Ahhh, Paris

How does one reflect on a recent trip to Paris? What does one say about a city that has been considered one of the most beautiful and talked about cities in the world for something like the last 2000 years? After all we had heard about Paris, we expected to be both wowed by its beauty and taken with its seeingly irresistable charm. After leaving our wonderful (but all too short) stay in the south of France, we hopped on the TGV and made our way to Paris.

Traveling through France has been an interesting collision of expectations and realities.

After a couple hours on the train, we arrived in Paris and made our way to our hotel. Here was the first of those interesting collisions. Expecting to be taken with the city of light/love, our first impression was rather: wow...this hotel room is maybe a little bigger than our closet was in Taiwan and we don't have any water. That's right, upon waking up our first morning, we discovered that our shower/water system was having some difficulties. For a while it wouldn't work at all...then after some waiting and fiddling with knobs, it wouldn't turn off. So there we were, our first morning in Paris watching the faucet spew out scalding hot water (or ice cold...but nothing in the middle) while we tried everything to get it to stop.

However, once this little obstacle was overcome (the hotel worker gave me a very disapproving frown after I told him about the water and told me, "Wait." He walked away and I never saw him again, but our water problem worked itself out sometime later...guess he was right!), we made our way into the city and we fell in love with it.

Paris is this beautiful and inspiring jewel of a city with open spaces, priceless art, winding alleys and people just walking around searching for the perfect picnic spot. It took only a few minutes of being in the city for our hotel experience to fade away and we were just overcome with gratitude that we were able to see a city like this.

As far as what we "did" in Paris: we walked around, ate croissants, baguettes and cheese, saw many of the sights, spent a day in Versailles wandering through the palace gardens, picnicing almost every night and just enjoying our surroundings.

Versailles!

Here is a typical Luke and Katie meal:
One highlight was spending an evening with a friend who lived in Paris and seeing the city from a Parisian point of view. Just like our experience in the south of France, we enjoyed time being with locals: seeing local places, eating at a local restaruant and enjoying time away from the tourists.

Too soon our time was up and we had to consider where we would be going next. But as we left Paris for the UK, we reflected on the importance of first impressions not being the final say, but rather just the beginning of the story. So in the end, we can really say: Ahhh, Paris!

Marathon Dinners in the South of France

After a nice stop in Camogli and a failed visit to Monaco we pulled up at our friend's house in the south of France. Until this point, we had spent most of our nights in hotels and seeing the major tourist attractions. Their house felt nothing like a hotel and staying with our family friends, we felt far from the tourist crowds that had previously been so prevalent in our trip.

The house was built in the 1600's and they have spent the last five years or so lovingly restoring, updating, working on the grounds and creating a nice place for their children and grandchildren to spend time.

Staying in their house felt like a dream, not to mention their wonderful and welcoming hospitality. Here we got to experience a true French dinner. It started around 5 with tea in the greenhouse, then moved to an "aperitif" in front of the fire, then a starter, main course, vegetable course, cheese and dessert at the dining table all accompanied with three distinct types of wine. The whole dinner finished about midnight when we went to bed sleepy and satisfied with good food in our stomachs and conversations in our heads.

The next day we went with my parents in the car to visit some little villages in the area. Again, we were thankful and feeling a little spoiled to have a car for this part of our trip. No figuring out train tickets, no hopping on the wrong bus, no trekking with the backpacks...just dad to drive us around. ; )

Our first stop was a little village, part of it in ruins called Lacoste. We were told by our friends that the french fashion designer, Pierre Cardin, had actually bought the castle and was working to restore the whole village.

The castle at the top that he also restored:
The rest of the village:

The next stop was Bonnieux, a bit larger and in better shape than Lacoste.
The last stop was the village nearest to our friends house. Here are a few pictures:
Too soon it was time to leave and we somewhat reluctantly packed our bags, hoisted them on our backs and had one last easy car ride to the train station from my dad. We felt rested and relaxed after our wonderful time in the south of France, having felt that we had experienced what life was really like for the residents of this beautiful and peaceful area.

Road Trippin' With the Kluenkers

Katie's parents rented a car and after some good days walking the streets of Rome, we were faced with the situation of driving out of the Eternal city. Our plan was simple, head north toward France for a few days with some friends of the family. An interesting note here is the significant difference between maps and reality. If one is to look at a map of Italy, they will notice there is a "ring road" circling the city, so it stands to simple reason that if you could drive in any one direction long enough, you could reach this "ring road" then find the correct freeway and so on. Well, driving in one constant direction in Rome is like trying to order a diet conscious meal at McDonald's--idealistic at best. However, with four sets of eyes looking and some back tracking we made it out of the city unscathed.

We decided to pass through Florence on the way for a few hours and after a mild but interesting parking search we managed to visit Florence's most well known sight: The Duomo. I don't think we were quite prepared for how beautiful it was:
The white and green marble exterior was a nice touch as well as the mosiac above the main entrance:
As was the famous gold door:
Next we walked on toward an open air market surrounding another cathedral.
After a brief gelato break we hopped in the car and made our way up the coast of Italy. A few hourse later we came to a stop for the night in the small town of Camogli. Since we went to Cinque Terre two weeks before, we were expecting something similar. To our suprise, what we found was a much sleepier, rustic, and quieter experience that we fell in love with almost as soon as we parked the car.
The next morning, we enjoyed our last cups of Italian coffee and made our way north into Southern France. We planned to spend an hour or two in Monaco's Monte Carlo, but due to rain and serious traffic, we saw it from the car.

Later that day we arrived at a family friend's house in southern France.