Dec 26 - Jamie's, "Tour de France"

I spent an uneventful Christmas in Paris. The real Christmas highlight for me was meeting Jamie 6:30AM on Dec 26. Despite getting lost on the way to the metro station, I arrived at the airport in plenty of time to meet Jamie. She was tired, but in good spirits and excited to be here in France. We spent much of her first day wandering around the streets, taking in some of the sights. Practically her first words to me were, "I'll be happy as long as I see the Eiffel Tower." We saw the Tour d' Eiffel in short order and all the rest was gravy.

Jamie's French Tour

The morning of our second day in Paris, we braved a one hour line to get into the Musee d' Orsay. We were both burned out after one hour of looking at some of the best impressionist era paintings by the likes of van Gogh, Monet, and Renoir. We were disappointed to only see a single Matisse, which was not very impressive. I've captured a few of the ones I liked best. A major problem for both of us was the huge amount of traffic viewing the paintings as the crush of people made it virtually impossible to sit and admire them.

We caught a late afternoon TGV and arrived in Lyon at 6PM, still in time to have a great meal at one of the traditional Lyonnais bouchon's. Lyon is similar to Toulouse, not too large, lots of old French buildings with charm, great food, an old town, a waterfront (in fact Lyon has two waterfront's, with both the Rhone and Saone Rivers flowing through town. We really liked Lyon and will return one day.

We rented a car in Lyon and drove to the Nice area, where we spent two evenings. On the drive, we stopped in Avignon, where the pope hid out during the 1500's. I got a haircut from a local coiffeur and got the skinny on the area. Basically a nice place, especially for raising a family. I don't think we've found a "bad" place during our time in France. The main basilica was BIG, as one would expect of a papal building, and the city had a good mix of quaint old curvy streets and modern bistros. Avignon is another place we'll visit again in the future.

Highlights from the Nice area were having dinner chez Brelet, where Jamie and I had to brave 3.5 hours speaking French at the dinner table (a challenging but fun experience for both of us), seeing Nathalie's small studio/art supply store in the village of Valbonne, and seeing the Picaso Museum in Antibes. While it was fun to see a few of Picaso's works at the museum, they were almost all from a single era during Picaso's life and it would have been more interesting to view the changes in Picaso's style during his lifetime.

The drive along the Cote d' Azur was memorable. It wasn't a particularly nice day, with some overcast and a bit cold, but the serpentine road along the coast wound its way through some beautiful areas. Jamie was impressed by the castle at Carcassonne, despite the crappy weather, but the highlight of the afternoon was meeting with Dominique & Luc Bouriez (my Nov teacher and her husband) and their good friends Jenny and Will, a couple of Americans who are living most of the time in France these days. We toasted the New Year (well, I suppose since it was not yet the new year, we must have been toasting 2008). They had heard sooooo much about Jamie, that it was fun to show them that indeed, Jamie is just as good as I made her out to be!

Our final destination on New Year's Eve was Nick Sawyer's, an old Xilinx friend who now lives just outside of Toulouse. Nick and Brigitte throw a mean party. In addition to champagne and midnight backyard fireworks, there was awesome food (the foie grass was to die for!), karaoke, more food, good bilingual company, great wine, and at 5AM in the morning as things were winding down, they served onion soup just before all the guests left. It was good fun.

We flew back to the US on Jan 3. My year of traveling is behind me, and it's time to figure out the next chapter in my life.

Dec 23 - Bordeaux

I took the train Bordeaux. I did not have an assigned seat and there was confusion for about 30 minutes after I boarded the train with people claiming their assigned seats. I was fortunate to find a seat as the train was very full. Between the "greves" (French strikes) shutting down some of the trains and the naturally high volume of travel around Christmas, the train was packed. I sat beside an older (I must be careful with this pejorative term, but I would guess she was between 55 and 60) woman and managed to hold my own talking to her. I was a bit tired after 90 minutes of chatting, but it was a kick to communicate with a local.

Bordeaux

I checked into my hotel near the train station, took a short rest (or perhaps I logged into Facebook and threw a few pillows and snowballs at various friends, I forget now). Before long, I took the Bordeaux light rail downtown to meet Tanja, a German friend of Hanna, my housemate from Toulouse. Tanja had graciously agreed to show me around Bordeaux. She was attending French school in Bordeaux, much as I was in Toulouse, except that she had four months to study.

We spent several hours wandering the streets of Bordeaux, and gradually made our way to the waterfront (Garonne River - same as Toulouse, except being close to the Atlantic, it was larger in Bordeaux) by nightfall. The light was not great but it was good enough to get a good view of the "Mirror de Bordeaux", something for which the city is famous. There is an area 40m x 60m covered with flat black granite blocks, each having several small holes in it. Water flows up through the holes, to form a very thin layer on the surface. This acts as an almost perfect reflector, and the view of the government buildings opposite were just beautiful, especially as the sun was setting and the resulting deep blue of the sky was visible.

There is a much longer bridge here in Bordeaux than in Toulouse, although they don't have the fancy lighting here, using only standard bulbs instead of the multicolors in Toulouse. Tanja liked the lit up bridge here better than Pont Neuf in Toulouse while I prefer the Pont Neuf.

Like all French cities, there are lots of churches in Bordeaux. I got some photos of one of the ugliest churches I have ever seen. It looks like something out of Lord of the Rings, with thin, ornate, flying buttresses. Yukko.

I picked up a few bottles of Bordeaux at the local grocery store, taking them with me on the train to Paris. I figured Jamie and I would find a way to drink them during our "Tour de France". It turns out that we drank almost all of the bottles, thereby reducing the weight of my bag.

Dec 20 - More Toulouse

Well, there was another nice day with sun in Toulouse, and I got a few more photos. This brings the total for December up to three days with sunshine. Toulouse is a beautiful city, but the weather in Nov, Dec (verified firsthand) and I suppose Jan, Feb leaves something to be desired. I've enjoyed my stay in Toulouse and look forward to coming back with Jamie at year end.

More Toulouse

My school, Langue Onze, has been good for me. Instead of being one of the young students, as I was at my school in Nov, here I'm the oldest student by a wide margin. Every other student I met was between 18 and 28. However, I felt like one of the group and went out for beers a couple times with students from my class.

I lived chez Mme Garcia, who rents out a couple rooms of her apartment to students from Langue Onze. During my stay, the second rented room was occupied by Hanna, a delightful young German woman, who was studying French to assist her in the first half of 2009, when she will be working at French-speaking refugee camps in Cameroon. Hanna and I walked to school every day and got a lot of practice speaking French during our daily walks.

Dec 14 - Toulouse

I've been in Toulouse for two weeks taking classes. The school has not left a lot time for exploring but I've been out enough to know that Toulouse is a beautiful city, as you can see from some of the photos. There is an old part of the city which takes 10 to 15 minutes walk to traverse. (ie,it is a very manageable size)

Toulouse

Dec 7 - Les Abbatoirs Musee d'Art Mordern

Hannah and I visited the Museum of Modern Art. In addition to the hot cat woman near the front entrance to the exhibit, there were some incredible photos of naked African men. Ladies,if you've always been wondering, now's your chance to check it out.

Les Abbatoirs Musee, In Toulouse

I've included a small sample of the art. There was enough to keep both Hannah (my German housemate) and I happy (Cat woman, naked men, go figure).

I also went to a photo exhibit but was disappointed by what I saw. Make that extremely disappointed. When staying in Toulouse at the end of October I went to another museum which had a good variety of art dating from Roman times. They do have some good cultural exhibits here in Toulouse.

Dec 1 - Langue Onze in Toulouse

I opted to try two schools in France, the second one being Langue Onze, located in Toulouse.

http://www.langue-onze.asso.fr/toulouse_city.html

It is much larger than Ludoexpression, and has a younger student body. The two schools are very different and I like them both very much.

Langue Onze, Toulouse

The students although much youngerthan I have been very accepting of me and we'vegone for beers several times. I'm again staying with a French family, (Mme Garcia - a hot French babe), and there is a second student staying chez Garcia.

True to form, there have several strikes since we've been here. I have some shots of a manifestation, the French word for strike. I was surprised to learn that it was in fact the French University Students complaining about too much work.

Nov 15 - JL's Wine Making Class

I spent the weekend of Nov 15 with my good friend Jean-Louis Brelet and his family. He's been trying to get me to visit for years and when he planted his own vineyard and invited me to a party to taste the first wine from his vineyard, well, you know I just had to go!

Roquefort le Pins (near Nice)

In addition to tasting his wine (very good), we spent time enjoying the French way of life (slurping coffee out of large bowls, eating well, drinking even better) and had time for a quick trip up to the French Solar Observatory located in the mountains behind Jean-Louis. It was a great weekend. Jean-Louis, I will be back to visit again!