Amsterdam

The Bloemgracht (Flower) Canal from our room at Hotel Onna.

Viewed from our hotel window, this is the bell tower that chimed every quarter,
half and on the hour, as well as playing little tunes, 24/7.  Sleep finally came
with earplugs. Still, it was a lovely location.

Amsterdam is a paradise for cyclists. Bikes have precedence – motor vehicles and often pedestrians give way to cyclists, and there are dedicated cycle ways everywhere. Motor vehicles in the city drive very slowly. Some even criticise cyclists saying they are too aggressive with pedestrians.

One of the series, "doors for Tararua Drive".

Mid-summer in Amsterdam is very civilised – canals, boats, eating and drinking by the water. 

Amsterdam graffiti.

My restaurant

As above: mid summer Amsterdam.

Plenty of cats in Amsterdam – above, at a street cafe and
another waiting for its human in our street, and left, in the
garden of the Museum of Bags and Purses (yes, it exists!)

With Daggi and Rolf in Cologne

              

Beautiful house and garden.

Daggi, Liane, Katrin, Rolf and Heather, dinner outside on a warm evening in Cologne.

Barbecue with Daggi and Rolf.

Cologne Cathedral – started in 1278!

Feline is good prospect for the Euro 2012 final.

Ripping down the autobahn at 140 kph, Mercs passing us at twice that speed, while the
Rolling Stones howl out Gimme Shelter!

Performance art – Euro 2012 put firmly in its place.

Quiet coffee in Bonn old town.

Peace outside Cologne.

The flash Paris-Cologne train – Thalys – took about three and a quarter hours traveling at 180 kph. Interesting views of the French, Belgian and the German countryside, but where are the animals? For all the agneau, boeuf and chevre on Parisian menus, hardly an animal to be seen.

The long, curving platform at Koln HBF (Cologne main station) disappeared far into the distance but from out of the sunset appeared a running, yelling figure with arms wide – it was Rolf last seen at Fairview over 30 years ago.  He and Daggi, who we met later at their lovely house, are like us, much the same only older. They live in the country, 20 minutes from Cologne and are wonderfully welcoming. The house was converted from an old half-ruined cottage and a barn, designed by architect Daggi and built by Rolf and friends. Later we met Liane and Katrin, twins born a few months before Sam.

Rolf is a respected performance artist in Germany and Daggi is an independent architect.  One evening Rolf took us to a performance of a group of artists that he organizes. On the way we picked up another artist, Beate with flaming red hair. She had props such as a naked mattress (springs only), a huge blow-up seat thing like a soccer ball, and two thigh-high prosthetic legs. Loading a small car with the props plus now four of us was obviously a problem and we offered to take the train back to Cologne. Rolf refused and we bent and squashed springs, snapped legs, and wobbled off. Beate asked for some calming music. So while the Stones sneered out Gimme Shelter at impossible decibels we roared down the autobahn at 140 kph while Mercs and BMWs passed us as if we were standing still. It was a bit surreal. H is a timid backseat driver (this is not true!! Blogger's wife) who does the peddle movements if she’s a passenger so I asked her if she was scared. She said she wasn’t and calmly looked out the window at the occasional nuclear power station. 

Lunch in front of Cologne Cathedral.

Daggi's strawberry tarts.

We got to Bonn at 4pm so H and I went for a walk into the old town for a coffee etc and we got lost, well I got lost; H unerringly navigated us home. I can’t do it any more. Later we watched the performances including Beate’s which included she belting the huge soccer ball around with a latex penis, showing Euro 2012 and all male sport 'what for'.

Went to the supermarket with Rolf. He sprinted ahead and lobbed groceries back into the trolley pushed by me. Fun!! Incidentally, it was stunningly cheap and made me realize what a high-cost place NZ is. Fruit, veg, wine, cheese, butter and bread is mostly all cheaper. Maybe it’s the buying power of over 80 million Germans.

Au revoir Paris

First French chat – in Pere Lachaise cemetery.
Plenty of chiens (mostly silly little ones) but
no chats. Where are they?

Big Meccano set.

We'll always have Paris darling…

Hi folks - I know you're hanging out for the next installment (ha ha!!) but erratic internet has prevented it until now!! 

We said a sad au revoir to Paris today, though we are all tuckered out from heavy touring. By the end of the afternoon and yet another metro ride it felt like it was time to put our feet up for a while.

We have had Mark showing us round for the last few days which has been lovely. We made it through the extensive queues at Musee d’Orsay (though they are miniscule compared to the Louvre) to wander through this huge and beautiful, airy and bright space. H and I were tired but the gentle radiance of the place brightened us up. We saw several Van Gogh, and 'Gaughan in Polynesie' and other post-impressionists.

The Eiffel Tower is astonishing closeup, so big and so much like a massive Meccano construction.  We picked our way through mega, mega queues, tricksters with pretend petitions, and girls with gold rings just found by chance and needing a small € contribution, and wandered the Champ de Mars, a vast green space in front of the  Eiffel Tower, yet another restful garden.  Paris is gardens, flowers, greenery: even in the meanest of areas you can turn a corner to come upon a leafy idyll, with roses, jasmine, neat paths and seats – though the grass is often INTERDIT!!  

Abandoning the Eiffel Tower we followed Steven and Grace King’s advice (for the second time – they suggested the Musee d’Orsay was a better bet than the Louvre, vis à vis the art as well as ease of access), and took off for the Tour Montparnasse, a two hundred metre office block – one of the few big tower blocks in Paris. We shot quickly to the top in a very crowded lift to see a panorama of Paris that included the Eiffel Tower. We had lots of fun up there for 45 minutes with just a little vertigo while Mark competed with all-comers on the length of his long lens.

Views from on top of Tour Montparnasse

H fighting vertigo.

Mark and his long lens.

One of several memorials to French Resistance fighters spotted around town.
This one with recent bouquet.

Cows might fly… H in a park near our canal-side home.

Heather in Jardin des Plants.

Plaque on the wall of a
primary school near
our place.

We have had seven days in Paris now, less if you take out the first day which was spent in a haze and daze of recovery from thirteen hours 'no-sleep'.  We have joined the other millions of tourists visiting famous hotspots: Notre Dame, Tuilleries, Champ d'Elyssee, Arc de Triomphe, the Marais, and today Sacre Coeur and Montmartre. The place is so impossibly beautiful that it's almost too much. Every time you turn a corner there is another stunning vista, another artfully created avenue of trees receding gorgeously into the distance, another outrageously ornate facade. Because of the plan by Baron Haussmann in the nineteenth century most of the buildings are only about six or seven floors high – very civilised, many have window boxes, and they are topped with row after row of chimney pots. Montmartre where we were today has pretty cobbled lanes, too narrow for motor vehicles, (but French drivers still inch their way in) and steep sets of steps including, of course, the 'Amelie' steps à la Audret Tatou, which sweep up to the stupendous building at the top of the hill - Sacre Coeur which surprisingly was not started until 1875 (only surprising because everything else seems to be at least seven or eight hundred years old). But everywhere the tourists kind of eating the goodies they have come to see.  We too, though of course we are a better class of tourist.


Mark arrived yesterday which was great. It was lovely to see him and not only because he has been here five or six times so knows it quite well. We went to a restaurant called Les Elles in Rue Ferdinand Duval where his abode is, sort of French Vietnamese 'fusion' which was great. A very personable and out-there maitre de was pleased to see us and to learn from where we came though her demeanour changed when Mark said he ate kangaroo. She was scandalised despite Mark saying there were 60 million of them and they were a pest. She said her son cuddled a fluffy kangaroo when going to sleep.  We responded with force-feeding geese and viande de cheval but to no avail. Later the chef, Christine, came out and did a very presentable haka and said "All Blacks", before kissing us on both cheeks.

H in the middle of mock orange.

It is spring and everywhere is fragrant. Heather has had her head in mock orange bushes in several places and her jacket is stained with yellow pollen from it. There's also a type of jasmin with few flowers but overpowering scent and it is everywhere. Elder is also in abundance and is just finishing flowering - think of all the elderflower champagne! We went to the Jardin de Plants which was a blast with every conceivable growing thing you could think of including hebes and pittosorum. There was also a 'menagerie', strangely old-fashioned, but they did have snakes - pythons, boa constrictors etc which was a blast. There were lots of school groups and once again I had to pinch myself when I thought "isn't it impressive how well those kids are speaking French!"

Notre Dame from the Seine.

Greenery on houseboat.

The compleat tourist!

There is music everywhere, in the Metro, on the streets. Last night we heard a great jazz band in the square in Montmartre, called the 'Riverside Shufflers'. Sometimes on the Metro you have to walk miles through tunnels to change lines and as the strains of a Basque band fades away, around the corner you hear classical guitar, then an accordion and so on. They even play on board the trains, today we saw a trumpeter and then a flugelhorn (perhaps?). There are also many beggars including one just around the corner from our boulanger which is a bit guilt making. She sits on the footpath leaning against the breadmaker's wall. She is maybe North African, about thirty and looks at you with sad eyes. Heather has got to know her by giving frequently and she smiles at us now.


I can't get over the Paris street life. It's Thursday night. We have just had dinner with Mark in his flat on Rue Ferdinand Duval in a Jewish area on the edge of the Marais district. We went shopping for dinner at 6.30pm and there were people everywhere: in the cafes, on the street, chatting in squares. I went out again an hour or so later to get an onion that Mark had forgotten and it was still roaring. Now we have just come home on the Metro around 10pm, it is still light, the cafes are still full and people are chatting in that very intense French way and having fun. The metro was crowded and friendly and felt completely safe. Teenage girls even stood up to give us their seats. Ah Paris!!

The Riverside Shufflers.

Trumpeter on the Metro.

Gold USB drives in jewellery shop.

153 Quai de Valmy

Three floors up and no elevator…

Third floor.

Heather has already talked on Facebook about the flight from Singapore to Paris. The crew weren't as friendly as on previous flight but the A380 has thousands more passengers than the Boeing 777 so is understandable. The journey from Aeroport Charles de Gaulle was a bit stressful after almost no sleep for 15 hours. We caught a train to Gare du Nord then walked to 153 Quai de Valmy, but Gare du Nord is huge and just getting out of it was difficult enough. Then had to negotiate the streets round and about. It's amazing how difficult it is to navigate strange streets despite having a map. Finally, with the help of kind strangers, and being careful not to step in too much dog shit, we finally turned the corner of Rue Eugène Varlin by the boulangerie and there a few metres away was 153!! The apartment is gorgeous, three floors up a spiral, polished wood stairway, kind of Amelie style. Over the road is Canal St Martin where the locks empty and fill through the day as tourist boats and houseboats with little forests in pots on their sterns head up the Seine. We could sit and watch it all day if we weren't busy tourists!

Heather has already used most of the good jokes on Facebook. She is bold with speaking French where I am a bit diffident. She jumps in with a mix of half-remembered vocab from school, years of exposure to the Franglais of English comedians, a lot of imagination, exposure to lots of French movies and a big smile – and it works!

Just looking of course - Boulangerie to die for! 

Quai de Valmy is in the 10th Arrondisement and there are few tourists around – lots of old people walking dogs, many children and families and 'Bobos' (bourgeois bohemians).  It used to be a working class area but is going upmarket so there are restaurants and cafes at every turn, plus the amazing patisserie and boulangerie three steps from our door and several more in adjacent streets. Yesterday we walked for miles and miles including up the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe and down again, where there were vast hordes of tourists of all shapes, ages, ethnicity, draped with cameras, hungrily searching for tourist nirvana (not like us!) It was exhausting and we both found the the torrent of humanity overwhelming.  When we got out of the Metro at our station – Chateau Landon – it was like coming home to a quiet friendly place.

Jardin des Tuilleries.

Early Saturday morning near our place.

Moody early summer days - lots of sudden rain storms.

Heather spies her new suitcase…

The French are amazing and I really like them. They seem to live in their own Francophile universe more or less oblivious to the outside world. Graham Ross said the French don't give a f--- and I think that's maybe what he meant. Such a powerful culture. And they are all fagging away, girls,mothers with babies,  the old and businessmen. Haven't they heard that it's bad for you?  But living here, where you see yet another beautiful vista every time you turn the corner, who's going to argue with them?