141. RJ Goes to Europe

About 50 years ago, the Whole Earth Catalogue was published, providing people with all the information and tools they needed to build their own geodesic dome homes and grow gardens and weave clothing. It also had a fun story in a lot of episodes entitled “Divine Right’s Trip”. In this episode we mainly hear about RJ’s recent 31-day sojourn in Europe, his driving experiences, food experiences, phone and translation app experiences, and increasingly hopeless efforts to talk to security guards and people in very long washroom lineups. It has that same sort of good-natured-slightly-chaotic-but-I-wanna-do-this feel as that 50-year-old column. Dig in. Listen. Laugh. Pick up a tip or two. It’s all here.

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RJ holds forth amongst the Eiffels

Link: Crash Test Dummies

Our first day in Amsterdam

Canal shots are a dime a dozen around here, so here’s one I call Window Shopping at the Condomerie.

The Rijksmuseum Research Library in Amsterdam, est. 1885, with around 650,000 volumes.

Had a perfect day trip out to Haarlem today (thanks Leigh Carter!) We rented bikes at the Haarlem train station and rode out to the North Sea. Riding in Holland is first class! Then we walked down to the square: spectacular. Pictured here are the Grote or St. Bavokerk (St Bavo’s Church) and the old Meat Hall at right, with room for 40 sellers of fresh meat.

Although we had a nice visit to the Royal Palace today, and capped off our stay here with a shot each of jenever (dreamy), I will just leave here the “Man With Violin Case Trying to Catch Tram 10”.

I walked right past Robert Plant here in Bruges today, and all I could muster up was a simple “Hi”. So I didn’t get a photo, and you’ll just have to settle for an evening shot of the Quay of the Rosary (Rozenhoedkaai).

In Bruges. This is the Markt, where Ken Daley falls to his death from The Belfry (spoiler alert). We climbed 366 steps and stood next to the gigantic bells while they rang.

We had been anticipating Musée Hergé for months, and it did not disappoint. A spectacular architecture is the setting for a detailed review of the career and works of the creator of Tintin. The beautiful interior was designed by cartoonist Joost Swarte.

Today was a train travel day from Belgium to Strasbourg, France. We chose a long layover in Luxembourg and had a good walk around, very picturesque. Here’s Pont Adolphe; we later walked its length but on a pedestrian/cycling level just visible here as a horizontal line under the centre span.

The half-timbered houses of La Petite France, in the German style. Strasbourg has changed hands between Germany and France (or their historic predecessors) several times. Lovely place.

Cathedral de Notre-Dame in Strasbourg

Buttresses in flight as we climb the cathedral spire

Today was a great day. A train to Colmar for a walk around Petite Venise, another train to Basel for some sightseeing, followed by a pleasant and somewhat moving visit to the world’s oldest still running museum (kunstmuseum). This is the classic houses shot in Colmar.

We viewed the Strasbourg astronomical clock today at solar noon, and it was marvellous. The first mechanical clock in the Cathedral was built in the 14th century, and this one was built in 1843. There is SO much going on here. At solar noon the 12 apostles proceed past Christ, the automaton cock crows three times, several complex algorithms are applied to correct for complexities such as Earth’s elliptical orbit, ecllipses are calculated, once a day a new figure appears representing the day of the week (today was Jupiter for Jeudi), an orrery runs, and once a year this thing computes when Easter will be, a very complex determination. The story of who built it and how is amazing; google for more info.

We had some time to kill before the train ride to Marseille, so we rented a little boat out of Petite France in Strasbourg. Here’s Cap’n Griff and me, with Sue taking the photo while spotting the water skier we’re towing. Good times!

Tough day today, super hot and our rental car’s AC was shot. So we switched to another one which we finally figured out how to use. The upshot was we decided to skip our foray to the Provence lavender fields as they were possibly all harvested due to the hot weather anyway. It was nice seeing the Mediterranean for our first time. Then once settled in here in Nice I screwed up our Paris room booking, which had been all set. With the Tour de France and all it seemed to be impossible to rebook. All was well that ended well as we came out with better rooms than we started out with. But we’re here in Nice for a few days so look for some Côté d’Azur photos coming up. Here’s our first from the Route des Crêtes.

Nice!

View of Nice from the Parc de la Colline du Château, with the Maritime Alps in the distance

We had a beautiful and brilliant (though hot) walk up the medieval village of Èze today, many thanks to Alana Stilla! But today’s photo is the Statue of Apollo, the Greek god of music, poetry and art. It was unveiled in 1956, but the League of Feminine Virtue was aghast, so it was moved elsewhere. By 2011 the people of Nice were more accepting and it has been up since then. I’m sure it was the four horses on Apollo’s head that caused the controversy.

Marseille was a layover town on the way to Nice and now again on our way to Paris. It is a working port and not particularly touristy. Our walk down to the Panier was quite gritty and interesting. Shops we passed were mostly for locals. There are many different cultures here and some even speak Provençal (a dialect of Occitan). We squeezed off a few street scenes, of which this is one. I call it Cat in the Shade at the Bazar du Panier.

Yesterday was 40° in Paris, so it’s fortunate that it was only 22° when we arrived today. I’m sure you would greatly appreciate seeing yet another Eiffel Tower shot, but instead here’s our first time viewing the Seine.

The view from our room here at the Hôtel de l’Empereur. That is not the Eiffel Tower, but it is the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides (House of the disabled), completed in 1706. It is a massive complex “containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the building's original purpose,” per Wikipedia. The gold plate on the dome, were it melted down, is currently worth $560,000 US. So not quite a million dollar view.

We went for the Kandinsky’s but everything about Le Centre Pompidou is quite striking, even the storage lockers. Green means available while red is in use. Still no Eiffel Tower photo despite all the clamouring.

Today we bade farewell to Griffin, who is en route home after three weeks with us here. We then strolled around Montmartre, where this shot of the Maison Rose was taken. We also had a nice cruise on the Seine (thanks Candace), and a failed trip to Pére Lachaise cemetery (closed—we will return tomorrow). No Eiffel though.

We made it to the sprawling Père Lachaise Cemetery today, the most visited cemetery in the world. We saw the tombs of Fred Chopin, Sarah Bernhardt, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, Mano Solo, and of course Jim Morrison. But there can only be one photo and it will be of these cyclists who prevented us from reaching the Eiffel Tower. The guy in yellow seems to be struggling to keep up.

Today we stumbled upon a beautiful tour of the Paris Opera building, a.k.a. the Palais Garnier. We were looking for the library, but we didn’t have a library card, so we shrugged and went where others seemed to be going. It was a true highlight. It is impossible to identify a best photo, but this one from the Grand Foyer is nice.

Breakthrough on the night before we head for Normandy. We finally saw the Eiffel Tower! Between our cover shot, this one, and the next two, which one do you like the most?

Turns out there are Eiffel Towers everywhere!

My personal favourite?

We rented a car today in Paris to drive to Bayeux here in Normandy, and Google Maps decided we needed to drive around the traffic circle at the Arc de Triomphe. Sue managed to take this one as we entered. Traffic wasn’t nearly as busy as it can be: we didn’t even get honked at.

Today was our day trip to Le Mont-Saint-Michel, and that means we will need a view of the mountain island and the Benedictine abbey on top of it. I took this from a salt-meadow polder. Lambs grazing here are said to be quite tasty. The tidal flats are huge and as the tide goes up or down it can flow quickly, which made the Abbey highly defendable. That said, the island was overrun during the French Revolution and it became a prison until 1863. The Abbey was reestablished in the 1960s. The population of the island is 31—likely all monks—but you wouldn’t know it with the crowds; 3 million people visit every year

Sainte-Mére-Église, featured in The Longest Day. On D-Day an American paratrooper hung up on one of these corner steeples and was shot by the Germans. So the town leaves a dummy up for the tourists (i.e. us).

Yesterday we toured the D-Day beaches, and today we stumbled upon the Pegasus Bridge on the way to Étretat. Thanks to Glen for recommending I watch The Longest Day before seeing Normandy—it really brought these places alive. Étretat was spectacular—see the Manneport Arch here—and Honfleur was beautiful this evening. Tomorrow we have One Night in Paris before the flight home!

I recalled Mike and Joanne had similarly found themselves on this street a decade back, so I recreated their photo. As featured on One Shot a Day, here I am at 42 Rue Saint-Jacques. The reference is to Une Nuit a Paris by 10cc in which they, for meter reasons, refer to it as 42 (quarante-deux) Rue de Saint-Jacques. I had the tune in my head every day of the vacation, in part because the bicycle bells sound kind of like the entry bell at the fictional (?) bordello here. Photo by Sue.