You Are Here

I know that guidebooks are useful, we really can't do without them, but at the same time they can be so frustrating: if they are big and clunky, badly written, or have no pictures. I also often find that the details featured in many guide books are not the things I am interested in. Because of this I like guides that are very basic, ones that give you addresses and the barest facts and leave you to do the rest. I also have a weakness for pictures, diagrams, and illustrations. The guides that fit the bill are Eyewitness Guides by DK and Knopf Guides. An auxiliary guide can be useful for cross reference but I try to do research ahead of time (on the plane, in the hotel in the morning) so that I don't have to carry to more than one book around all day. Knopf has come out with a line of City Maps that make this even easier. The Knopf Citymaps are really useful little books. The city center is broken up into quadrants laid out on easy-to-read fold-out pages, on the back of which are listed site-seeing, shopping and restaurant highlights. Knopf Guides have great design that makes the information clear while presenting it in an attractive way. The book itself is about 6" x 7" and 1/2" thick and slips easily into a bag or purse, it also avoids looking overtly map-like so you can keep your touristy-ness to a minimum. I carried my Paris Citymap everywhere and it never let me down, it even led me to few sights that weren't mentioned in my guidebook. It is no good though if you are looking to explore the far flung suburbs of a city, that's where the trusty old guidebook comes in!

While You Were Sleeping...

Oops, I fell off the blog-wagon for a couple of weeks! Summer scheduling got in the way for a while but I am going to try to be more vigilant from now on... First things first, from now on my boyfriend will be known as Tenzig Norgay after the ultimate unsung travel companion, I am tired of trying to think of new interesting alternative ways of saying boyfriend. I also imagine that Tenzig was sometimes tired of carrying Edmund Hillary's crap all the way up Everest, and maybe he even wished he was home in bed instead of heading up to the roof of the world. After a long day of sightseeing and walking I know that my Tenzig is eager to get back to the hotel for a nap and some relaxation before dinner or whatever night-time plans we might have. It is fitting then that this post begins with a nap. After we got back from Notre Dame we finally got the keys to our hotel room and Tenzig declared it was nap-time. after a shower, to get rid of the rime of airplane scum still clinging to my hair and skin, I layed down with him. I couldn't sleep though. Our window opened onto the hotel courtyard and the air gently jostled the curtains and kept me from nodding off. I felt too excited to be in Paris, a place I had heard so much about but had never been to before. So, I got up and checked the guidebook, there was a church that looked pretty close-by the hotel so I went to take a look. I was delighted to find that close-by meant less than five minutes away (I didn't have a sense of what the scale of the city was yet, luckily the center is more like Rome in size rather than New York). The church was Saint-Eustache and it turned out to be my favorite church in Paris.


First of all, there was nobody there. No big crowds, the sweeping aisles were bathed in light with only a smattering of people wandering about. Second, it seems like it has been badly neglected and restoration has only recently gotten underway on both the inside and the ornate gothic exterior. Many of the vaults still show water damage and are blackened by centuries old soot. In some areas, the restoration is creeping in on the grime, backing it into a corner or a small chapel.


There are some famous people buried there: Moliere, Richelieu and the Madame de Pompadour and it has a beautiful organ and incredible carved wooden details. Light streaming in through the clerestory windows made the stone piers and vaults seem weightless, and made me aware of my own human scale. Most of all it really felt like a place of solitude and contemplation, undisturbed by crowds site seeing because they feel they have to.

A Brand New Plaid

I saw this bag in the June issue of Vogue in a section about the travel favorites of "fashion's most fabulous faces". I thought this suitcase, the Wheelie Cargo from Burton, stole the show. I love the plaid, and it looks like you could really fill it up with loot from far and away. It's the right size, it's expandable and then some and has a shoe garage and a removable toiletry bag. I'm sold. Especially since my Samsonite that I have had for the last 7 years has been taken over by my cat and now sports a sexy layer of cat hair. Reclaiming it seems unlikely, I may have to give it up to its fate and start fresh with something fresh and plaid.

Nous Sommes Arivee

My most recent big trip was in October, last year, when my boyfriend took me to Paris. He was going for work, so he bought me a ticket and once again I tagged along. I hadn't traveled in a group in a long time, I had really gotten used to solitude on the airplane. My high school was an International school in Europe and we took several trips a year in groups of about twenty kids. Flying with the company to Paris reminded me of those days. Looking out for those most likely to be late or disoriented, switching seats on the plane until everyone is where they want to be, basically traveling in a herd. Apart from some ticket trouble at the airport (the Delta terminal at JFK is like being in hell) we all arrived without a hitch at Charles de Gaulle. As soon as we got there I felt happy to be back in Europe, I get a special feeling from the design of the cars and buses, the small lanes on the highway and the different symbols on traffic signs. After the busride from the airport we got into the hotel at about noon. We were staying in Les Halles at the Citadines, a mediocre apart-hotel with small rooms and concentration camp beds. Even though they were expecting us, our rooms were not ready (for 2 hours!), so instead of settling in and cleaning up we had to stow our bags in a room off the lobby and kill time until the rooms were ready. My companion and I decided to stroll across the river to the Isle de la Cite and have a look at Notre Dame. He had been to Paris before, but I had not so I had a long list of things to see and he was looking forward to daily forced marches as I tried to pack everything in to one week. The day was clear and beautiful (we only had one or two gray days), and even though I felt icky from the airplane, it was breath-taking to be walking along the Seine in the sunshine.


We joined the river of people filing into the church while gargoyles and stone bishops looking down on us. The colossal doors funneled us into the gargantuan stone space pierced with the colored light streaming through the stained glass windows and the soft glow of offering candles. I lit a candle for my grandmother and grandfather, something I always do in a Catholic church even though I don't practice, my grandmother did so I think she would appreciate it.


My favorite thing about the insides of all of these old churches are the small details: hand painted detailing on fluted columns, filigreed iron work overlaid on the doors and carvings covering every spare inch of space, the faces looking down over the ages on the slow moving crowd of visitors.




As we flowed out the door after our circuit of the church, the organ began to fill the church with music. The space spread the sound to all the corners, magically settling it over our heads. We took a turn outside along the water, and took a closer look at the gargoyles before heading back to the hotel for a nap.