J’adore le chocolat

One of the more special experiences so far in Paris is the Chocolate Fair, also known as, le Salon du Chocolat. It’s an event hosted in many of the big cities in the world such as New York, Shanghai and so on. But it started in Paris and this is where hundreds of chocolate lovers congregate every year to taste the best offerings from the chocolate aficionado of the industry. Thanks to my friend D who got me a ticket, I was lucky enough to go in and eat as many samples as possible until we were bursting and sick to our stomaches.  Plus, predictably, I couldn’t stop jumping around from my sugar high. Thankfully we had bottles of water on hand and sushi to help.

Here are the spoils from the afternoon:

So to start, I have photos from the Lindt company; the two chefs are making crème brûlée chocolate squares that have a thin and gooey inside with a thin and crunchy chocolate coating on the outside.

I also really enjoyed the fashion and sculptures made from chocolate especially the dress with the chocolate skirt that has the right texture and flow to make the material look real. The Aztec sculpture with the dragon head and detailed base is amazing. It’s also very cool how the artists uses the 4 types of chocolate at his disposal: white, milk, dark and cocoa powder to create the different shadings and patterns.

The raw cocoa plant looks like a pod that contains weird organs when first opened. It’s amazing how beautiful chocolate comes from something so ugly and disgusting-tasting before it’s processed!

And there are pictures after pictures of all the goodies 🙂 Some of the peculiar ones: potato-shaped and sardine-shaped chocolate, “inactive” cannabis chocolate without the THC, the innocent looking cherub pissing a fountain of chocolate! And the huge bigger-than-life-size Petit Ourson – part of the petits oursons which are marshallow shaped teddy bears dipped in chocolate. Yes they’re as good as they sound. And they covered the entire 4 sides of the stand for the mini statue in petits oursons with a sign saying “no touch”. At that point, clearly it was an invitation and I stole 2. And they tasted amazing.

I really enjoyed seeing the curry powder and spices though. They had some of the most fragrant tea I’ve ever smelled, which just so happened also tasted delicious.

Monet’s Inspiration

Ever seen a painting by Claude Monet and wondered what he was thinking?

Well, our trip to Giverny wasn’t able to answer that question. But we saw his beautiful house and even more picturesque garden which explains why he was able to live there for so many years and paint so many iconic, internationally famous paintings.

The lily pond is one of the highlights and really made the whole trip. But everything was so delicate and delightful. Giverny is a little over an hour outside of Paris and the train ride was a mess. But the weather was gorgeous (we went during Summer, so these photos are a few months old).

His house is situated in the country side. We saw roosters, chickens and horse and other farm animals in mini farmers on the little hike to the house and then more in pens in his garden. The house was filled with his paintings and art from others who stayed with him and were influenced by Monet or in turn influenced him. Surprisingly there was a lot of Japanese art!

Life in the country was slow and peaceful in a very relaxing way. It is no wonder why Parisians (those who can) escape the capital during the summer to spend delectable summer months à la campagne.

I highly recommend going to Giverny if you have a few extra days in Paris and it’s summer. Especially if you’ve seen a good deal of touristy things; it’s a nice excuse to give yourself a relaxing stroll in nature. You take the train from Saint-Lazare and then a little shuttle and voilà, easy!

Le Château de Versailles

So my darlings, this is le Château de Versailles, located…in Versailles.

This is the former royal residence of Louis XIV, also known as le roi soleil (the Sun King – because he thought he was in the middle of the world, solar system, and essentially, universe). The château (castle) was supposed to be a summer residence but the kind decided to move his whole court to Versailles permanently, which became the capital during Louis XIV’s reign.

He spent a ton of money too, about half of all the money the richest country in Europe at the time (yes, France) earnt in that year. But the details are so fine, you can see why. Even the pots and urns in the garden have individual designs so each one is unique. Not to mention the silk hangings in the royal bedrooms because wallpaper just didn’t cut it. And need I say more about the mile long artificial canal created so the garden literally stretches as far as the eye can see. But not too far unless you can a glimpse of the dreadful Bernini bust Louis despised and exiled to the very back of the garden.

Few other cool things to note: La Galerie des Glaces (The hall of Mirrors), the perfectly symmetrical and evenly spaced gardens – Louis’ way of flipping the bird to nature (just to show how powerful he was, he even controlled nature…supposedly), the gorgeous fountains, the monumental front and sides with Classical architecture features (columns, pediments, urns, relief sculpture….)…

And if you’re wondering what those weird golden kitsch looking things are…well Takashi Murakami was having an exhibit at the palace for whatever reason (kind of a weird clash, don’t you think?). But I suppose it adds a modern touch to the very Classic château.

Le Bon Marché

As part of my marché series, had to share something funny with you today. Long while ago I wrote down I had to visit something called Le Bon Marché. I forgot what it was because I only put the address down in my moleskin (which I love, it’s my best friend in Paris). I happened to be in the neighbour and decided to check it out.

Bon marché in French means cheap, or a good deal. Ya know, like a bargain buy. So I go there expecting to find a run down market maybe with some cheap food or cheap winter clothes I can buy (perfect). Plus I desperately needed to use the bathroom (those of you who know me well…) and they’re hard to find in Paris! So I walk around looking for the store. Only to find…hahah

 

it was filled with anything but items bon marché.

At this point, I laughed. I realised I’d been punned. Le Bon Marché, might mean cheap in French, but a literal translation also means the good market. As in, a good shopping mall, in this case. Haha, a cute little malentendu (misunderstanding) ou double sens (double meaning, curiously the French don’t use the expression, double entendre, meaning a double, often sexual, connotation/meaning, even though they are French words). Anyway, I happily used the clean bathrooms (love that about high end department stores) and went away thinking about the rest of my life.

 

You’re in for a treat: Aux Marchés

Sorry I know I know! It’s been forever and you’re dying to read. Well finally I got the time and the pictures to show you. It’s been a busy few weeks. La grève (the strikes/protests) are still happening and there’s still problems with the métro (surprise, surprise). But I promise I’ll be sending many more updates to catch you up on my adventures.

In the mean time, you can have a mouth watering look at all the beautiful foods I get to experience, sometimes on a daily basis thanks to the French love of outdoor markets. Some of these places are indoors, but the majority are outdoor markets the Parisians attend religiously in order to get their fresh produce. You see, kitchens in Parisian apartments are small and food must be fresh, so they shop a few times a week, only buying enough for one or two days each time (well there are those weekly supermarket shoppers, but we’ll pretend they don’t exist).

Anyway enough reading, let’s get to it! Yum yum. (Besides, my English is deteriorating quickly (and yet the French isn’t getting much better), so it’s a bit of a struggle for me to write as much. Which is perfect for you right?)

 

CANDYLAND

Um what can make me happier than seeing lollies (candy, if you’re American)? Eating candy of course! Haha but at this point I’m satisfied with the eye-blogging range. I ❤ Haribo. It’s amazing. Enuf said, yum yum.

Look at the huge smile on my face.

That’s the smile of somebody who had too much candy as a kid.

A little surprise from the BUTCHERY

Voilà it’s boudin, also known as a blood sausage. It’s sausage made from pig blood. Supposed to be great source of iron! Kind of looks like you know what though, so I just tried not to think about it. I tried it 2 times (gasp, I know I used to be a vegetarian, then I went to France…). It’s really good when spicy. Just don’t stare too long. Not as bad as Andouille (a French specialty, it’s an intestine sausage made from a lot of offal – meaning it looks and stinks like merde – oh and it tastes like it too, one of the most awful smelly things I’ve ever had – worse than Camembert du lait cru (smelly cheese made from raw milk) in Normandie). Speaking of cheese…

CHEESE

Yum, don’t that look tasty?

All the different varieties…

This, I just had to take a photo cos I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much mould on a cheese that it is black coloured. Well bon appétit!

FRUITS and VEGETABLES

The fruit and vegetables here are out of this world. You don’t need to buy organic. Just anything fresh at the market is a taste sensation. I’m in love with all the varieties of mushrooms here, often wild. Shame the cost me an arm and a leg. But so delicious.

And everything is so good that I’m even willing to eat it raw, as in salads.

Mouth watering juicy fruits, and…..yum

Frozen Foods At one point we went to Picard which is a supermarket that ONLY has frozen foods. Can you imagine? Ppl give Americans a hard time about eating frozen meals. But the French have an entire supermarket dedicated to these frozen meals and other cold goodies. Like herbs…

FROZEN HERBS

Or ice cream and lasagna. Basically anything you want 🙂 There was the normal stuff, frozen apple pie, frozen veggies, chicken…but then there’s the weirder (but cool) stuff, frozen gucamole & salsa, frog legs, herbs..

Marché IENA

A view from the street market closest to my house. What cosy company, right? You can stroll leisurely down, look at the products according to your own pace and chat to the vendors. When it gets very busy though, be prepared to rub shoulders with your neighbours. Just make sure you don’t lose your wallet in the process!

FLOWERS

So beautiful. They’re some of the freshest and most beautiful flowers. Paris has 2 famous flower markets. This was just an ordinary vendor at a store, so I’ve yet to go. But I’m sure they’d be goregous. It’s cheaper to buy from a market than a store. And just as beautiful.

SEAFOOD

Yum yum yum. Love shrimp. The fish is very appealing. Always. I’ve almost never smelt the “fishy” smell or ammonia smell which means they’re all very fresh. But this was a bit disgusting…

At least I didn’t show you the photo of the half-skinned rabbit :p

 

Faire La Grève

Faire la grève /gʀɛv/ feminine noun*: 1. to be on strike (the official translation), 2. to be French (my own translation)

La grève quickly becomes a common phenomenon once you’ve been in Paris for more than 1 month. You can see how often the French go on strike. Last week the whole country went on strike against the proposed retirement reforms. The government is threatening to increase the retirement age from the current 60 years to 62 years. 2 extra years of work while for the rest of the word retirement still stands at 65. Furthermore, they stopped over half of the traffic. In order to show the Man the French are serious, the Parisian transport system, RATP, stopped a huge number of metros and RERs making it difficult to go to most places. So what is there left to do…well join la grève [actually, technically what we joined is la manifestion – which are the demonstrations where people go out and have a big carnival and parade. la grève are the strikes – where people don’t go to work and disturb the functioning of everyday life]. And that is exactly what S and I decided to do (though I heard somewhere this is not allowed/illegal – so we didn’t join in the protest, merely just followed the people…from a “distance”).

It all starts from République to Bastille and ends in Nation. We caught the human train from la Bastille, appropriate considering the significance of the site played during the French Revolution. In fact, most demonstrations from the left (French politics) all follow this very traditional route.

Clearly you can tell we belong and fit in.

Mleh, I’m not even going to pretend

That’s S showing her passion for the injustice against old people, who refuse to retire 3 years before all other old people in developed nations. Well, at least the Frenchman behind her looks impressed by her enthusiasm. OMG I love the juxtaposition and irony of this photo. Plus the creepy dude in the back with a surgeon mask and hat on.

Did I mention, a bunch of the protesters were young people my age? Either they really care about retirement, or they’re just getting out of school/work. Don’t blame them, the grève experience is a lot of fun. People are dancing and singing down the street like a big parade. It was a great time.

This was hilarious!

Longest line out of a bakery I’ve ever seen in my life. No kidding.

While people protest for their rights, businesses gotta be making money. That’s just life. Plus, a good protest makes the people hungry.

As if the whole experience wasn’t enough, the highlight of my day…seeing this picture. It’s a bunch of kids, and adults who should know better, with a sign saying “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité“. This is the official French motto, meaning Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. But the best part, it’s a bunch of kids protesting at a retirement demonstration in front of a statue of a woman who represents Liberty? with a red and yellow flag that looks like the former Soviet Union’s flag with the hammer and sickle.

Needless to say, I was laughing the whole way home.

There’s is another grève predicted for next Thursday. Again. That’s the 2nd in 3 weeks. Makes sense, La Grève in France is like a bloody carnival & the French get the day off work. I would throw a protest too  if it allowed me to get so much time off work every week so I could to have fun with the people, singing and dancing down the street. Retirement, salary, health care, French body odour and chaffing from overly tight jeans. Seriously, I’d protest it all.

* Thanks WordReference! You’re always there for me during last minute cram sessions before midterms!

Le Fabuleux Destin de Montmartre

Spent the morning with our wonderful guide M in Montmartre. M is amazing. He is so knowledgeable and conducts the tours all in French. As this is difficult for us to understand, he somehow uses just the right vocabulary so it feels almost effortless to understand everything he says. And the best part is, all the commentary is very interesting so I want to listen. Because whenever I start to tune out, I understand nothing because at this point my french is at the level where if I don’t concentrate hard to understand, I block everything out.

Anyway let’s get  on to the highlights of Montmartre.

Those of who you have watched the film Amélie will know a lot of it was shot in Montmartre. This little market/dairy is in the beginning when you see Amélie sink her hand into a bag of grain (one of her favourite things to do). Everybody’s (mine, and maybe J’s) stomach went a flutter with butterflies when we first saw the shop and recognized it from the movie.

We passed by 2 interesting statues.

The first, was the statue of Dalida, well her bust actually, quite fittingly. She was a famous French popstar, a real DIVA apparently. She was Italian and Egyptian, maybe even had some gypsy blood in her. Very wild and had an interesting voice. Sadly came to a tragic end.The second statue is of the “man in the wall” from the famous short story by Marcel Aymé, called Le Passe-Muraill (The Walker-Through-Walls). It’s about a man who finds a hidden talent one day; he discovers he can walk through walls. Sadly, like mainly other French stories, the end is not happy. But I’ll leave you to find out what happens. Quite interesting actually.

Cute little Montmartre house.

Passed by le Sacre Coeur but didn’t have time to go in. Obvious, due to the fact that somehow I had only taken a photo of half the church (insanely dumb, but whatever). Next time I’ll try to give a bit more detail about this magnificent church.

Ended the tour with lunch at the café Amélie works in. It’s called, le Café des deux Moulins, which translates to, the Two Windmill Café.

Interesting fact. The reason there are so many “moulins” mentioned in Montmartre, such as the cafe and Moulin Rouge (Red Windmill) is because Montmartre is a high and steep hill. So the whole hill before it became urbanised and a suburb, used to have windmills to grind flour and all those helpful things that windmills do (provide electricity? I doubt it there though). So that’s why there are so many mentions, moulin this moulin that. Funnily enough Moulin Rouge was never a real windmill that was turned into a cabaret bar. The windmill build there is fake and just used for decoration.

Now I’m going to be honest, it was amazing because I recognized so much of it. But also creepy. You’ll see what I mean…

This have this creepy looking shrine dedicated to the film in the bathrooms. Such a weird place to put it. And unexpected. So you know when I’m going to the bathroom, it’s right there and I think…um interesting. Nice to know.

And of course the famous sign. How could I not get a photo?? For those of you who have seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about!

The façade of the café.

The profile side of the café where there isn’t a big, obnoxious white van blocking the view.

And of course, finished off by Mr. Gnome.

Paris, Je t’aime!

Ok cheesy title. Sorry. But everything in Paris is borderline cheesy. Partly due to the many stereotypes floating around about Parisian, but really also because Paris plays such a large role in culture and well life is actually kind of like those stereotypes.

So long day today. And forgive me for skipping straight to the point. But let’s be honest, everybody wants to hear about my Paris adventures, right? Switzerland and the rest of Italy, while gorgeous will wait for another day.

Let’s start early this morning. Our small USC group of 10 girls (perfectly sized) made it to the Cité stop and met with our guide M for a quick tour of the oldest part of Paris, the Île de la Cité and later Île de St. Louis.

We walked around and check out sights like Notre Dame:

These are the side and back views. I’ll post up some front and inside views later in the semester when I have more time to explore. However, needless to say the sides are breath-taking and reveal the extremely intricate Gothic architecture that local Parisians built themselves, usually for free.

These are people with no experience in construction but wanted a beautiful cathedral to devote to the Virgin Mary and to give their children a grand church to adorn the city. Consequently it took 2 centuries to build and the craftsmanship is very evident.

We went to take a boat cruise on the Vedettes du Pont Neuf (ironically called the New Bridge, this bridge is the oldest in Paris). Here are some of the highlights:

My favourite bridge is Paris is called the Pont Alexandre III. It is one of 37 bridges, but considered the most ornate and beautiful.

Clearly you can see the detailed sculptures and decorations like the lamps and columns.

Even the face of the bridge, extremely beautiful with a mermaid like creature welcoming us while we were floating under the bridge.

La Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower) - eternally beautiful even in the distance on a cloudy day

Supposedly this is one of the buildings after which the White House in DC is modeled.

The smallest house in all of Paris.

After lunch at some dingy restaurant in the Église St. Séverin (food was not good even though this place has some decent restaurants that offer un menu fixe), we hopped on the first bus that arrived at the closest bus stop to us. This is a great past time and a way to explore Paris through the public transportation which we already paid for with our passe navigo. We got off at Opéra, where (one of) the big Paris Opera building is. Absolutely goregous and many expensive clothing stores and department stores were nearby. So we visited…

Les Galleries Lafayette!

This is if you can believe it, the roof of the department store building. Gorgeous right?

We also stopped by Picard, a supermarket. But this one was special; it only sold surgelés (frozen) meals. It was so funny to see Americans in there, curious about a supermarket that only had frozen goods, when they probably eat more frozen meals than the French. There was everything including veggies, meat, desserts and even guacamole frozen.

Funny story 1: My friend T was absentmindedly walking toward the exit. She pushes open a door with a green sign and sets of the fire alarm. EVERYBODY stares at her in the store including the check out guy. Everybody cracks up laughing and the check out dude tells her to close the door. Even the strangers on the street laughed. Luckily T has a great sense of humour and laughed a long too. So lesson learned, not every green sign means go (in S’s words).

Turns out the street we were on is also a market street with tons of cute little shops that sell all types of food. There was fresh produce…

cheeses…

more cheese (it is France after all)…

et encore plus de fromage (you get the idea)…

Luckily I finally landed in a candy store…The candyland dream…

Yum yum. Reminds me of all the delicious candy I had as a kid. On the opposite note, below is boudin. And we’re not talking delicious San Francisco sour dough I blogged about a few months ago. This is something I never ate as a kid. It’s bloody sausage (also called black pudding, it’s a sausage made with blood that’s cooked until it congeals).

My friend S who looks beautifully French, and confused.

Hilariously juxtaposed with D who looks bored in a sex shop. At this point we stopped by the red light district after a delicious and cheap dinner at New Locomotive (a lovely Vietnamese resto I discovered thanks to my uncle).

Funny story 2: We got off the métro at Marx Dormoy to go to the restaurant. And unfortunately for D, we were a bit slow off the bat (you gotta race like those Parisians). So D got trapped as the doors were closing. She couldn’t pry them open and they closed. S ran up to help and D just took at her with the funniest look on her face – partially frantic to open the doors, partially concerned about where she would be sent off to in the train, and partially resigned to her fate. She just put her hands up and shrugged her shoulders. I think we were more concerned than she! Haha we finally got her out in the end. But it was HILARIOUS.

Just for Tommy, I’ll add a caption to this photo. I took this picture while we were exploring a HUGE sex shop in the red light district. No photos are allowed so I don’t know how I managed to get away with this one. But I couldn’t let this hilarious moment pass. The juxtaposition between D, sitting next to two female mannequins getting it on, with the most mundane and bored expression on her face, is roll-on-the-floor-laughing material. That and all the vibrators in the background.

This is a beautiful poem I really enjoyed in a book store. Yes I sneakily took photographed it. But I give due credit. It’s called Couvre feu poême (1942) by Paul Éluard.

We ended the night appropriate at Le Moulin Rouge

The red windmill was beautiful and seductively glittering with light. Much more enticing than the way it looks during the day (look for picture at the beginning of the post).

We took a “Marilyn Monroe” photo above a drain thing where the wind was blowing up our skirts (and pants). Ahhh Paris, so much fun. Je t’aime. Je t’aime.

Le Château de Chantilly

Ever heard of la crème Chantilly? Well it comes from the same place that houses a magnificent place called Le Château de Chantilly which is a castle in…obviously, Chantilly. For those curious, the cream is like whipped cream except it has vanilla and sugar added for extra goodness and is placed on top of desserts. But more importantly, the castle was the primary attraction I visited today.

It was first built with some relations to the Montmorency family in the 1400s (according to Wikipedia). But it was mostly destroyed after the French Revolution but rebuilt in the late 1800s. So the architecture I saw was a semi-recreation of the castle but in reality incorporated more of the modern style of the 1800s.

The castle is best known for its collection of fine paintings and collection of books. There are so many famous and valuable paintings there it is probably the second finest collection in France after the Louvre. There were many pieces I enjoyed and a lot of nice stained glass.

The library was also packed with books. They all looked in perfect condition so I don’t know if anybody has ever taken them out and translated them since they were restored and neatly organized in the library.

The whole château was beautiful. I had a breath-taking moment the first time I saw it coming over the bend. It comes fully with a moat and draw bridge. The best part of it, well one of the best parts, is the fact that next to it is a huge (I mean huge) stable, and inside museum, for horses.

The stable, les Grands Écuries, was built for horses because the Prince of Condé who was the last owner and who also commissioned the rebuilding of the castle believed he would be reincarnated as a horse in his next life. So he built an extremely lavish stable and has multiple statues of horses, etc. in hopes perhaps he would end up in his stables, which honestly look more like a palatial mansion.

Today the Musée Vivant de Cheval houses 40 live horses that do shows. There is also a racecourse, Hippodrome de Chantilly where real races are still run today.

As the first real touristy exploration I did, I’m going to start rating these things.

My rating: 3.5/5. I liked the château. The building is beautiful and the artwork, even more so. Some of the garden was inspiration for parts of the garden at Versailles, which scores big brownie points. But there was something kind of small and disorganized about the way the wings were structured. The interior definitely didn’t match up to Versailles. But still worth visiting if nothing just to beat the mad crowds that are clogging lines and everything else at Versailles.

Bâteau Mouche FAIL on La Seine

OK this was unnecessary, but I just had to post this.

Today, I saw one of the biggest fails on the Seine River (La Seine). We were walking down the portion of the river where all the boats are anchored. These boats, such as the famous Bâteau Mouche, Bâteau Parisien, Vedettes de Paris give you tour ride down the Seine where you can see big monuments from the water. It’s well worth it if you are interested in sightseeing such as the Louvre illuminated at night and the Eiffel Tower flashing its lights. People were lining up to buy tickets. Suddenly we chanced on a huge crowd of people that were standing around staring at the water.

This is what we were all looking at:

What is happening here?

What are all the police doing?
We direct our attention to some police and life guard people on the Seine…

Still after 5 minutes, had no idea what was happening. After asking a guard nearby, turns out the story is there was a ship that had sunk in the Seine. Take a closer look at the last photo.

There’s a just the very top of the boat visible above water. The boat literally sunk entirely in the river. It was carrying sand. Probably to refresh the supply at the Paris Plage (a fake beach the Parisians create every summer on the Seine). Unfortunately, the boat was carrying too much sand and ended up sinking. The police and ambulance arrived trying to fish and tow the ship out of the water. Nobody was hurt. There was only the captain on board and he swam to safety. Unfortunately all the boats were unable to sail that day. So we drove all the way to Paris for no reason!

The only 2 good things that came from it was I got a decent view of the Eiffel Tower. And it was a hilarious story.

More to come on Paris. Promise next time it will actually be an adventure.