Tours

Tours, France - Monday, June 16 - Tuesday, June 17

I’m sitting here quite concerned about what only appears to be a thin, plastic sliding partition, one that doesn’t close all the way, as the door to the bathroom. The reason for my concern is that Keone just walked in proclaiming that he was “about to drop bombs like nobody’s business.” In fact, because the toilet is tucked into a corner of the bathroom, he just slid open the partition now, revealing only his knees and face, to show me how to operate the shower – a knob that switches water flow, controlled by our sink’s faucets, between our tap and shower head.

When we got off of the train to Tours, we were a bit lost as to how to get to our hotel. Thirty minutes and a 5 Euro map later, we realized that we would be staying a little ways out of the city centre. We boarded a bus headed in that direction, but, out of our increasing worry that we would pass our stop and then be whisked away into bumblefuck France, we exited a few stops too early. I now realize that our map only contains large streets. We maneuvered our way to the main highway by a one mile U-shaped path, a path which we then found out was entirely unnecessary owing to the existence of intermediate streets. As the intermediate street path involved a few turns, it wasn’t immediately apparent to us just by looking at them, that it would lead to the main highway.

Regardless, we walked on an unevenly poured tar path on the side of a freeway, passing a car full of French guys, about our age, who yelled “Bienvenue a Tours,” in the direction of our hotel. We must have walked nearly three miles with packs on our back and front (we started wearing our smaller day bags on our stomachs – in essence we looked like pregnant people) along with that cardboard box, mentioned earlier, whose contents had now dwindled to grapes, carrots, half of a bottle of water, and three bananas.

The hotel wasn't even in the proper town, so we ended up staying at a different hostel, Hotel Terminus, that was right next to the station.

We then did our laundry, which was a fiasco. Because of some poor laundry machine design, if the knob used to set type of wash – whites/colors/permanent press/woolens – is turned 360 degrees, the machine locks and doesn’t run. Being industrial washers, we couldn’t pry them open. Essentially, my nice hoodie, polo, towel, and all of my underwear would have to be abandoned if nothing could be done last night, since this morning at 8:00am, the store’s opening time, would be well past our train’s departure. This happened at 5:30pm after the manager had left for the day, trusting an automatically locking door to shut at 8:30pm, closing his store. We called him at the emergency number posted in the store, but he spoke fast French which Keone couldn’t understand. We asked some random person walking by on the street to speak with him and translate to us, but we couldn’t figure out the machine, still. In a one mile run back to the hotel to use a bathroom, I decided on a whim to ask our concierge to speak with him again, and this time, the manager agreed to come in (at 8:15pm) and fix it. For nearly 3 hours, I thought I would have to abandon my underwear and towel in a rogue washing machine in Tours, France. We spent the better, and what would have been an enjoyable part of the day, 5 hours to be precise, in a Laundromat.

Saumur

Saumur, France

Sunday, 15 - Monday, 16 June 2008

Saumur quickly led us to realize that the smaller regions of France essentially shut down on Sundays. The station was on the northern side of the Loire, which also happened to be the more desolate side of the town (see Southern side of the Madeleine in the blog entry about Nantes). There was not a soul to be seen on the streets, and the taxi cab stand, which looked like it could easily accommodate up to 15 taxis, was completely empty. We walked across to the city centre to find what was a more packed part of the city store-wise, but equally devoid of people. It was almost like walking into a ghost town.

Walking along the main road, Rue de Franklin Roosevelt (“rue” is French for road), we looked down an alley to find a sign for a “Rouge e Noir”, “black and red.” Wanting to take a sign of what seemed to be either a strip-club or whore-house, I whipped out my trusty Canon. Seconds later, we were approached by a French woman, reeking of alcohol, who happened to be dressed in black and red. I immediately put my camera away, and just as I was about to raise my right arm to defend myself from what I thought was going to be a beating from a prostitute, she asked, in broken English, for two Euro so she could call her mother. We gladly gave her the two Euro, and she left.

We kept walking down the main street. We went inside what seemed to be an upscale restaurant, only to be told by the hostess, who also happened to have a look of shock at homeless people walking into her trendy eatery, that they weren’t open for another few hours. We settled on the only place that was going to opening soon enough, “Boite a la Pizza.” After grabbing our food and deciding to eat it at our hostel, we called a cab – we’d been told at the local tourism office that our Hostel was quite a ways away. The cab-ride to our Euro 40 room turned out to be Euro 50 one way. Equipped with our Harvard skills of critical thinking, we quickly deduced that 50 + 50 is more than what we’d pay for a hostel in the city (the Euro 40 was going to be charged regardless of whether or not we stayed at the far away hostel, since the cancellation was not 24 hours in advance).

We got a room, with one queen bed, at Hotel de Londres. Afterward, we went to a Café des Cloud to watch the Switzerland vs. Portugal soccer match, accompanied by a Saumur Rouge – a red wine from the region.

The next morning we woke up at around 10:00am and left the hotel by 11. We found a Supermarche (even if you don’t speak French, I assume you can figure that one out) and bought a big meal consisting of tomatoes, carrots, pears, grapes, bananas, milk, bottles of water, and a bottle of wine, all for about $12 a person. We then ate half of this in parking lot of the grocery store. While washing our pears by pouring water bottles onto our hands and chugging milk, it hit us with the force of the odor of a sharp French cheese that we were homeless. We got to the station at 1:05pm, just missing the train to Tours which left at 1:03pm. We’re sitting at the train station right now, on a bench on platform C, finishing off our box of groceries. Eating a box of cherry tomatoes proves to be quite acidic in the mouth.

Angers

Angers, France

Sunday, 15 June 2008

The trip to Angers was quite uneventful. As our layover was only two hours, we just had enough time two walk into the city centre, passing a statue on our way of a naked woman wearing what were ostensibly cloth panties. The city must have deemed the statue, which depicted a woman on her knees, legs parted, leaning back so that her hands were on the ground behind her, to be a little risqué, even for the French standards which go so far as to permit nude women, with only the poonani veiled in shadow, to advertise for moisturizer in “pharmacie” windows.

We bought sandwiches from a “boucherie” (French for butcher shop), of which we ate one at the station waiting for our train to Anger. For note, we ate the other one at Gare de Saumur (“gare” is French for station), waiting for our train to Tours, but, given that it contained one-day-old, unrefrigerated meat, the first bite was quickly followed by a near immediate reversal onto the train tracks. We then boarded our train for Saumur, on which Keone befriended a tough looking fellow sporting a broken front tooth-line; assuming that he must have fashioned himself this mouthpiece in a French, underground cage fight, we adopted and realized the popular saying – “If you can’t beat them, join them.”

Nantes

Nantes, France
14 June 2008

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/Nantes20080614

As I’m starting to write this on the train to Angers, our next stop, Keone appropriately comments that “this computer doesn’t have enough memory to capture Nantes.” Excusing his n00b failure to distinguish between memory and storage, I will continue.

Nantes, in short, is a town with a Madeleine River-induced split personality disorder. On the North side, we found what may have been not only Walt Disney’s inspiration for Disney World, but also the very locale that he sought to outdo with his theme park. A shopping district with fashionable designer stores, collectors items, bakeries, ice cream shops, and many “bar a vin” all connected by a cobblestone maze, and interspersed with many “places” and beautiful churches comprised the first part of the town we saw. Keep in mind that the city is quite small, and that to walk from the main train station to our hotel, a distance which spanned the entirety of the main part of town, took no more than 20 minutes.

In the middle of the city, adjacent to the shopping district described above, sat a castle, or a chateaux, that had its own drawbridge and a moat. On the outside of the moat was a elliptical patch of grass, stretching around the entirety of the castle, littered with couples engaged in activities that were sure to eventually lead to the next wave of babies in this tiny town, nestled in Western France. Expecting to find some sort of historic tour inside the castle, we walked across a tiny little metal bridge (what we later found out to be the back entrance - the peasant’s entrance, if you will) to enter the main courtyard.

Inside, we were astonished to find a stage, with a complete, high quality sound system set up for what seemed to be a city-wide children’s musical talent show. As we walked up the stairs to walk around the periphery of the castle (i.e. where the archers stood at Helm’s deep), a number of men dressed in pink pirate costumes, one of them sporting the canonical pirate moustache, ran by. A number of women, dressed like pirate wenches dressed in matching pink outfits, ran by moments later. We are quite sure this was some sort of gay pride parade that they had planned at the castle, but had just then come to realize that their plans were at the same time as a children’s musical concert.

We left the chateaux about an hour and a half after, ambling around the castle at our leisure, and headed toward the Madeleine. That this town was some sort of dream-like paradise was apparent when we were walking along the pavement, rollerbladers and groups of cycling racists passing us, the previously mentioned castle towering on our left, and a very modern tram system speeding by on the rails to our right. There even seemed to be light din throughout all of the areas we had walked, making the town seem even happier.

The Madeleine was quite a ways away, and we had to cross a bridge over a smaller river to get to it. As soon as we crossed this first bridge, we were struck by how quickly the general noise of merriment had vanished. We kept walking through this side of the street only to find every restaurant, pharmacie, and store closed. There was no one walking about, and the few characters we saw seemed quite shady. Keone admonished me for wanting to take out my camera to get some pictures for fear of giving ourselves away as tourists, although I’m sure that our American accents and dress had already done that. We walked for about a kilometer over to the river, but what we saw was far from the idyllic landscape that I had built up in my head – instead of restaurant boats floating down with many people gently strolling about the banks of the river, we saw only an empty parking lot on the other side, one side of which entirely covered with graffiti, overlooking a murky, ominous looking river on which there were no ducks, let alone restaurant boats. Scampering over to the nearest tram station, we breathed a sigh of relief as we made our way back to the happy part of town again. Nantes seemed unreal.

We milled about the shopping area some more, picking up two bottles of wine – a local Muscadet White for Euro 6.50 and a Coteaux D’ancenis Cabernet Red that was about Euro 4.00. The last thing I would expect from a trip to the Loire Valley, in which the town of Nantes sat, was to be drinking from a plastic cup in a hotel room watching a “Les Simpson” marathon, but that was exactly what we did, and the experience was not depressing, as it may sound.

We woke up at 9:40am, missing our train ticket that was for 9:00am. After eating as many fruits, dried fruits, and jams from a breakfast (fit for a King) for which we had unwillingly paid Euro 8.00, we walked over to the station, and boarded a train for our next stop in the Loire Valley – Angers.

Louvre, Eiffel

Another delayed post...

Paris Day 2 - 13 June 2008

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/ParisDay22008613

We had grand plans of waking up at 7:30am to go stand in, what we thought would most definitely be (from the movie Eurotrip), an incredibly long line at the Louvre. We hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, as our train from London was at 7:30am, and we ended up sleeping until about 10:00am. At the Louvre, whose majestic courtyards, turrets, and castles make you almost forget about the masterpieces housed within, we were pleasantly surprised with a very efficient ticketing system. We then proceeded to get our audio tour devices, essentially Palm pilots with pictures and narrations of the notable pieces and maps of the entire museum, whose size is not to be underestimated.

We first went on the “Masterpieces Tour” on which we saw, in this order, the “Venus de Milo,” “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” and, finally, the “Mona Lisa.” The narration was very helpful in not only helping us appreciate the various aesthetic qualities of the works, but also explaining why these works have reached the exalted position in which they comfortably sit today. The captions on the pictures, which I’ll put up soon enough, will hopefully get at some of this.

After this tour, and the “Antiquities Tour,” whose estimated duration of 1.5 hours in reality became 4 hours, we went back to the apartment, legs aching from what must have been a few miles of walking in the museum. We met up with another group, consisting of one girl from Harvard whom Keone had met earlier in the year, and her two friends from St. Mary’s College. We went to meet up with our host, who was watching the France vs. Holland match, the unpleasant outcome of which would be the cause large volume of trash in the streets in Nantes, our next stop. After getting unbelievably lost, we found our way to the pub, minutes before the match ended. Walking within the throng of dejected French men and women, we went to get some drunk food – greasy kebab sandwiches at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Montparnasse. At about 11:30, we headed toward the last major tourist attraction, and arguably the most famous one, we had left to see in Paris – the Eiffel Tower.

While we were too late to go up the elevator, the dazzling light show, of which we got a small glimpse on the metro ride, along with the iridescent golden glow in which one’s bathed when standing at the foot of the structure more than made up for it. I’d be doing the description a great injustice if I didn’t mention Keone’s artistic emotional response to standing under the tower – “It’s like looking up a really big girl’s skirt. The shock and awe of it – c’est magnifique.”

We were back in the apartment at about 1:00am, and so ended our Paris adventures.

Getting into Gare De Nord, walking around Paris

As you can tell by the date of this posting, this entry is three days overdue. My internet access, when in Paris, however, was spotty, and, as such, I haven't been able to update pictures and/or blog for a while.

Paris Day 1 - June 12, 2008

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/ParisDay12008612

We took the Eurostar, via the Chunnel, from King's Cross in London to Gare de Nord in Paris. Upon getting to Paris, we realized that we had no idea how to get to our friend's apartment which was located on Rue Pierre Leroux. A 2 Euro map, along with perseverance and patience guided us on a walk out of the station area, which was incredibly touristy, through a part of town which was incredibly non-touristy, into Place Vendome and, eventually, Place de Concorde.

From Place de Concorde, after being dazzled by gold-gilded lamp posts, an obelisk, Arch de Triomphe, and views of Pont de Alexandra III, the Louvre, Musee d'Oorsay, Jardin des Tuileries, and National Assembly, we walked down the other side of the river to the Musee d'Oorsay, an art musuem. We had our backpacks on this entire time, and realized, after spending about 40 minutes in line, that it was highly unlikely that they would let us in to see delicate paintings by Matisse, Monet, Van Gogh, etc. with lumbering packs hanging off of our back. After getting out of line, we took the metro, which we found out to our great surprise had doors that needed to be manually opened, we went to the Notre Dame, only to be faced with the same dilemma regarding our luggage.

Somewhat dejected, we went to a cafe right across the Seine from Notre Dame, where we paid far too much for a cup of coffee (more than 4 euros/6 dollars), a cup which ended up being about 1/4th full. The sandwiches, however, consisted of a great baguette, Swiss cheese, and ham; although it sounds simple, it tasted amazing to two tourists, rejected from two national landmarks and then questioned by their waitress, on account of their oversized packs, whether they had walked from the United States and were planning on "sleeping in the forest."

We dropped our stuff off at our friend's apartment located in 7th district, and then went out to explore further. We did a quick run through of the masterpieces in the Musee D'oorsay, saw the light show in the Notre Dame, and then ate Subway (our budget was aching at this point from the expenses earlier in the day) on the banks of the Seine, merely 20 meters from the cathedral itself. We then headed off to a pub, advised by our Lonely Planet guide, and proceeded to meet up with two would-be juniors from UNC Chapel Hill. One of them gave us the run down on how to have a great time in Prague, a city whose (almost sure to be incorrect) perception of being cheap had been enticing us since the day we left for Europe.

The day was filled with so many different events, from almost missing the Chunnel on account of a slow Victoria line, navigating through suburban Paris, walking around the Louvre, Notre Dame, and Musee D'oorsay with backpacks, and then drinking spicy sangria in a shady, offbeat pub, that we thought nearly four days had actually passed.

Bonsoir.

Hampton Court Palace

Pics from today:
http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/LondonDay320080611
All with captions
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We went to see Hampton Court Palace today. It was a short drive from Southfields station on the District line. Laura's mum was nice enough to drive us there. Hampton Court Palace was the part time residence of Henry VIII, William III, and George IV. They all built their own separate sections within the palace grounds. The pictures do more than I can ever do describing the place.

I then came back by the Tube again. I fell asleep and woke up to realize that I had overshot the station I would have had to get off at to correct myself to the correct train since I had, in my sleepiness, gotten on the wrong train to begin with. I leave for paris in about 4 1/2 hours. Should finish packing and try to catch a few winks.

Trafalgar Square, British Museum, St. Paul's Cathedral, a long nap

You can see the pictures from today here: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/LondonDay220080610

I put captions this time, since looking at a series of a hundred pictures, taken over only one day, must be incredibly boring without knowing what you're actually seeing.
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This morning, I decided to walk over to the British Museum to meet up with Keone and Laura. I walked past Buckingham Palace, where people had gathered in a great throng to see the changing of the guard. I couldn't be bothered to wait 30 minutes to watch this though, so I decided to plan another day around this. I walked down "The Mall," the road with a reddish hue, half-jokingly referred to as the red-carpet for the royalty, that leads up from Trafalgar Sqaure, starting with quite an imposing stone gate, down, about 3/4 of a mile, to Buckingham Palace. Its quite a site to see trees lining the side of what is literally a red road lined with trees and Union Jacks leading up to the beautiful palace.

Trafalgar Square is nearly exactly what imagines when one thinks of what a proper British town square ought to look like. Imposing statues of General Nelson, some lions, and another military general, whose name escapes me now, that was responsible for managing the British appropriation of India as a colony. From the direction I entered, the National Gallery served a backdrop for a complicated intersection of no less than 6 roads, all of which were teeming with double decker buses and other quaint cars that I had formerly associated with the "Bourne" series. Keone, Laura, and I came back here after the British Museum but, unfortunately, my camera, by that point, had run out of battery and I don't have any of those pictures. Keone should have those though.

After being pointed in the wrong direction by a local in an attempt to then walk to the British Museum, and after also learning the hard way that the Briton is hard pressed to admit ignorance when it comes to travel directions, I eventually found my way over the course of an hour. Not having heard of the museum, apart from a less than glamorous mention in my "Europe on a Shoe String" guide, I walked in with low expectations of the objects in their collections only to encounter the Rosetta Stone (see pics) as the first of many remarkable artifacts in the audio "Top 50 Highlights Tour." If you've never experienced a museum with an audio tour, I highly recommend it as its quite another experience to passively listen to a commentator, especially if he/she speaks in a British accent which automatically commands
unwavering legitimacy, and being able to walk around and concurrently look at all the aspects of the object being narrated.

I then went over to St. Paul's Cathedral to meet up with Keone and Laura. Those two left the Museum before me as they'd gotten there a good deal earlier. We ate lunch on the steps and I saw the first, and what I hoped to be the last, of another guy wearing camo shorts, Keone's favorite bottom-wear. Unfortunately I saw another guy wearing even more intimidating looking camo shorts walking outside Riya's apartment. I didn't get a chance to go inside St. Paul's because the last tour was at 2, and I had stayed at the museum well beyond that.

We then made our way back to Trafalgar Square on the very front seats of the top deck of a Double Decker Bus. We bummed around there for about 30 to 45 minutes, taking photos in various compromising positions. At around 5:30 we left, and I walked back to the apartment. My nap, intended to last for 20 minutes, went for 2 hours instead. Walking around is tiring (my glass half full way of saying "I'm so out of shape that walking is tiring."). Been here writing emails, intermittently reading my current book ("Moral Minds" by Marc Hauser), meeting people who've come by to see Riya (I got to see Gayatri today), and just lounging around. I've realized that I have yet to be weaned from compulsively checking Gmail.

Was a good day, but I'm going to try and get more sight-seeing packed in tomorrow, seeing as how I'm leaving the day after.

Buckingham Palace

I got into London at around 9:00am. I fumbled around the Tube station and got yelled at by a Sardar for "taking too much the time" when I was indecisive about how much money I should put on my Oyster card. I think it was when I was sitting on the train, and the computer announcement, in the voice of a sultry British woman, told me that this train was going from Picadilly to Cockfosters, that I realized I was in a new land. I got into Riya's place about 10:00am. Just got my T-mobile SIM card. Then we went to Starbucks and Subway. Looks like easing into the prices of the European cafes and sandwich shops is going to be a slow, painful process. Living in Westminster right now, Buckingham palace is only a 20 minute walk away. I checked that out, along with the Royal Mews and the Queen's gallery. Was pretty tired from the flight, so I passed out at 6pm, only to wake up at around 8am the next morning.

The pictures from today: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/FirstDayInLondon