France Day 4

The day of Sainte-Chappelle:

Notre Dame:

And the Orsay Museum.

This day was a long one. By the time I wrote this, it was midnight and I'd just taken a 4-hour nap. Because of the amount of stuff we covered this day, I did this entry in my journal in sections.

1. Breakfast at the hotel. Laughing cow cheese and baguettes are awesome! We didn't sleep well last night, so coffee was a must too.

2. Arnaud taught us to use the metro. We already knew that. The old people needed a lot of explanation.

3. Hotel DeVille.

The mayor was dragged out and ripped apart by the bare hands of a crowd during the French Revolution. People have been drawn and quartered here over the centuries and it is the site of public executions. The last one was in the 70s and then the death penalty was abolished. Essentially, it is a beautiful square of death. The building itself also still has visible holes from bullets shot in World War II.

4. Sainte-Chappelle.
This church contains the most beautiful stained glass I've ever seen.


Somewhere in the church are holy relics from the Passion, which are brought out at Easter for the public and faithful to view. The rest of the time they are safely stored away. One of the relics is a crown of thorns, however, the thorns were taken off one at a time and given to visiting dignitaries. Apparently, there are enough thorns to make 30+ crowns, so the authenticity of those are in question. The funny thing that happened at Sainte-Chappelle: Arnaud had a conniption fit at another tour guide for cutting in line. And then couldn't let it go. Haha!

5. Notre Dame de Paris.

There aren't adequate words to describe this beautiful cathedral with its breathtaking architectural detail.

However, it felt wrong to be "touristy" in such a holy and breathtaking place. The girl walking around in a midriff top inside the cathedral made me very angry. There were also lots of armed military people because of a bomb threat at the Eiffel Tower the day before. (Side note: we knew about the travel warnings in France through CNN, but it didn't affect us in any way. We felt very safe, especially with the very visible police and military presence everywhere, which is not unusual in France.)

One of the most interesting things about Notre Dame were the carvings. Each told a story. This one shows the day of judgment with Christ and the top, the saved below him on his right, and the damned on the left. These carvings helped to solidify the stories heard in church in people's minds. Medieval visual aids, if you will.

And of course there are the famed stained glass windows.

The rose window.

The rose window from the opposite end of the cathedral.

We bought a beautiful rosary in the cathedral as well and then went outside to enjoy the gardens and fountain.

Here are the gargoyles, used to ward against evil spirits and as rain spouts.

It was a beautiful day.

6. Feet hurt.

7. Lunch in the Latin Quarter.

It is called the Latin Quarter because it was the neighborhood of students years ago. These students spoke Latin, hence the name: the Latin Quarter. It was our favorite part of Paris at that point, and it felt very medieval. For our lunch Nick had a croque madame which is basically toast with Canadian bacon, cheese, and a fried egg. I had scrambled eggs with potatoes and blue cheese. There was a lot of blue cheese and the eggs were slightly raw, but it was still good. And, of course, we had more café.

8. More walking and standing. Someone should find the edit button on Arnaud. I would have liked a quicker pace at this point, meaning less lecture and more time at the monuments.

9. The Orsay Museum, which was formerly a train station.

The Impressionists including Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, and a slew of others are housed here. Check out the beautiful and ornate clock:

Here's one of our favorites, Manet's Olympia. She's a prostitute. Check out the hand on her leg; it's like a clamp. She stares out defiantly, ignoring the flowers her servants brings from her last customer, while seeming to say, "Who's next?"

Here are a couple of Van Gogh's pieces we saw, including a self portrait:


No photos were allowed in the museum, and I'm sorry to say, we were too out of it and exhausted at this point to get as much out of the art as we should have. We saw paintings of prostitutes, saints and Christ, many sculptures, and a graphic painting of a vagina. It felt dirty to stand in front of that piece with the other tourists. "Hi! I'm looking at old porn. Care to join me creepy stranger?" There were a lot of naked women in this museum. Realism is still my favorite.

10. We took the metro back to the hotel. After walking all day, it felt great to just sit for a moment. We also experienced the R&R, which is another underground train. Getting around in Paris is the easiest thing in the world. It would be great if Seattle was set up like it. There would be no real need for cars in the city. Anyway, we slept for 4 hours once we got back to the hotel. Our feet still hurt, but we hadn't had dinner yet, so we went out for crepes at one of the stands in the Bastille square. We also bought cheese and crackers from a small market after neither Nick or I could eat the crepe fromage (with cheese), which had probably a 1/2 pound of cheese on it. The Nutella crepe was much better.

*We also walked through the Tuileries garden that afternoon.

The beauty of the place was a little lost on us because of exhaustion and foot pain.

Overall, in case you can't already tell, this was a hell day for us. So much to see and do and cram in that your head spins a little bit.

**Funny story: I made a friend in the women's bathroom at the Orsay Museum when another woman opened a stall with someone in it and then panicked. We both laughed.

***A lady named Sandy on our tour is an older version of my Aunt Kathy! She looks and acts just like her! This makes me like her a lot.

Nick's Notes (I take zero credit for the cryptic nature of the notes that spring from Nick's head):
-The Hotel DeVille is surprisingly cool
-Stained glass-wow-never seen anything like that before
-Surreal and hard to picture the historical events that occurred in these places
-Standing in a private chapel of the French kings-whoa
-Notre Dame-huge! Cobblestones coming up to it and the Point Zero where all roads lead to Paris
-Latin Quarter-smelled amazing from all directions (there were many restaurants)
-Ditches in the Latin Quarter running down the middle of the streets-the old sewer system (gare de l'eau!)
-Orsay Museum would have been awesome if my back didn't hurt so bad, but I really liked the art-especially Van Gogh
-It's amazing what people can make with a chisel and hammer (sculptures from the Orsay)

And then we went to bed. This was our longest day, but one of the shortest in terms of journal entries. Again, the head-spinning effect. When we go back to Paris, we'll be visiting these monuments again so we can enjoy them at our pace.

France Day 3

The day of Les Invalides.

But first, breakfast: An amazing bakery.

Nick's quote of the day in regards to the bakery: "This is so much better than I ever thought it could be."

What he's talking about: The creme and chocolate filled fried doughnut deliciousnesses. Oh. My. Gosh. They were heaven in a greasy pastry. But greasy sounds gross. These were anything but gross.

After breakfast and me realizing that my power converter, and therefore curling iron, wasn't going to work, we hopped a bus to West Bank to visit Les Invalides. Here's our first image of the gilded dome:

P.S. bus drivers in in Paris are SCARY! Holy crap. Anyway, Invalides also includes a church, which is where Napoleon is interred. This is the altar in the church:

Our primary reason for visiting Invalides was to see Napoleon's tomb, which was huge and completely overwhelming. The casket is made of red porphry and it's about 15 feet tall on a marble pedestal. Inside the shiny red coffin are 6 more coffins made of different materials and then there is Napoleon himself. He lies in a recessed area under the main floor of a church with a tall domed ceiling above him.

Nick was in the presence of his idol and he was glowing.

Here's a large statue of the man himself from the courtyard:

The rest of Invalides, which used to be a sprawling military hospital, is now the largest military museum in the world. It covers everything from medieval weapons and armor to all things World War II. Some of my favorite parts included Catherine de Medici's crossbow:

The armor, some from just after the reign of Richard III (one of my historical obsessions):

The prop from the Wright brothers' plane:

The hall of standards (flags taken during battles):

I also enjoyed seeing Napoleon's stuffed horse and uniforms, and the cuirass (metal breastplate) of one of Napoleon's heavy cavalry, which was pierced through both sides with a cannonball. That guy died fast, and they probably had a very hard time extricating him from that armor. We didn't take a lot of pictures at Invalides because we didn't know at the time how to check how many pictures we had left on our memory card. We learned later we had a LOT, so this lack of pictures is one of our regrets about the trip. We console ourselves with the fact that we will be going back one day in the near future, so we'll just have to do Invalides again. Even though we spent almost 5 hours there the first time . . .

Nick's perspective: Seeing Napoleon's tomb gave me a feeling of insignificance. It made me feel very small. Also, Louis XIII's massive amount of armor leads me to believe that he had some kind of fetish. The other part I thought was cool was the jacket from World War I that was still caked with the mud from the trenches. What a miserable existence that was for those men. The Greek armor from 800 B.C. to the current weaponry just goes to show that there has never been and will never be a time without war. People will never be peaceful.

Nick thought the museum would take us about 2 hours. It was HUGE and would have taken all day if we could have read all the information (most of the plaques were in French) The sheer volume of "stuff" was overwhelming. In the middle of our 5 hour tour of the museum, I almost kicked Nick when starvation hit. We ate in the cafeteria of the place. I had the quiche Lorraine, which was pretty good. It had leeks in it-my first experience with them-and they were pretty tasty. When we finally finished at the museum, we walked out to the Champs-Élysées and down to the metro to go back to the Bastille neighborhood. At this point, I'm exhausted and my feet are hot and painful. It took us a little while to figure out the metro, but we eventually got our tickets and then got to experience the cattle car, I mean metro, and the cocaine addict with a tick who talked to herself. Culture, ladies and gentlemen! Haha!

Nap time. Then we met our tour companions at a restaurant across from our hotel and we are the youngest people on the tour by about 20 years. Our companions are teachers, RNs, engineers, digital designers, and a prosecuting attorney and come from everywhere, literally. They hail from places in Hawaii to Staten Island. Most are retired with grandchildren, but all seem nice and many are fun. Our tour guide, Arnaud, is in an episode with Rick Steves in which they sit and eat a huge meal for a few hours in Paris. He has a dry sense of humor and Nick says he has the strangest colored eyes he's ever seen. We like him a lot so far. He explained some things about the French that were ah-has for us, such as:
1. French people are very closed off-they don't mix business and their personal lives.
2. They are very formal-when you walk in a store, say bonjour madame or monsieur .
3. They are proud to speak French-that's why everything is in French, including the information in museums.
4. You'll get better service if you ask if they speak English in French (parlez-vous Anglais?).
5. They dress formally all the time.
6. They have a different mentality than Americans-don't smile when you greet a French person. If you're a woman and you smile at a man, he'll probably think that you find him attractive!
And, etc.

The light clicked on in a few ways for us. We had a potty break after introductions and then did a quick tour of our neighborhood. We found out that the park we visited the night before, the Place de Vosages, was the location of Henri II's fatal jousting accident, in which he took a large splinter through the eye and into his brain. He lived for a few days after, and in trying to determine whether he could be saved, his doctors jammed splinters into the eyes of criminals and then took them out to find out if they could live. None did. When Henri died, his wife, Catherine de Medici, promptly took away a chateau from his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. This chateau was Chenonceau, which we will visit later in our trip. This is a story I've very familiar with, so it was fun to hear. Although the part about the criminal guinea pigs was one I hadn't heard before.

Dinner was very good that night. We ate with the group (one of the many amazing meals included in our trip) and had great conversation with a fellow teacher, a former school superintendent, an environmental engineer, and an early childhood education specialist with an autistic daughter who is now in college. It was so interesting to hear about the accommodations they are making for her.

Dinner started with a salmon and avocado tartare, which Nick LOVED. Texture-wise it was a killer for me, but the flavor was okay. The main course was roasted lamb shoulder and couscous. Yummy, even with all the fat on the meat. Finally, dessert was a flourless chocolate cake with crystallized orange slices and a cream sauce. Oh wow. So decadent! We were completely exhausted after all that and went back to the hotel room ready for bed. At 10:30 Nick was already out. Next up: Breakfast at 7:15 and then it's Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame followed by the Orsay Museum.

France Days 1 & 2

To start off, the flight from Seattle to Iceland was LONG. It was 7 hours total, but we were in an exit row, so at least we had a lot of leg room. Our 1 hour layover in Reykjavik was no big deal, although by the time we got there, I was completely exhausted. One positive was that we had to check our bags (European flights apparently are stricter on carry-on size) so we didn't have to to worry about lugging 2 heavy bags around. Score!

Side note: Nick had a shrimp salad sandwich at the airport in Reykjavik and loved it. I'll have to try making it when we get home.

Upon getting to Paris (a short 3-hour flight from Reykjavik), we took a taxi ride from the airport to our hotel, which took about 30 minutes. The surrounding suburbs of Paris are not an impressive sight. Many modern buildings and LOTS of graffiti sprinkled all over made it feel very gritty. Our hotel, however, was anything but. The Hotel Castex is a great place to stay in Paris. It is close to the metro and, therefore, it's just a short walk and subway ride to get anywhere you need to go. The neighborhood was beautiful too.

Our room was a nice surprise. It was spacious, for Paris, pleasant and filled with wrought iron accents.


Dinner in Paris: Our 1st experience in ordering.
Finally, real French food at the Reveil Bastille.

Once we made it into Paris at around 2 in the afternoon, we took showers and short naps and then went out for dinner and a long walk to combat the jet lag. Here is our first view of the Seine River.

At the restaurant, Nick decided to be brave and ordered the steak tartare. Yep, raw meat and a raw egg mixed with capers, onions, and some other stuff. He liked it (weirdo). He said the texture was very soft and he'd order it again, but it wouldn't be his first choice. I had a little bite and had to fight back a gag. I have serious texture issues and my brain was screaming, "YOU'RE EATING RAW MEAT! SPIT IT OUT!" The flavor wasn't bad at all though, for the record.

After "reading" the menu and trying to figure it out, I thought I'd get steak cheval (or something to that effect) until Nick found cheval in the phrase book. Yeah, that's horse. Um, no. I ordered poulet rotî a frites. Roasted chicken and fries, in other words. We had bread with the meal, créme brûlée for dessert, and café at the end of the meal. Café comes in very small cups and is essentially a shot of very dark and bold espresso. All thoughts of going back to bed ended with that little cup.

So, no longer tired, and a little jittery from the jolt of caffeine, we walked about 3 miles around the neighborhood. The buildings were beautiful and old. Some needed a bit of repair.

We took some pictures of the monument at the Place de Bastille.

We also walked along the Seine-all this occurred between 8:30 and 10:30pm. The Seine has boats cruises as soon as it gets dark that light up the city streets as they go by.

The Seine also has many bridges, most built by kings and emperors.

This is a city that never sleeps and watch where you walk! The bikers (motorcycles and scooters) drive like crazy people!

One interesting thing we noted was the massive amount of restaurants. There is one on every corner and multiple in between. And there's everything you can think of to eat: sushi, Thai food, Japanese cuisine, and, of course, all things French. And everyone smokes in Paris-something I'm not too fond of. Blech! Hold your breath a lot. (On a side note, by the end of the trip, we didn't notice the smell of cigarettes as much. I guess you get used to it, but still-yuck!)

Clothing is also very fashion forward here. Women in leggings and skinny jeans with boots were all over. Everywhere there are boots! No tennis shoes here, but lots of high-heeled boots. Darks colors, scarves, and beautifully draped tops and wraps are everywhere too. It's easy to feel out of place in tourist gear. Unfortunately, as in any big city, there are plenty of homeless people sleeping on sidewalks and in large boxes under the bridges. It's quite a sad juxtaposition.

One interesting bonus we found was that all historical markers are in French, so Nick can't read it! This means less time spent staring at historically significant monuments, buildings, objects, etc. I'm all for anything historical, but I don't want to stare at a rock for 45 minutes every 5 steps. And in Paris, EVERYTHING has a historical significance. It's mind-boggling.

Great moment of the day: Asking for l'addiction (the check) in French and the French-speaking waiter getting really excited for me. (Up to that point, it had been a lot of gesturing, pointing, and yes and no nodding to order.) I said merci a lot and excuse moi once too. I speak French better than Nick, who took three useless years in high school-and remembers none of it.

And that sums up days 1-2. Tomorrow, day 3!

Bucket List (a beginning)

I realized today that there are some random things I would really like to accomplish in life and I decided to write them down as I think of them. What better motivator than a list of things to accomplish making me feel guilty every time I think about it? This is a true statement from a professional procrastinator, let me tell you! So here are the few items I thought of today:

*Become a canning queen (learn how to and then promptly can everything in sight)
*Tile a floor by myself (probably the only way my bathroom floors are going to be redone)
*Write a book and get published (a lifelong goal)
*Produce 2 or 3 kids (Nick would freak if I didn't have this on my list)
*Grow and cultivate an herb and vegetable garden (and not kill it in a day)

This is a short list for now, but I'll add more and write about anything I may accomplish in the coming years. One that was on my list and I get to cross off is attend a family reunion, which Mom and I did this summer. I'll have to blog about that because it was a lot of fun and incredibly interesting. I have a wonderful family! Ooh, I thought of another one for my list:

*Go to every family reunion I can and become a part of the Roloff reunions so that I can help make sure they do continue for years to come.

That's a good one!

New Blog!

This blog was supposed to be about Nick's and my life, but I've been using to document recipes as of late. I really want to go back and retain the original purpose of this blog, so I have moved all my recipes to a new blog called Stephanie's Cooking. If you enjoy my recipes, you should go check it out!

Ah, the gifts from Gus

When we had everyone over for Easter, Nick and I did a deep-clean of the house. We were concerned about our niece, Isabelle, who hasn't really been around a lot of animals and we didn't want her to have any issues because of Gus or Budda. It was a lot of work, completely worth it, but a lot of work. I don't think there are enough ways to describe the feeling of sitting in your own clean house, knowing that your sweats and tears made it clean. But it's a lot of work!

Anyway, enough of the rambling about cleaning the house. There is a point to the ramblings, however. When I've vacuumed twice and spent time on (likely imaginary) spots on the carpet and then the dog runs around the backyard and drags in dog poo not once, but TWICE, it's amazing if your head doesn't explode. And mine did a little bit. The first time the poo only got on the rug by the French doors and a footprint or two ended up on the kitchen floor when I dragged him in there to clean it off. No big deal, right?

Round two: Gus has poo all over his foot and I don't realize it until he's in the kitchen and there are footprints all over. When I go to grab him, he runs from me. Still has poo on his foot and he proceeds to run all over the house. Livid doesn't begin to describe my feelings at this point. I cleaned Gus up and dragged him upstairs to his crate while I spent over an hour cleaning the kitchen and carpets downstairs. Serious angry face. Took me a little while to forgive him.

And then last night. Ah, last night. Nick called me as soon as he started shift to tell me that they needed him to work overtime, so he was picking up an extra 4 hours, meaning he wouldn't be home until 6am. Fine. I had 3 huge loads of laundry to do and I was really tired. At about 1:30am, Gus and I went upstairs to go to bed (because of Nick's work schedule, we've turned into real night owls, rarely going to bed before 3am). I'm reading Interview With a Vampire, so I read for a little while and turned the light out at around 2. I'm having some crazy dreams (the result of reading a macabre book before falling asleep, I'm sure) when I hear the sound every animal owner dreads. Blehhh! Gus puked up his dinner on the bed. Lovely. It's 4:30am. At first I'm thinking that I can clean the spot, not tell Nick it happened, and wash the bedding when Nick goes to work. Unfortunately, that was not in the stars for me. Those lovely stars that were still shining outside our window since it was still so FREAKING EARLY! The puke had gone through the comforter to the sheet underneath. Off came all the bedding. Nick came home at 6:30 and the sheets were done, so he went to bed and I stayed up for another hour to wait for the comforter. I put it on Nick when it was done and then took a nap on the couch while I waited the two hours for my alarm to go off so I could start the crockpot for dinner. Yeah, slept through that. What a crappy day!

Anyway, point of all this: I love Gus. He's our first "child" and that fact doesn't change because he drives me crazy sometimes. In fact, it probably proves the point that he's our baby. Of course our baby would walk through his own doo and chuck up his dinner on the bed. Of course . . . dysfunctionality reigns supreme in our house! (And, quite honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way.)

My Mom Says . . .

I don't update this blog enough. She's right.

Nick and I have had a really lazy, do-nothing week, which we earned because the previous week was psychotic and mental disease-inducing. We decided to do some renovating in our downstairs guest bath. This meant taking down the wallpaper, painting, removing and replacing the light fixture, mirror, toilet paper holder, and towel rack and then cleaning up the giant mess we made. Between two adults this should not be too much work, right? Wrong.

It took us 4 days to take down the wallpaper (one of those days both of us were incredibly sick and didn't really do any taking down of the wallpaper, so I don't know if that day counted). Then we had to paint and do all that other stuff (we didn't actually get the light fixture up since neither of us felt like getting an electric shock, but that's okay since there is another light in the ceiling that we didn't mess with). All this on top of getting the house ready for two separate Easter celebrations. Yes, I did TWO Easter celebrations at my house. Why? Because I'm crazy.

On Saturday, the day before everyone came over, we did all the painting and other stuff. Why did we wait so long to do this? Well, the wallpaper wasn't completely off the walls until 3am the night before/morning of. This was also the day that I cleaned the entire house, top to bottom. And made a brunch casserole and a GIANT batch of roasted tomato salsa. This salsa took 3 hours to do by itself, considering the fact that I had to roast 10 cloves of garlic, 25 roma tomatoes, 3 onions, and 25 serrano peppers.( And yes, we still have a ton of it in our fridge. It made a lot of salsa!) Add to that the fact that I had to process it in 4 batches and you have one messy kitchen, which I had spent the morning deep cleaning. Anyway, lots of work.

Nick and I were so tired by the time Saturday was over and then we had a long day on Sunday too. First, my mom, dad, and brother came over and they brought my Papa, who hadn't seen our new house yet. It was really nice to have Papa there for brunch and he liked the house, which meant a lot to me. We had lots of great food and everyone kept saying how nice it was just being together like this. It was! But then they left and we had to clean all over again to get ready for dinner with the Pritchetts. A nap was in order, but it would have taken a full 8-hour "nap" to help us feel rested. Fortunately, Nick and I have amazing families who make it incredibly easy to entertain, so we had a delicious and successful dinner on top of our delicious and successful brunch. All in all, it was a great day. But we were exhausted when it was all over!

So Nick and I took this week "off." We also relaxed on Nick's 3-day this weekend. Next weekend we're going to Powell's Books in Portland (a huge, amazing bookstore) and to the Woodburn factory outlets to go shopping. And then after that? We start getting ready for a big Mother's Day brunch with my family and Papa and the Pritchetts. That's right, everyone in our house at the same time! Crazy! I figure since I did so well with brunch and dinner separately, I can handle an all-in-one brunch. As much work as it is to entertain, I really love it, especially when it's with family.

And don't tell Nick, but my goals for home renovations before Mother's Day include painting the upstairs guest bath and two spare bedrooms. He's going to poop a brick when he finds out!