edging the valence

I had been having an internal discussion about using the term "Philly" for Philadelphia - is it as lame as "Frisco"? - since I came to the City of Brotherly Love (a.k.a. "Killadelphia" - check the murder stats) when I hopped onto perhaps my favorite blog and found a musing on the same thing.

I'm staying at a friend's house, though he's not here. We had some miscommunication about dates, but he came through like a champ and got me some keys. It's very strange, really. I haven't seen him in many years (something like five, or even seven), but here I am, learning about his life through looking at his stuff. He now has three kids, none of whom I've met, but here are their books, their artwork, their toys. And his artwork, which I've always admired greatly, and which has changed and grown even more since the time I last saw any in person. His guitars, kitchen...I know that I'd like this guy even if he weren't already my friend. Thankfully, I've found some time in my schedule to come back here and hang out together before leaving the East Coast in a few weeks.

I adore this neighborhood. I'm not sure what it's called, exactly, but it's right by Clark Park. It's very diverse, with the dominant population being peeps of color, and also a cafe that serves the whiter 20- and 30-something alt-crowd. The first sign of gentrification, I suppose, though there are no other indications that I've seen. The houses are beautiful, almost all brick, with three stories and real front yards, and kept up in the practical way that people do when there's not a lot of money.

Even beyond this neighborhood, I'm enjoying the city a lot. There are frustrations; public transportation is really expensive, all lines (I think) costing two bucks for a single ride, with no transfers. And people aren't that pleasant, even when waiting your table in restaurants. Grudging service is what I've come to expect. And I've had to use cash for almost every transaction, for food or goods. Weird.

I had lunch by Independence Hall today. You could probably write the rest of this paragraph yourself...how the people who worked hard in this simple building to create a vision for this country would be appalled at what the nation has become, or rather, its government. You know what I mean. I didn't feel much in viewing the structure, except; how little all that debate and work means now.

I kinda forget I'm in Pennsylvania, here. It's a real city, with its attendant cool restaurants and jazz clubs and boutiques. It feels light-years away from my childhood Lancaster County, just 90 minutes away.

I know, I still owe verbage on Arles, but I'm in the U.S. now and need to write on the current things. And photos from Yurp still await, too.

On Friday, Julie and I both kinda blew off work and spent the day driving around LA. We'd been really busy in the week and half previous, hardly even knowing where we were, so it was nice to get out and indulge in the city a little bit. For lunch, we went to a new place called Lucky Devil's, in Hollywood, right on the boulevard. We split a laughably expensive veggie burger - thirteen friggin dollars fifty - and fries. But my goodness, it was the best veggie burger ever, really a new kind of food entirely. It had beets, and caramelized onions, and who knows what else (25 ingredients, claimed the menu), on a sort of bun ("brioche", though nothing like the brioche I've ever had) that was soft as a pillow and sweet. It was incredible, really, and the fries were perfect, not at all greasy, just lovingly fried crisp. This place will soon be huge, I promise you.

Appropriately, we had not one but two celebrity sightings while there. Both Sandra Oh and Kate Flannery (Janice from the U.S. "The Office") were also enjoying the fried goods. It was nice to see an absolute lack of pretension, they both were dressed simply and were hanging out with non-glamorous friends.

Then we headed to Milk - not the fashion joint - another new place that is predictably big on its ice cream, though it also has some good-looking salads. After much debate, we ended up with six assorted bon-bons and a slice of "Blue Velvet" cake. The bon-bons RULED - unlike the frozen vanilla rocks that normally pass for the delicacy, these were dollops of either coffee or mint chip ice cream, inside a crunchy exterior that formed less of a shell than a skin that blended perfectly with the toothsome contents. And the cake was awesome as well - basically blueberry red velvet cake, with fresh blueberries in syrup poured overtop.

Waddling now, we continued on to Melrose and its endless boutiques. I was looking for a nice hat, something a bit classier than the clutch of Kangols I've adopted. Though I didn't end up finding anything quite right, it was fun to play the metrosexual and waltz in and out of the stores, choosily examining their contents. At one corner place, they said they had no hats, but they did have "a polo I KNOW you'll love". It was interesting, with hand-stitched lettering all down the back, but when I asked the price the response was a shocking $200. I couldn't believe they actually approached me thinking I might be interested - I don't usually "pass" in these places - but I've found that the cheap way to look fashionable is just to wear black; lots and lots of black. I'm slowly converting my wardrobe to the shades of night, since you can a) go longer without washing, and b) always look hipper than you actually are.

Though we'd spent seven days and eight nights in Paris, it still was a drag to have to leave. Though we'd hit just about every destination we'd hoped to, we hadn't seen any shows of any kind, and it seemed like we were just starting to uncover some good restaurants.

We'd booked seats on the high-speed train between Paris and Lyon, which has greatly reduced airline usage in France. I can understand why, it really is a great way to travel. The ride is very quiet and generally quite smooth, the views of the lush countryside very rewarding, and the velocity is pretty incredible, like a car going three times freeway speeds. When we pass another ten-car train going the other direction, it's only visible for a second or two, with a ear-crushingly whoosh. There's also something tremendously soothing about the motion, and it seems like that just about everyone falls asleep within a couple minutes. You do keep your luggage with you, and there are only limited spaces for big bags (at the end of each car and between some of the seats), so if you're planning on this mode of transport you'll find it easier if you pack light.

We arrived in Lyon in the early afternoon, and found a big city (the second-largest in France) with a lot more breathing room than Paris. Our hotel turned out to be just a few blocks from the train station, and as we walked over we passed through a green park with an outdoor food market. It was a very nice ambience, so we were rather disappointed when we saw our (rather pricey) hotel, which looked worse for the wear outside. We had to ring an intercom and wait for someone to unlock the door, and once inside, we saw a dingy lobby and uninviting-looking reception desk. Though we'd reserved a room with a double bed a month before, the excitable fellow working the desk said there was no such room available, then made a big show of "finding" one with a "big" bed. We ascended via the smelly elevator and found our room with its door open, revealing a dark chamber with an unmade bed and a mess on the desk. I ran downstairs to inquire, and the man was full of apologies, and insisted on coming upstairs to talk to the chambermaid himself. Upon reaching our floor, he strode towards our room, and we just caught a glimpse of a woman in a working outfit before the door was hastily closed. The host shoved on the door, the woman pushed back on the other side, and there was a few seconds of a reverse tug-of-war before she relented and admitted him inside. There was a brief but heated discussion before we were informed that the room would not be ready for some time yet, but we could leave our bags and explore the town.

Though hardly raring to go after the lulling train ride, we were easily convinced to leave the hotel and its attendant calamities, so we headed back across the park and into what seemed to be the center of town. Immediately we found bread shops, chocolate shops, and cheese shops, plus other food stores and restaurants by the score, quite opposite what we'd found in Paris. We soon hit a large pedestrian walkway (also something we didn't find in the capital) and encountered loads of clothing shops as well. This really does seem like a shopping haven, and though it was a Wednesday afternoon, the area was packed with people (almost all European; this doesn't seem like a big place for American tourists to visit).

We bought apple-filled pastries (unbelievable!) from a shop and some fresh cherries from the market in the park, then headed back to the hotel. The room was ready, but we were hardly thrilled to step inside. It clearly had not been remodeled or even touched up in 30 years or more, and with its blocky fake-wood furniture, drab carpets, and cheap institutional-looking fixtures, seemed like a relic of Stalinist Russia. It felt as if we had left glamorous France and ended up in some small, wayward Mexican city (where such places are not unheard of at lower price points). The "big" bed was merely a double, but in was installed in a space meant for a king-size mattress, with two or three feet of space on either side between the frame and the monolithic endtables. There was a fridge, as promised, but when I tried to open it, the door feel flatly forward - it wasn't attached on its hinges and probably hadn't been used in a decade. Finally, the curtains did not meet in the middle, so for any privacy we had to yank the two drapes together and secure them with a safety pin. We took a brief nap, but it was solidly depressing to hang out there, so we went out again for more exploring.

The shopping areas seemed to extend forever, and soon we were getting hungry. Though at first it had appeared as if there were many restaurants, fulfilling the statistic we'd heard many times that the city has more eating places per capita than anywhere else in the world, those were mainly just around our hotel, and of the brasserie variety. Where we all the other restaurants?

It was getting late, so we decided to go to a sushi place I'd looked up online - obviously not particularly French, but one does have to eat and we don't get nearly enough fish in Oaxaca, so it seemed like the thing to do. It turned out to be a grab-a-plate-as-it-goes-by kind of place, in this case not realized through the typical little wooden boats, but still blessed with the combination or being both kinda fun and kinda annoying. The constant parade of new items going by with the carnivalesque aspect of having to act quickly to get what you want is enjoyable, but sometimes the things you really want don't ever seem to come or are eaten by someone across the way, which can lead to huge expanses of time spent tediuosly watching plate after undesired plate roll by.

After a good hour of watching and grabbing, we were doing pretty well, but hadn't seen any barbecued eel, or unagi, which is a big favorite. I finally decided to request it directly from one of the chefs. Now, the menu was of course in French. All of the kitchen staff were Asian, and presumably knew Japanese. Though it took a few repetitions, I managed to convey in my Anglo-French with the slight Spanish twist that I wanted an eel roll, asking for it by its Japanese name. A minute later, we had a lovely avocado-eel roll on a plate in front of us - a triumph of international communication.

When I went to the front counter to pay the bill, the person working the register was a European and a dead ringer for John Waters, down to the slicked-back hair and the ridiculous pencil moustache. As we left, he bid us "Au revoir!" and I responded automatically, "Hasta luego!" Oh well. 

We've heard Paris described as a "tourist playground", and though I don't fully subscribe to that viewpoint as the attractions (with the obvious exception of EuroDisney) are genuine cultural institutions, it definitely has a glut of sight-seeing activities. Before we left Oaxaca, we'd made a list of 25-plus things we wanted to do here, and to our amazement, it looks like we're going to do almost every one of them.

In fact, I believe the only one we're going to skip is seeing the graves of Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. They lie in the Pere Lachaise cemetery, which covers some 110 acres, and we've done just about walked enough. Not content with having spent all of Sunday walking through galleries in the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay, and Monday between more Louvre and the Picasso museum, with a break in between to surmount the 300-some steps of the Notre Dame cathedral tower, we then spent today first climbing up the 300-some steps of the Sacre Coeur cathedral tower, then the 300-some steps of the Saint Chappelle tower, then the 280-some steps of the Arc de Triomphe. Though since we left Mexico, every day has been a big walking tour, these ancient spiral staircases have just about done us in.

The night before last, we went up the Eiffel Tower, deciding to forgo that particular set of famous steps and pay the extra few Euros for the elevator to the top (actually two elevators, the first of which brings you to the second observatory deck, the second which takes you the rest of the way to the top). It really is a lovely structure, and the way they've preserved much of the historical element is very nice (you can see the 100-year old wheels turning to lift the elevator, for instance). We decided to skip dinner, which was nothing unusual as we hadn't really been eating proper dinners anyway, and headed over after the Picasso museum. Because of France's Northern position and the time of year, the sun hasn't been setting for us until 9:30 or later at night, and though we were intending to see the lights of Paris it seemed like we were going to be too early. However, the line for tickets (which was a lot shorter than it had been during the day) took half an hour, the wait for the first elevator took 20 minutes or so, and the wait for the elevator to the top took 45 minutes, so we saw the sun set from the second deck (in a freezing wind) and had full dark for the view from the top. It's well worth the wait and the cold, it's an incredible view, with most of the recognizable features of the city lit up and the river gleaming from the lampposts and the boats.

The descent was pretty unsatisfactory, however. We were there til 11:00 or so, and by the time we took the elevator back to the second deck, there were lines forming for the elevator. We took the steps down to the first deck, thinking we'd catch the elevator from there. However, they had closed the staircases from there to the ground for some reason, so everyone got in line for the elevators. We waited as carful after carful arrived from above, the doors opening to admit only five or six more people, before a 20-minute wait for the slow descent to the ground, the slow return, then another carful. We waited close to an hour before a violent rush from behind packed us, wriggling, into an already-overfull car with 25 new close friends. Though it was after midnight, we thankfully found a crepe joint still open, and devoured a cheese, then a Nutella savory pancake.

Last night, at last, we found a real dinner. It took a lot of searching online, but we found a place that offered a few meat-free fish dishes, soups, and salads and was not centered around a massive bar. The food turned out to be incredible, and we did quite well in the conversations with the host and waiter (except for the end of the meal, when the host asked how everything was, I tried to say "c'etait deliceux" but he thought I said "l'addition", he repeated "l'addition?" to me, I thought he was confirming that I had said "c'etait deliceux" so I said "oui!", so instead of looking pleased that I had complimented him on a delicious meal, he looked crestfallen and instead immediately brought the check as I had inadvertently requested).

Tonight, also, we did pretty well for food. We lingered for a long time on the Arc, waiting for the strobe lights on the Eiffel (every hour on the hour, the entire monument is lit by flashing lights from bottom to top, quite striking though I imagine distracting for pilots) at 10:00, which was very cool and resulted in much frenzied picture-taking (we have dozens of the A-frame monolith, like most visitors I suppose), and it was close to 11:00 before we headed back to the Opera neighborhood near our hotel.

(One might think that the Champs-Elysee, the wide street famed for its tremendously romantic sidewalks fulls of restaurants and cafes, full of life til all hours, might be the place to go. Well, let me possibly be the first to tell you - THE CHAMPS-ELYSEE IS A BIG FAT JOKE. I'm sorry. It's nothing but six blocks of mall, with your Gap stores and your McDonalds and your huge overblown makeup ads. Yeah, there are some sidewalk cafes, but they're few and overpriced and the food sucks (we know, we gave it a whirl). I suppose it was an happening kind of place in the thirties, but there is no romance to be found there; it is not worth a visit, even if you're at the Arc which marks the end of its "historic" strip. I can't believe it is still mentioned in guidebooks).

Wandering around one night earlier this week, I had noticed a fondue place near the Opera. I hadn't had fondue since my college years in Indiana, and Julie had never really had the pleasure, so when we walked by tonight and saw it still open this late it seemed like a sure thing. We were seated after a few minutes waiting by the bar, breathing in waves of cigarette smoke - as befits common conception, people do smoke a lot here, though this January it will be illegal to light up in public places and a number of restaurants have already forbidden it - and we soon realized that we were the only tourists in there, always a good sign. It seemed like a real neighborhoody place, with people coming in off the street and greeting patrons and staff alike with the traditional cheek kisses, then a glass of wine and, of course, a cigarette.

The host left us with a couple of menus and we soon figured out what we wanted; fondue, of course, with soup and salad to start. A waiter soon arrived, a moustachioed gent with a curiously deadpan expression. I found it kind of funny that he didn't ask us what we wanted, but merely raised his eyebrows which seemed to indicate that we should start speaking. I ordered, then asked which beers were French. He gave a slight lean to my side and pointed to a brew called "1664", which I agreed to. Then I asked for chocolate fondue for dessert, which must be ordered ahead of time. To this, he put out his hands flat to his side and gave an ever so brief shake of his head, which we understood to mean that it was too late to order that dish. Julie ordered for herself, with a similiarly mute interchange, and we were again left alone, a bit bemused by this treatment, especially when we saw his joking with the other waiters and even some of the guests.

He returned in a few minutes with the soup and salad. Instead of actually coming to our table, he reached across the neighboring table to hand things over. Julie went to pick up our shoulder bag from that table so he wouldn't bump it, and as she was doing so, he notice her hairclip still sitting there. Without any change of expression, he picked up the ashtray and placed it solidly on top of the clip. When Julie laughed, he gave her a quick glance with the tiniest upturn of the corners of his mouth, then removed the ashtray and once again set his face to stone.

The salad was good, the soup decent, and the fondue HUGE as well as delicious, redolent of a bit of Swiss mixed with maybe some mozzarella and Gruyere, in a copper pot set over a little solid-fuel flame. There were several trays of breadcubes, plus small round potatoes, which we dunked in the mixture with the provided skewers to coat them with layers and layers of cheese before gulping the dripping mess down. (I have no idea of the manners involved with eating like this; we did dump the becheesed morsels onto our plates first, but maybe it is just as proper just to go directly from pot to mouth). It was impossible to believe how much cheese we were downing, it must have been pounds and pounds of the stuff, but it was impossible to stop until the bubbling pool was reduced to a but a small, dark puddle quickly adhering to the bottom of the pot. (I pity whoever does the dishes here.)

It seemed like even the regulars were quitting for the night, so we asked for our bill and paid (no tipping for meals here, the service is included, which is a very nice change from that particular headache at the end of every meal in the States). As I signed the check, I saw one of the waiters stuck outside the front entrance, balancing a full stack of beer glasses, unable to free a hand. That's when I saw our waiter do an exaggerated penguin-walk, the entire length of the restaurant, to open the door and rescue his colleague with a ridiculous flourish. Funny guy. I can't say he deserved too much of a tip from us, but had I had the opportunity, I'd have kicked in an extra couple of percent just for his entertainment value.

So far, Paris has been a tremendous gastronomical disappointment. I know this is some kind of sacrilege, but honestly, other than the hotel breakfast which involves a great spread of cheese, croissants (the best we've ever had), pain au chocolat (kind of a croissant with chocolate stuffed inside), fruit, yogurt, and homemade cakes, we can barely find anything to eat. We were tremendously spoiled by London, I suppose, where every menu had something for us and every block had a good option in Pret a Manger (how can these not be in France?!). But here, we've simply been unable to find one reasonably quiet and nice looking sit-down restaurant. Everything (with the exception of the below-par Italian restaurant we ate at in desperation our first night, it being the other thing open after two hours of searching) is a brasserie, which is a lovely-sounding word that means a bar with an expanded kitchen and a bunch of chairs facing the sidewalk. Without fail, the menu consists of large section called "Our Meats" and little else except appetizers, soups and salads that might as well also be called "Our Meats" as that's what they're made of. It looks very charming to have a street filled with brasseries, with jolly crowds spilling out, but it's a real drag for a vegetarian to see the same thing on carte after carte after carte.

We did yesterday happen upon a bread shop called "Paul", part of a French chain, which had a nice mozzarella cheese sandwich. That served as dinner, and probably which also serve as lunch most days, but it closes at six and is just a take-out counter. What are we missing in this supposed food capital, other than a taste for flesh?

Today was our first day at the Louvre. The museum pass is a great deal as it not only saves money on admission, but at a lot of the museums you can bypass the regular lines for entrance. Such was the case today, which was fantastic as there was a line stretching far past the (famous) pyramid entryway, shivering in the rain as we strolled past. The museum itself is beyond belief, every piece a masterpiece of its genre. I've never been a big one for sculpture, but we spent most of the morning in French works from the 17th and 18th centuries, which focused heavily on Greek myth and turned out to be tremendously moving.

One thing I didn't know about the Louvre (this may be obvious to most) is that it doesn't cover contemporary art, at least from what we've seen. So the inclusion of a new series called "Counterpoint", which used these classic works as sort of a raw material, was a bit shocking, both in its modern sentiment, and in our opinion, its complete inability to remotely approach the power of the established pieces. One sort of installation involved turning four massive pieces towards each other, roping them off so the public could no longer walk between them, then placing a lifelike, nondescript plastic man between them holding a microphone. Now, I fully support the validity of conceptual art as well as the idea that no art is absolutely good or bad, so I offer this just as my own perspective, but I found this both cheap and annoying. Other works involved shining a bright spotlight on one section of a sculpture, placing a crowd of papier-mache figures with clocks for faces (please!) among the old marble statues, and hanging a passel of scythes on a rail above relics created for a tomb. I didn't think any of this worked, at all, and in fact I found that they blew the focus of the entire gallery.

For dinner, another sandwich. I dream of dinner.

(ed. note - I know I'm way behind at this point, more entries and eventually, pictures, to come. Thank you for reading).

Whoops, sorry for the abrupt ending last entry. I'd been standing up in the hotel lobby for a couple of hours, answering email and plotting out events for today, and fatigue plus the annoying keyboard made me eventually lose all patience, partway through a paragraph.

So. Paris. I need to cover a few days at once here, every night we get back late and are too exhausted to get too far with the blogging. We've now been here three days, three and a half I guess. That first day, we had a successful trip on the Metro, though I had what is probably a typical moment of tourist embarrassment when we arrived at our stop. I waited for the doors to open, and when they didn't, just stood, staring at them ferociously, until a kind gentleman reached over and turned a large silver handle in the middle of the doors, which then allowed us an exit. It seems to be polite, actually, for whoever is standing closest to the door to twist this handle (or occassionally, push a button which does the same thing), which opens the doors for everyone, a bit alarmingly a few seconds before the train comes to a complete stop.

It doesn't seem possible to overstate how culturally lush this city is. Our first day, we walked in the direction of the Seine, the river which flows through the center of town, dividing it into the Left and Right Banks, and we soon happened upon the St. Marie Madeline church, which is huge and beautiful and centuries old. Continuing on, we hit the Place de la Concorde, which is a huge plaza centered around an enormous obelisk (a gift from Egypt at the end of the 19th century, and touched off by countless intricate statues and lamps all around, most in brilliant gold. It's stunning, even before one notices Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the arched-glass-roofed Grand Palais, the wonderful Seine itself, and of course the Eiffel Tower in the distance. It's just all so stately and ceremonial and old that one feels a bit like the tiny dot in that dependable icon of human obscurity, the t-shirt of the Milky Way with the little arrow, "You are here".    

And it doesn't seem to end. Though London was suitably impressive with its historic buildings, here there are amazing structures full of history and culture in every direction, no matter where one goes. It really makes San Francisco, Los Angeles and even New York pale in comparison. Construction on the famous (another superlative that is soon rendered meaningless, as EVERYTHING here is famous) Notre Dame cathedral was begun in 1163, 850 years ago. That blows my mind. And there's so much else; Versailles, the Luxembourg gardens, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coeur, Pompidou Center, etc. It really feels like it goes on forever.

Today we went to Versailles, which was the home for France's kings and queens (yep, Marie Antoinette lived there) for centuries, and is known for both its royal residences and its gardens. We'd bought a four-day museum pass (at L'Orangerie, a museum close to the Louvre, which houses Monet's large-scale "Nymphs", paintings intended to be seen in this very structure - we just had time for a quick peek) so were able to bypass the 13.50 Euros admission fee. However, after seeing the enormously impressive Chateau, full of gilt on unprecedented scale (I loved the Peace Drawing Room, down the Hall (of Mirrors) from the War Drawing Room), we were denied entrance to the famous (yeah, here I go again) gardens, which is usually free with the museum pass, because there was a "water show" going on. The water show seemed to consist of nothing more than more than classical music playing while the fountains were turned on (in an unintentionally ironic nod, perhaps, towards the days of Napoleon, when the fountains required so much effort to run that they were only turned on when the petite emporor actually was walking by, then quickly shut off again), and the gardens seemed to consist mainly of surgically trimmed hedges, so we decided not to drop the additional seven Euros and headed back to town.

(It was a bit of effort, actually, involved in getting to and from Versailles. We'd bought a five-day Metro pass, plus a "carnet" or book of ten tickets, choosing (for a nice discount) to have the pass include only trips within Zones 1 and 2 of the city (not to be confused with the arrondissemonts, which are the 18-plus neighborhoods that Paris is divided into), which includes all of the main attractions and centers. But Versailles is on the southeastern outskirts, in Zone 5, and is only served by the "RER" train line, which is kind of a commuter rail line. One can use the pass and Metro tickets for the RER, as long as your zones match. It had been our understanding that the tickets were good for all zones, so we tried to use two from the carnet, but were told by a rather stern and unhelpful woman that we had to buy separate tickets to get to Versailles. After a moment of private discussion, which merely resulted in a common shrug and the coughing up of a few more Euros (part of traveling involves occasionally being at the complete mercy of those in control of information), we headed down a flight of concrete steps, and were then greeted by some five different hallways, two of which mentioned Versailles. We chose one, and emerging from the hall then had several of tracks to choose from. We hopped the first train that came, but after two stops realized it was going the wrong way. Having realized this, we hopped out and tried to find somebody to explain, but there was not a single uniformed soul to be found, even upstairs on the main level. We had a serious tete-a-tete with a map and saw the cause of our confusion being that not only were there two Versailles stops on two different lines, but one of them (the one we'd picked) first went due East before doing a loop and heading back due West, past its starting point. We finally figured out which train we wanted and arrived there successfully, but it was a grueling trip).  

We've been able to get by pretty well with the French we have between us, and we've found people to be generally very patient when trying to figure out what we're getting at. It does seem that just about everyone knows English, though, and at some point during the lengthier conversations inevitably they will make a polite shift. One problem I've been having personally is slipping a bit of Spanish into my French. Though I can usually remember the proper verbs, when it comes to quick responses, things like saying "goodbye" or "huh?", I will suddenly pop out an "hasta luego" or "mande?". And just a handful of times, I'll actually mix the beginning of a French word with the end of the Spanish word, or start rolling my R's, to some confusion. Julie has dubbed this invented language "Spench".

We haven't been up the Eiffel Tower yet - we stood at its base but were dismayed at the large crowds mixed with the sweltering midday sun, so we'll return tomorrow night for a view of the lights of Paris. 

This is most confusing - not only are the A, W, M, Z, and comma in different places, but the period needs the shift key, as do all of the numbers. The Spanish keyboard has some interesting switcharounds when it comes to punctuation, but it's nothing like this. So forgive ,e if things stqrt to look q little zierd:

If you're going to take the train from London to Paris on Eurostar, one piece of advice - book early. Similarly to airplane flights (actually, they refer to their trips as ''flights''), their prices vary greatly depending on when you buy them. We lucked out in the end, but still ended up paying double what we originally thought, and for a few panicked moments we were afraid we were going to pay that double again.

We got the last seats on the train, they told us, so naturally we had to walk to the last car, number 18 out of 18, dragging our bags (you need to take them with you, surprisingly there's no baggage car) for what seemed like a quarter mile. We settled into our comfortable seats and within a few minutes we were off. We were looking forward to some serious speed, but we sorta lagged along until we got to the Chunnel (tunnel under the English Channel - I doubt that's the official name, but it should be), when they really stepped on it, and we only seemed to be in the dark for ten or fifteen minutes. Then we were in France.

The country wasted no time in looking romantic and inviting - rolling hills and ancient stone farmhouses seemed to appear immediately for our benefit. It took maybe 40 more minutes to get to Paris, and after changing our watches, saw that it had been a trip of just under three hours.

We detrained (I love the term ''deplane'' and think it should apply to leaving any form of transportation - debusing, detaxiing, deboating...) into Gare du Nord and stood for a moment, overwhelmed at the size of the place and the sudden current of French, German and goodness knows what else washing around us. Then we spotted the ''Metro'' sign and headed there, angling through the crowd of busy travelers and trying to wake up our inner Francophones.

The London Underground is huge, but surprisingly easy to figure out, its various lines all making some kind of sense and its stations being very clearly marked. And of course, we remembered as we gaped at the unparsable Paris Metro map, the Tube's literature is in English. And remember what happened in our first experience there...

I wasn't eager to test the patience of the Paris version of our impatient, ticket-taking London roughneck, so we tried to inform ourselves as best as we could from the reams of French text describing different card and ticket options. We managed to narrow it down to the Carte L'Orange or the Carte Visitee, but knew that we had to get personal information before plunking down our Euros (which are pretty cool-looking, by the way).

Preparing ourselves for the worst, we head to the information window and asked our first French question, ''Parlez-vous Anglais?'' Thankfully, it was the last French we'd have to speak in this conversation, as the answer was ''Yes'' in perfect English, albeit rather grudging perfect English. We got some prices and a bit more information from her, but retired again for another huddle before committing. Paris, like London, has zones that affect where you can go with different types of Metro cards and tickets, so back to the map to think and plan and go glassy-eyed.

Back to the counter, though now the not-especially-warm English speaker was busy, so time to go all French. Between the three of us, we managed to have a successful and not-unpleasant transaction - contrary to traveler myth, the ticket-seller seemed happy that we were trying.

Keys in hand (actually a thick piece of cardboard that resembled a shrunken Wonka ticket with its foil and colors, not entirely inapropos as the five-day Carte is worth about thirty bucks), we went back to the map to figure out what to do with them. We needed to get to the Sydney Opera Best Western, which appeared to be nearly equidistant between three stops on three different lines. Picking one of them - the Havre-SomethingveryFrench, on the green Somethingfullofaccentsandpunctuation line, going West towards the Somethingalmostentirelymadeofvowels final destination - we headed down several flights of steps and inserted our pricey tickets into the turnstile, already missing the quick n' clean tap of the Tube. More steps, during which we noticed that the top handle of suitcase is nearly disconnected from the body, victim of too much bus and plane travel these last six years or so, and we were in the Metro itself. The stations resemble New York a bit, large, a little grungy, and somewhat confusing in figuring out which train is going which direction.

I woke early to play in Shepherd's Bush Green, just in front of the hotel. After a little while, I was joined by a man who said he was from Somalia. He hummed me a melody, which I played back to him, then he started vocalizing quietly, singing a bit, then speaking a bit in what might have been poetry. It was all very nice for a moment - then he asked me for a pound. When I wasn't forthcoming, he quickly lost interest and wandered off to find another musical partner/patron.

I returned to the hotel for another "ludicrously tasty" (I've been corrected by Julie, this is the actual slogan) cold cereal breakfast, then packed up our things. It was a gorgeous morning, the warmest day yet, which generally seems to be the case when we leave a place. We hopped the Tube once again and arrived in Waterloo station just a few minutes later. The Tube is astoundingly prompt; in probably 20 journeys, we never had to wait more than three minutes, and usually only one. The buses weren't bad either. Kudos to London for doing their public transport so well.

At Waterloo Station we picked up our Eurostar tickets and Julie headed off to track down some food. Unbelievably, there wasn't a Pret a Manger in sight, unlike every other block in the city. Still, the cheddar cheese ploughman's sandwiches she picked up at Mark and Spencer's, a chain of natural food stores which is nearly as ubiquitous as PaM, were fantastic.

There was an airport-style security point before boarding the train, and had our first, albeit brief, French conversation with an officer checking passports. "Merci." "Merci." Good so far.

I'll finish this entry tomorrow - though our first day in London pretty much eliminated jetlag (after the night awake, we slept most of the day, then were up all evening before having a regular night of sleep), the days are big and involved and I need to sleep.

Another big day. We went first to Trafalgar Square, which is a huge plaza filled with statues, pigeons, and schoolkids. At one end of the square is the National Gallery, which is another very impressive museum, also free of charge. Many of the "big" paintings were there - Van Gogh's "Sunflowers", Seurat's "Bathers", Rembrandt's last (I think) self-portrait - and it was pretty well packed, even at midday on a Tuesday. I really think it's a great thing for museums of this caliber to be free - the artwork will be seen by a much larger cross-section of society, the institutions become livelier places, and donations are obviously frequent and generous.

It's surprisingly easy to eat fresh and vegetarian in London, to our great surprise. It seems as if every other store is a deli of Italian basis featuring panini, naturally with excellent cheese and perfect bread. There is also a massive chain called "Pret a Manger" (meaning ready to eat, in French) which seems to have as many locations as LA has 7-11's, or even Starbucks. They specialize in very fresh sandwiches, plus selections of soup, sushi and desserts, all pre-made and not very expensive. And they're good. It's a very comforting thought to know that a good food option is nearly always at hand. It was getting late for our planned matinee show, so we grabbed two excellent cheese/bread creations and walked the few blocks to the Palace Theater.

Theatre is just huge here, I think even bigger than New York. Every escalator in the Tube stations is plastered with show posters, more than any other kind of civic activity. We'd continually been reminded about Monty Python's "Spamalot", and finally decided we just had to see it, especially in a town where they definitely could pull off the accents. It was a matinee on Tuesday, I assume the slowest gig of the week, so we figured we could get pretty good seats, even though we arrived just half an hour before the curtain.

There were decent seats in the first balcony on the extreme edges for 20 pounds, which sounded like the best deal (the only cheaper seats were way up in the precipitious third balcony). The ticket-seller thought for a minute, though, then told us that for the same price, there were just a few seats available all the way down in front, like ALL the way down front - fourth row back, on the right side. We jumped at those, and plopped down in the plush chairs practically giggling at our luck. The people seated beside us had paid 55 pounds. I guess last-minute purchases can be the way to go.

The first act was great - a loose reworking of "The Holy Grail", with a few of the troupe's most famous bits worked in. I personally found the French castle guard to be a bit of a letdown, since he has some of the best lines in the movie ("Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberry!"), but kinda threw them away here. But the rest of the cast did very well and the stage interpretation was updated nicely.

There was a brief intermission, which we spent admiring the 110-year-old theater building, then back to more cross-dressing, gallows humor and piquant insults. Then, just as the knights seemed to be completely stalled in their quest, one of the knights rushed off the stage and down our aisle, reached under Julie's chair and held aloft - The Grail! He ran back to his comrades with the prize, declaring that a peasant had found the holy cup. Then he ran back to us, grabbed Julie by the arm and dragged her up to receive the full glory of her discovery. As they musically recounted her achivements (and even got her name right as they included it in their song), I have to say she did an admirable job of looking as if she belonged up there, playing along with the knnigghits and not wilting in the awesome glare of the floodlights. Then, after declaring her "Best Peasant", they pushed her into position for a quick Polaroid, gave her a final congratulations and sent her back to my side with the photo and a great little trophy.

The show came to a predictably over-the-top finale, then as we walked out, person after person kept asking her, "So JULIE, are you part of the cast? Were you in on the joke?" She really did seem quite natural - I think I'd pretty much have died, thrown up or said something absolutely unfunny, bringing the whole orchestration to an awkward grinding halt in one way or another. We hung out and basked in her glory for a bit, then caught a double-decker bus (they really are the way to fly) down to some shops we'd noticed the night before. We made a beeline towards the Maison du Chocolat, intending to toast Julie's new celebrity in cacao, but caught a glimpse of the imposing Royal Academy of Arts and thought we needed to stop there first.

Though the museum was about to close, a most generous employee took us under his wing for a few minutes, asking our story, explaining the history of the museum and describing a number of the upcoming exhibits. As the inner doors began to be locked, then, he reached behind his desk and handed us a lovely booklet on the Monet drawings, which are normally only sold in the shop. Then he dug a bit deeper and also handed us each a pack of beautifully-made cards, based on another exhibit and also only available after paying a bunch of money. We thanked him profusely and promised we'd return.

The products of the Maison du Chocolat only continued our run of good feelings - almost the polar opposite of the powerful, unrefined Oaxacan version (simply toasted and ground cacao mixed with sugar and nuts), this chocolate was impossibly delicate and silky, just exquisite. Also insanely expensive, with some specialities running $80 a pound or more. We chose five or six individual pieces, then continued down the street, where we each found a charming and not-expensive cap. London fashion is appealing but usually pricey, so we felt our luck continuing to run strong.

Next stop was the London Eye, a Ferris wheel of sorts which really is more of a moving observation platform, with 32 twenty-person cars set onto a 400-foot - seriously - spoked rim, very much resembling a bicycle wheel with its offset spokes and center hub. I found it unsettling to see that the only support for myself and my 639 companions was two angled steel trunks, which at 15 feet above the ground were separated into two joints, with perhaps 40 bolts hooking the pieces together. It looked like the sort of thing used to hang a billboard from above, not hold up 2,000 tons from below.

In spite of my racing heart, it was an amazing "ride" - just a single turn of the wheel lasting half an hour, but affording an astounding view of the city, across the Thames from Parliament. We took dozens of pictures of Big Ben at all angles, including ones from far above, and looked out over Buckingham Palace, St. Paul's cathedral, that crazy Swiss egg building, and more.

It was high time for some fish n' chips. The Sea Shell is probably the most famous shop of its kind, with celebrities regularly coming by and prices to match its fame. However, if one is content to order at a counter and eat either standing up at a counter or sitting at a plastic table outside, prices dive to half, with the offerings remaining the same. The chips aren't anything special, but the fish really is awesome. Don't forget to order your separately-charged ketchup and tartar sauce.

We hadn't quite packed enough greatness into this day, so we hopped a few more red double-deckers, haphazardly stringing together a circuitous route across the city back to Her Majesty, encountering more new, interesting neighborhoods along the way. We could spend a month here just exploring, I think.

I was wrong yesterday, we have yet another day in London. Days and dates run together and don’t mean much until the time comes to return, or move to the next city.

Today was classic weather, or rather what I expected to be classic. Doom and gloom, rainy and cold. I woke early to hit the Net at the same cheap place I went to yesterday, but they didn’t open until 9 so I had a cup of tea at a café nearby. I don’t normally even like black tea that much, but every cup I’ve had here is just excellent. I actually haven’t dared to ask about herbal selections – in California one usually has to choose between a dozen bags, but here tea seems to be tea, and ginger-mayberry-St. John’s Wort-chysanthemum is something else entirely.

I also had to call the Oyster card people. At Liverpool Station yesterday, we saw turnstiles, tapped our cards (now in their bright blue protective wallets, a bit tentatively requested on our first day) on the reader, and were allowed entrance. However, the route maps looked unfamiliar, so we asked one of the personnel loitering nearby how to get to Moorgate, a transfer station. They informed us that these rails belonged to the London Rail, not the Underground, and we’d have to leave the station and walk a block to the Tube. Not only that, but we’d just lost five pounds. (Vomiting from stress…sorry. No, just a handful of quid/crowns/GBP deducted from the cards). Though they were the ones who’d filched the fiver, they somehow weren’t able to correct the mistake themselves, and said we needed to talk to the Tube folks. We tried that, and they of course directed us to a help line. Sigh. The one complaint have about the otherwise really great Her Majesty is that it advertises phones, which indeed appear in the rooms, but they are only functional for incoming calls, of which we are expecting zero.

There are plenty of pay phones here (they seem to be disappearing in California, and there aren’t many in Oaxaca either), and they seem to be pretty cheap, promising a 20-minute call to local or national numbers for only 40 pence (pence are the British version of the penny, one-hundredth of a pound). However, after just a minute, I was asked for more money and, as I was scrambling for additional ten-pence coin (which is larger than a five, smaller than a two, but bigger than both a one and a pound, confusingly) was disconnected for my deadbeat ways. I called the operator, and they informed me that the digits I was dialing were neither local, national nor international, but a “non-geographic” number which would set me back 40 pence EACH minute. Riiight. I suppose phone companies are the same the world over in their haste to invent new ways to squeeze us further. Anyway, I did manage to get my point across and was promised my five pounds back in a few days, to be automatically added to my card which is fine as we’ll be coming back to after our time in .

(I have to add at this point that the Oyster card has been a fantastic deal. A single trip on the Tube would cost four pounds, but buying the card (an initial three-pound investment) and putting five pounds on it, we were able to take eight trips yesterday without paying another more. It’s also very convenient, you don’t even have to slip the card into the mouth of a machine or through slots, you just tap it on a big yellow button and the gates swing open. Definitely very well done).

I then called Eurostar, the company that runs the high-speed trains (three hours!) between London and Paris. I’d been shocked to find out yesterday that their rates change dramatically in the same way as plane fares do, and our planned trip for Wednesday was going to cost way way way more than we’d been counting on. In this case, buying over the phone is going to get us a better deal than online, a reversal of how things usually are.

We decided to make some indoor plans, so we headed to the British Museum. As seems to be the case with a number of museums there, admission is free every day. What makes this particularly amazing is their incredible facilities and collection – if I remember correctly and didn’t get it mixed up with one of the other many civic institutions we’ve seen in the last few days, it’s an institution supported only by donations, not government funding.

After the museum lobby, you arrive into an unbelievable courtyard of sorts, with huge buildings on either side, making up the various wings, an enormous round structure in the center, and maybe fifty feet or more overhead, a diagonally-patterned glass roof which seems to extend forever. It’s the largest covered square in Europe, their literature states, and it’s hard to imagine an interior space being any larger. (In its incredible, white expanse, it reminded me most of the infinite room where planets are made, from Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe”). The exhibits themselves are similarly impressive – where I’m used to an “Egyptian room” having one or two sarcophagi, here there were fifteen or more, plus a number of mummies in their linen (even mummified alligators, oxen and cats!). I highly recommend this museum, even for non-museum-loving people. Did I mention it’s free?

It was a long afternoon, and we retired back to our hotel for some great take-out sushi, which was excellent – we haven’t been disappointed yet food-wise, and we’re a bit demanding.

A nap was in order, and after that we didn’t really have solid plans, so we simply hopped on a double-decker bus as we’ve been meaning to (getting a great seat right up front) and went wherever it took us, taking notes as we went along on neighborhood we passed through, all easily viewable from our almost hilariously high vantage point. We stopped in the theater district at a coffeeshop called Costa, which had a logo similar to Starbucks but delivered the BEST muffins I think I’ve ever had. Mine was raspberry and white chocolate, Julie’s was lemon-orange, and they were just unbelievable. Then we hopped on another bus which was heading towards Hammersmith, again seeing some great neighborhoods from 20 feet up, then caught the last Tube of the night back to Shepherd’s Bush. I went out later to look for some Tylenol, and though I couldn’t find that, I did find that at 1:30 a.m., there is all kinds of food available around us – bagels, “jacket potatoes” (baked potatoes with toppings recommended to us by a Stateside friend in the know), all manner of fried chicken and onions and chips, and even shish-ke-babs and Lebanese cuisine. I love cities like this.