my interpretation the French haven't changed too much when it comes to their feelings on food.
3. Atonement - yeah, it's the book that the movie is based on. surprise surprise I didn't see the movie, but the book is wonderfully written and I found myself falling in love with the characters, despite many of their flaws. I won't go into this too much seeing as I feel like most people are more attracted to Keira Knightly than 300 pages...
4. Three Cups of Tea - a fairly new one that's been heralded by the NYTimes etc. etc. as amazing. it's about this one man's journey to build schools all across central Asia (Pakistan, Afghanistan etc.). he started off as an alpinist who was so moved by the lack of education, especially for girls, that he's made it a life-long endeavor. it packs in a lot of interesting information about Pakistani culture and people.
5. Ethan Frome - so I've been trying to diversify my reading materials a bit this summer (you know - move on from Patricia Cornwell mystery novels - which I highly recommend, by the way) and my mom had given me this for Christmas a couple years ago. (somehow it made its way over here... but that's beside the point.) it's a really quick read and one of the most moving love stories I've ever read. and this is coming from a cold-hearted cynic!
6. Suite Francaise - it's gotten a lot of lauding in the WSJ and other book reviews. the Wall Street said it was one of the top five books to encapsulate France. the story behind how the book came about is just as interesting as the book itself - which is amazing! it sums up the stories of several different families and individuals in France during WWII - both during the occupation and the mass exodus of people from Paris prior to the occupation. the author (who was a French Jew, killed during the war) had plans for it to be a huge War & Peace type book, but she never got to finish it. I'm not quite done with the book so any other thoughts will have to be added later.
ok, so I know I haven't included pictures on this blog post (as I have promised I would...) so I'll make up for that later. and I'm sure I have also rambled about, on and around all these books - but I promise they're all really good. I'm trying to ration myself on Suite Francaise because after that I'm not sure what else I'll have to read. despite having a huge selection of books here, I've either read most of them or they're kid books. I do have a stack of French books sitting in my closet that I got for my birthday several years ago that I have yet to tackle and I'm not sure if I want to. reading with a dictionary by your side isn't exactly the most fun, but we'll see!
This weekend was a whirlwind of pavement-pounding and sightseeing as the family and Anna Stokes and I blasted through Paris in a little over 36 hours. We in with a plan of attack and tickets already in hand for the Musee d'Orsay and Versailles.
The Orsay is possibly one of my favorite museums in Paris and even two trips later there are still rooms upon rooms of things I still haven't seen, partly due to the large collection and partly due to the vast number of people that swarm the building day in and day out.
For all the amazing paintings and sculptures that are housed there, I'm sure there are two times as many tourists with their cameras, audio guides, fanny packs and children (yes, loads of children who really aren't going to remember seeing Monet's water lilies or even the Eiffel Tower for that matter). The crowds seemed lighter than we had expected - but still far too many people by my estimation. What I wouldn't have paid to have the museum to myself (a la From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - anyone read that as a kid?) and an entire day just to amble through it without being shoved or worried that I was standing in the middle of someone's picture. a complete impossibility, I know. but honestly, I didn't go to see an unsmiling Asian man standing in front of Caillebot's Floor Planers. And then I have to wonder - are they really there because they appreciate it all or are they there simply to pose
in front of the famous works and tell their friends they've been there, done that?
Granted, Paris is a big city with a lot of history and attraction to it - I completely understand. But there's something about hearing very little French in the capital of France that disturbs me... maybe it's partly that I've become an elitist sequestered away in my little townwhere there are no tourists and English is hard to come by. But there is something to be said for tour buses, guides indiscriminately waving umbrellas in crowded areas and groups of 40+ people causing traffic jams in rooms at Versailles. Obviously the whole thing is inevitable, and I'm part of the problem! and yes, I do try to convince myself that I blend in like a local, which I'm sure is far from truth.
I think the root of my problem with millions of tourists descending on a place like Paris is the fact that you then don't feel like you've gone anywhere. When waiters and waitresses immediately answer you in English, it seems like you might as well be in New York City ... so while I can moan and groan all I want, I do know I'm part of the group I love to hate, and there's really no changing that. So really, I guess my only plea is - for the love of God, please don't wear fanny packs!
side note: I'll soon be moving into the petit hameau de Marie Antoinette at Versailles... please forward all notes to Marieville.
So it's been quite a while since I made a mark on the blogosphere... and I know it's been lacking without my presence! But what can be said - a lack of blogging fodder and a school/ work schedule that nearly cost me my sanity prevented me from blogging.
BUT - at long last I make my second summer debut this time not from New York or home in N.C. but from my home-away-from-home, St. Marcellin, where my family and I are apparently living under a black cloud as it's been raining for what seems like half an eternity. Forecast says we'll get sun June 5. We're not sure if we can make it that long without washing away. I mean all this rain makes it hard to get anything done, drying laundry's like being in France and not eating bread - i.e. impossible.
So this summer's fodder is going to be (at least for a time) documenting the colors of France. Interpret that as you will, because I don't think I can really define it.
Example 1: It's an amazing phenomenon we've stumbled upon here. French women have taken to dying their hair and then matching them to their clothes!!! Now we're not talking typical bottle blondes and all here, you see everything from the fire engine red at right, to purple and orange. Incredible. Imagine the time and effort put into finding enough clothes to match that one specific color. And then what if this woman one day wakes up and decides she wants to change hair colors? She's now stuck with a closet full of red!
Like before I'm sure this will turn into a conglomeration of all my random thoughts and yes, ramblings... are you really that surprised?!
Queenie looking so chipper in her blue (way to call it, Anna!) at 81. her birthday's really in April, but due to terrible British weather conditions she has consistently celebrated on the 2nd Saturday in June.
