Visiting Reims

The highlight of my visit to Champagne was, of course, the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Reims. It is an overwhelmingly ornate gothic cathedral, highly influenced by Notre Dame de Paris, which was built just slightly earlier. I have decided that gothic cathedrals have to be some of the most difficult subjects to photograph. From the outside, it's difficult to capture the size of the building while retaining the details of the sculptures, all of which tell stories. On the inside, it's usually dark and the aspect ratios of the features are not camera-friendly. So, for the whole story, you really need to look at the website of the cathedral. If you read French, there is a ton of historical information, and if you don't, just click on Voir tous les albums photos at the bottom of the page.

One of the distinctive features of the cathedral is the set of tympani above the entrances. Usually, these are carved in stone, but in Reims they are stained glass. In my photo, you can see that the cleaning of part of the cathedral has just been finished. Like other gothic cathedrals, the stone was originally painted in vivid colors, to gild the lily.



Of course, thanks to fire and wars, most of the statues were severely damaged or lost, so the current statues are replicas, while the originals rest in the neighboring Museum of the Palais du Tau. The most recent destruction of the cathedral was during WWII, and this site was then chosen for the celebration of reconciliation between the French and the German governments, in 1962.

One of the sculptures, called the Ange au Sourire (Angle of the Smile) is considered a uniquely beautiful example of medieval art. I suppose the sculpture does have a fluid quality not usually seen in statues of saints posed like wooden soldiers. The parish's website even gives a prayer suggested for meditating while contemplating this angel:



My translation of the prayer originally by Jean-Marie Guerlin:
You, the Angel of the Smile, messenger of God, the stone-cutters knew quite well how to express on your face the very smile of God, to tell to all who contemplate it, how much God loves them, how much he is close to them! You, the Angel of the Smile, have braved all the destruction to be, among us, a sign of joyous hope and tenacity, of reconciliation among people.

Destruction of religious art seems to be a recurring theme as I visit the cities of France, and one cannot help but be sad when one imagines all the beauty that is lost to the world through violence. I guess it helps to put a hopeful spin on things, that they might change and we might not have to repeat the cycle ad infinitum.

There is a lot more history in Reims, because it was a pretty major Gallo-Roman city, and in fact the first cathedral on the site of Notre Dame de Reims dates back to the fifth century! Hopefully I'll get a chance to go back and see the museums, and drink more champagne!

For lunch, I do recommend the Brasserie du Boulingrin, 48 rue de Mars, +33(0)3 2640 9622. On that site(a bit off the tourist track) since 1925, they serve a broad variety classic French brasserie fare, including platters from their oyster/shellfish/lobster bar. My lunch menu was 17.50, for appetizer (warm lentil salad with sausage), main dish (cod brandade wrapped in crispy filo pastry), dessert (hazelnut cake), wine (red, white or rose), and coffee. The restaurant seemed very popular, and not only with travelers.

Tasting at G.H. Martel in Champagne

The CIJP organized a day trip to Champagne last weekend, which included a visit to the winecellars of a champagne producer, G.H. Martel, in Reims. Unfortunately, it's not where any of the processing goes on anymore, since they moved to accommodate increased production volume. There are lots of similar caves in Reims, a short distance from the city center.



The Champagne-Ardenne region is the most northerly wine-growing region of France, and one important role of the caves is indeed to maintain the humidity (90%!) and temperature of the wine. It feels quite chilly down there, even more than above ground, because of the damp air.



The Methode Champenoise process for making sparkling wine is very involved and costly , since no machinery is allowed in picking the grapes, the juice must be extracted very carefully to keep from tinting it with the skins of the pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes, the stored bottles must be turned (sometimes by hand) regularly and because the carbonation requires a second fermentation. Of course, for a long time, producers have tried to adapt technology for making the process more efficient. Now there are machines to turn the bottles and, even more bizarrely, the yeast is removed after the first fermentation by turning the bottle upside down to collect it in the neck of the bottle, freezing the neck, and opening the bottle to make the plug of solids pop out. This process is not done at the degustation site, but they show visitors a video of it. The older gadgets looked a little like torture machines at first glance.



The caves in Champagne are dug out of very chalky stone, so soft that a fine powder rubs off on your fingers if you touch it. This place where the stone was chipped away scarily made me think of the faces of the Nome king and his monsters that swim through stone in the movie Return to Oz.



After the tour, there was the tasting, of course! It may seem strange that we started with the Grand Cru, but it had a classic fine brut champagne flavor, while the following champagnes, a millesime (made with juice from only one year's harvest), a demi-sec (slightly more sugar), and a rose, were variations from what most people think of in champagne.



If you're interested in visiting, G.H. Martel has various locations listed on their website, including the cave we went to located at 17 rue des Créneaux, in Reims, and their telephone number is +33(0)3 2682 7067.

Nearby is the Basilique St. Remi, where the bishop who baptised the first Catholic king of France (on Christmas eve in 496) is entombed. Sorry, my picture turned out blurry and dark because of the dim lighting.

Oh Canada!

I laughed when I saw this cover on a guidebook in the Paris airport. The French-Canadians must love their image. But those pancakes do look good...

St. Vincent's Cathedral in St. Malo

Here are some pictures I took at the main cathedral in St. Malo, which is the Cathedral of St. Vincent. Because of the bombardment during the war, the spire is a modern reconstruction of what used to be a neogothic spire and the interior stained glass is also modern. St. Malo is the birthplace of Jacques Cartier, the explorer who attempted to find a route to the Indies by sailing through North America, but instead found the St. Lawrence Seaway and cleared the path for French colonies in what is now Canada. There is a stained glass window showing Cartier kneeling to receive the bishops blessing before his journey, and a plaque on the floor indicating the exact place where he knelt. Cartier is also entombed there, but my Lonely Planet guide revealed that all they could find after the bombing was the head of the body. The last picture below is of a photo that shows the condition of the cathedral in 1944.

Mont St. Michel

On Saturday, I embarked on a weekend trip with the Club International des Jeunes a Paris, which turned out to be a fantastic time. First, we visited Mont St. Michel, an abbey on the Normandy coast. The abbey is built on a rock, separated from the mainland by tidal sea meadows. It is the most popular tourist attraction in France, outside Paris and Eurodisneyland, and there were certainly plenty of tourists in attendance, despite the rain. The second picture shows me in the cloister, a place where the Benedictine monks could go to be alone and meditate, designed to reflect the garden of Eden. I was warmed up by my lunch of classic Breton galette (with wild mushrooms and thick cut bacon) and a bolee of cidre brut (Breton hard cider served from a keg).

St. Malo

On Sunday, I visited St. Malo, in Brittany. It is an old city whose name is derived from St. Maclow, a Welsh monk who came to the island in the middle ages and began converting the people to Christianity. Because of its location on the coast, it is a prominent port and has a significant military history, beginning with the conflicts with the English and Dutch sailors, and more recently being occupied and subsequently bombarded by the Germans during WWII. After the destruction in the 1940's, St. Malo was beautifully restored and retains a lot of charm within the walls of the old city. The first picutre is what the view along the coast towards St. Malo was like during the morning, near high tide. The next two are some pictures from later in the day, when the tide was low and the sun was shining. The last one is of me, sitting on the ramparts overlooking the sea.
  

La Barque

There is a style of sailboat, perhaps a bit old-fashioned, which was at one time quite common on Lac Léman, called a 'barque.' As you can see from the photo, each mast is crossed at an angle by another mast which holds the sail and can be tilted to adjust for different wind conditions. They're beautiful boats, and occasionally some people hire them for short pleasure cruises on the lake. Unfortunately this one did not have its sails out. There are some models in the Musée des barques et traditions du Léman, with photos online.

This picture was taken by Jean-Claude Brosse.

Lac Léman Part 4

How could I spend a weekend in the Alps without eating fondue? Cheese fondue is indeed called Fondue Savoyarde because the cheeses that are the best to use come from that region. Compared to what I have had in Paris, the cheese was more flavorful and there was more pepper in this one --it was definitely more tasty.
  

Lac Leman Part 2

While I was in the Haute Savoie, which is the department where Evian is located, it was difficult to decide to plan a hike, because of the threat of rain. The threat was not that it might rain, but in fact that the rain might never stop. Thanks to polymer science, everyone could put on rain jackets and so we did take a little walk in Switzerland. On the way down to the shore from the mountains we met some nice sheep being delivered to a farm.

What I didn't know before is that Switzerland is in fact not part of the European Union and that they also use their own currency instead of the Euro. It was all the more disappointing, then, that when we crossed the border they barely even looked at us, and they certainly didn't put a stamp in my passport. I could have asked for one, I suppose. I didn't want to stir up any trouble.
The Swiss are known (by the French) for doing things slowly and without a lot of agitation. This could be cultural or genetic, but we also discussed that it might be due to the fact that it is legal in Switzerland to grow cannabis as long as you make it into a tea rather than smoking it.
Despite the clouds and precipitation, there were some nice views across the lake. All of these pictures were taken by Jean-Claude Brosse, because unfortunately mine are lost in cyberspace.

Lac Leman Part 1

Last week, I had to admit defeat in my effort to make plans to leave Paris for the long weekend, but fortunately a labmate saved me by inviting me to spend the weekend with her family, an invitation which I happily accepted. Of course, Paris has Paris-Plage and all the museums, but when half of the town is out of town, one feels like one must be missing something. So I, being one of the luckiest people on the planet, spent the weekend on the shores of Lac Leman, often known to English speakers as Lake Geneva, in the Alps. It was really great. The photo below, taken by my labmate's father, shows the lake and the villages of Thonon (the part which sticks out into the lake) and Evian (the part where it looks like someone took a bite out of the coastline is the harbor.) Evian is the source of the famous bottled water, and receives money from each sold, so they have a cute lakefront garden walk. They were also having a festival of mechanical street organs while we were there. My pictures from Evian got lost in cyberspace somehow, so you'll have to trust me. I'll keep on posting pictures from my trip in the coming days.

Parc Asterix

A couple weeks ago, when it was still hot an sunny but starting to cool down, I went to Parc Asterix with a couple friends from the lab. It is a theme park based on some comic book characters called Asterix and Obelix. The stories are set in 50 BC and they tell the tales of these two warriors as the travel throughout Europe and North Africa, revealing a lot of tongue-in-cheek caricatures of cultural stereotypes. The humor is typically French, but has found a broad audience through translation into Spanish, Italian, and, to a very limited extent, English. In fact, Disney bought the rights to distribution of a few of the Asterix and Obelix movies, but I think it will take a genius to make French humor translatable to Americans, who have a whole different set of stereotypes about Europeans. Anyway, I had a really fun day, even though I wasn't converted into being a fan of the characters. The most fun parts were 1. Spending time with my friends, 2. The roller coaster, although reminded me that I'm getting old because I didn't seem to enjoy it as much as I did when I was a teenager, and 3. The Dolphin Show, because dolphins are so beautiful, although of course I don't feel good about dolphins in captivity.

Etretat

Last weekend I finally escaped Paris by going to Etretat, a coastal town in Normandy famous for its white cliffs. When we (myself, a colleague Cécile, and her friend Florence) arrived it was raining and even chilly, a typical occurrence in Normandy, I'm told. It's difficult to capture the feeling of Etretat in a photo, but I tried. When Claude Monet went there, he tried too. In the photo, you might be able to see that there is a memorial, shaped kind of like a wing stuck into the ground, next to the church, marking the point from which a couple of early aviators could be seen in their failed attempt to cross the channel to England.The town is nestled between the cliffs, and the beach consists of pebbles rather than sand. There are trails all along the cliffs, and also a golf course. After had a dinner of mussels and fries accompanied by a sunset in Etretat, we went to a neighboring town, Yport (pronounced ee-pore), where we had a campsite. Yport was hosting some sort of Russian dancing and singing group, performing on a stage next to the beach, and they were actually pretty impressive. That was followed by fireworks set to the music of Mozart, similar to the Bastille Day fireworks in Paris.
We went hiking again the next day, which was completely sunny.

Update - June

The season of travel seems to have taken me sort of by surprise, so I haven’t been updating my blog as well as I probably should have. I finally bought a decent digital camera, though, so I should be putting up some more pictures soon. My sister has a fantastic camera, which she used when she visited me for a week. We ate so much cheese that week that I hardly feel like touching the stuff now! And I live in France! After my sister visited I went to the US for a week, which was pretty relaxing, except for having my former Ph.D. advisor suggest that I become a high school teacher. Not only is it not what I’m interested in, but I’d have to go back to school to get my certification! Ugh, depressing.

On a brighter note, my dad is visiting me for a week, and it seems like he is really getting a feeling of Paris life. I found a tiny hotel for him, for 35 euros per night, not far from where I live. The room doesn’t have a toilet, but it does have a shower, and for any cheaper you’d probably have to go to a youth hostel. It’s close to bus and metro, on the southern edge of Paris. In case anybody is interested, it’s Hotel Montsouris-Orleans, 35 rue Beaunier, 75014. Tomorrow, my dad starts a self-guided trip to Italy for a couple weeks, and then he is going to Copenhagen to join an Elderhostel tour of Scandinavia. Altogether, he’s rambling around Europe for six weeks (he started out in Amsterdam). I’m so impressed by his sense of adventure – he doesn’t plan on finding a hotel in Rome until he gets there!

Myself, I took a trip to Barcelona in April. It was fantastic. The most impressive two things were the architecture by Gaudi and the pride of the Catalan people. In a close third is the impressively late dinners of the Spanish people. We never started before 10 or finished before midnight! Here is a picture from the roof of the Gaudi building called La Pedrera, with his unfinished Sagrada Familia Cathedral in the background.

I made a trip to Barcelona for a three-day weekend, which was great! There is a lot of stunning modern architecture and also quite historic buildings. There is a monument to Christopher Columbus and a plaque in the cathedral by the baptismal font where the native Americans he broght back with him were baptised. The pictures below are from my trip.

The Placa Catalunya, a huge square in the center of Barcelona, bordered by shopping centers and a bank building, located at the head of Las Ramblas, which used to be a canal but is now the main pedestrian mall.


On Las Ramblas you have a lot of tourists, so there are plenty of people trying to make a buck. Some get pretty creative and attract the attention of television cameras. This guy was giving an interview in horse-neighs. On the right, you can just see Che Guevara looking on.


La Pedrera, a Gaudi masterpiece



It is said that if you drink from this fountain on Las Ramblas, you are fated to return to Barcelona. I hope so!