america, f*** yeah!

Nick and I spent our last 24 hours in London enjoing the Indian food and the Tate Modern. Thanks for the advice, all. To be completely honest, though, London was a bit of a letdown after Paris. Summer in Paris turned Nick and I into horrible city snobs, apparently. I think it'll be a while before Paris's rosy glow wears off and we can learn to love another landscape.

But now I'm back, and it's great! My mom and I went out to the Northern Virginia hinterland to visit the area's sole remaining Roy Rogers yesterday. I scarfed down some fried chicken and an extra large fries, and suddenly the fire of my soul was relit. Mmmm, fried.

Some things about the US have been a bit of a shock, admittedly. Public transit here blows, for example. I miss the Paris Metro. And wow, look at us with the capitalism! Nick and I observed often on our trip that no one in the world gets capitalism like the US. In other countries, shops are closed even when I'm desperate to acquire their goods, and waiters are totally indifferent to my needs. By contrast, in the US when I'd like to acquire a good or service, 99.9% of the time someone has figured out a way to sell it to me. America is all about beating its way to your door with a better mousetrap, and that's awesome. On the other hand, the unrelenting zeal with which Yanks are encouraged to consume is kind of crazy, when you think about it, which you do when you return from a two-month absence. I walked into a Banana Republic yesterday to kill time before meeting a coworker for some drinks, and I had to leave immediately because I almost had a panic attack. I suddenly felt deeply threatened by the borg-like homogenizing power of this season's cute new apple-green silk wrap dresses. Back off, The Man! I need some time to readjust before I can suckle at your teat again. I can't wait to get back to San Francisco, where I'm a total moderate compared to all the other crazy-crunchy-granola-off-the-grid commies.

Before that, though, I've got my road trip through New England with Megan & Ginny. New Englanders, please advise. Alex, I know you'll have wise words to share about Maine. What about Boston? What should be on our to-do list there? And is the Cape or Nantucket worth the detour? I'm sort of tempted to visit the Nantucket airport because that's where the TV show Wings was filmed, so clearly I need ideas for better ways to spend our time, so that Megan is not forced to beat me to death with her bar review books.

king's cross

So, we're on the move again, which means limited internet access. Here's a quick rundown of the last few days.

July 18th - Our last night in Paris. We went back to our favorite steak frites place and reminisced about best parts of the trip so far. (I liked the gypsy caravan, and Nick liked Fete de la Musique.) Then we bought two beers and wandered down to the river. I don't really remember much after that, other than that I insisited at some point that we go to the corner store for another beer run.

July 19 - We woke up in a world of hurt, which was, as Nick pointed out, all my fault. We had to rally, though, because it was our last morning. We bought trois croissants (un for Nick, deux for me, as usual) and walked along the river to the Place des Vosges, where we watched an old man in a track suit do squat exercises among the pigeons. I'm going to miss Paris.

We took the train to Brussels afterwards, and spent the next 24 hours drinking and eating. Street waffles are awesome, by the way. Why hasn't this concept been imported to America yet? Thanks also to Alex for pointing us to a fantastic Belgian friterie.

July 20 - We fly to London and meet up with my cousin Bekah, our host for the evening. At around 11 PM we headed over to the Harry Potter queue party in Piccadilly, and I realized that the problem with going to the best Harry Potter queue party in the whole world is that people started lining up there days in advance. Not only did we not get a book that night, we didn't even manage to walk the whole length of the line, it was so long. It was fun, though, watching the crowds of costumed fans chanting, "HARRY! HARRY! HARRY!" and generally freaking out as the midnight hour approached.

July 21-22 - We bought a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in King's Cross station on our way to meet up with Nick's friends, which I thought was pretty neat, since I mostly know about King's Cross from Harry's adventures there. Nick's friends invited us down Pool, which is apparently known as the British Riviera. It seemed quite nice, although I can't say for sure because I spent the entire weekend inside, reading and not talking to anyone. It was totally rude, but I couldn't help myself. Harry Potter 7 is GREAT.

Tomorrow we're off to enjoy some of England's non-fiction highlights, assuming Nick can tear himself away from HP7. If you've got any London must-sees to recommend, holla!

ossuaries, reliquaries, and epiceries

Our time left in Paris is short, so we spent yesterday dashing through three must-see recommendations from friends that we had left to visit.

We started at The Catacombs, an underground network of tunnels leftover from the Romans' limestone quarries. They were converted into a mass grave in the final years of the French monarchy, because Paris was running out of burial space, and nobody (other than bacteria) likes overflowing graveyards. Monsieur Hericart de Thury, an Inspector General of the Quarries under Napoleon, decided to turn the ossuary into a tourist attraction, and had all the bones restacked in crazy patterns. You can see mosaics in the shape of hearts, crosses, and arches, all made from skulls and femurs and ribs and the like. It's nutty.

Nick and I were really curious as to how Thury decided that the public wanted to see skulls stacked into heart shapes. We paid 5 euros each for the privilege, though, so obviously he was right. We got to talking about what we'd do with the Catacombs if we had Thury's job, and decided we'd bring back the candlelit tours they offered pre-electricity, and also let people pay extra to have the guards jump out from behind corners and scare the bejeezus out of their friends. I have now officially added manager of macabre national monument to my list of potential post-midlife crisis careers. (Other possibilities: owner-manager of a socially responsible bed and breakfast in a small Mexican village, high school science teacher.)

If you ever make it to the Catacombs, be sure to read all the signs, some of which were pretty funny. Instead of warning pregnant ladies and people suffering from heart conditions to stay away, like we do in America, the Catacombs cuts to the chase and declares "weak people" unfit for entry. I also enjoyed the warning that read "The ossuary tour could make a strong impression on children and people of a nervous disposition." I guess I've got a nervous disposition, because walking out the exit into the sunlight and realizing my feet were covered in bone dust definitely made a strong impression on me.

After the Catacombs, we jumped on the train to Chartres to see Europe's best preserved medieval cathedral. It was very pretty. If you go, I highly recommend the tour with Malcolm Miller, an adorable old british scholar who makes his living by rhapsodizing about the cathedral for the tourists. (Read more here.)

Finally, we stopped by Le Bon Marche, reputedly the best grocery store in Paris. My favorite part was the foreign food, which included an American aisle, featuring jars of strawberry marshmallow fluff, and a Tex-Mex aisle with taco shells and root beer. Why root beer? I don't get it, but then this isn't the first time I've noticed that Parisians have a strange conception of Tex-Mex. We once walked by a little girl eating a hamburger with a fried egg on it in a Tex-Mex restaurant on Rue Saint-Germain. I'm sympathetic, though. I live with a Texan, and they're still a mystery to me in many ways. (Why do they all think they have a panhandle, for example? Chimney, maybe. Pot-lid, sure. But that's not a panhandle - THIS is a panhandle.)

Anyway, thanks to everyone who shared their Paris recommendations with us, especially Jason and Stacey. We were lucky to have the advice of two savvy tourists like them.

champagne makes everything delightful

champagne makes everything delightful
Originally uploaded by Ffoggy

Today we went to Champagne and toured the Moët et Chandon cellars. Champagne is one of many of the finer things in life that I'm not that excited about, or at least I wasn't until today. The House of Moët , though, is REALLY good at convincing you that they are awesome, and that you'd be lucky to have a sip of their awesomeness.

For example, they offer you the chance to pay a little extra to taste the vintage champagne, and then when you're walking through their 18 km of cellars on the tour, you see the same vintage champagne you're about to taste on a pedestal, under a spotlight, behind bars. No lie. Also, Jean-Remy Moët was personal friends with Napoleon, which is why all the Moët traditional champagnes say imperial on the label. Apparently every time Napoleon won a big battle, he'd travel to the House of Moët to celebrate with some of their bubbly. How ridiculously awesome is that? Now that I know that, I don't ever want to celebrate anything without a glass of Moët. Also, apparently Louis XV's mistress Madame du Pompadour said that champagne was the only wine that made women who drink it more beautiful. It's true, after three glasses, I felt totally hottttttttt. Who even cares what the champagne tastes like, after a tour like that? (It was pretty good, for the record.)

bastille day

ladies love heavy artillery
Originally uploaded by Ffoggy

Bastille Day was fun. We went to watch the military parade on the Champs-Élysées, and had the good fortune to stumble on the end of the parade where all the regiments (or batallions, or brigades, or whatever -- I have trouble with military vocab) were hanging out and getting back on their busses. They were happy to pose for pictures, and Nick and I entertained ourselves for a while getting shots of me with different kinds of French military hats.

That night we walked to the Champ de Mars to see the fireworks, which turned out to be a LONG way. I was determined to get there in time, so I busted out my best immitation of a NY commuter walk for the three mile trek. Nick was impressed -- he described the pace I set as "grueling," and claimed that if we were playing Oregon Trail our oxen would have died somewhere around Napoleon's Tomb. The fireworks were really nice, and the crowd was fun. They applauded like people do at a rock concert -- clapping and yelling during the interludes, and isolated woooo-ing during particularly awesome moments, like the spiral-shaped sparlky explosions (the firework equivalent of guitar solos).

Bastille Day was great, although dissapointingly free of any angry crowds tearing down buildings in the name of freedom. The whole thing made me miss 4th of July, though. Next year, I am SO flying to the east coast and dragging all ya'll out there into to another incredibly stupid and awesome round of tequila flip cup. Mark your calendars, for reals.

jumping

You may have been wondering, "What's with all the pictures of Anna jumping?" Here's the thing: I recently discovered that jumping is possibly the only thing in the world I do more gracefully than Nick. He's a pretty good athlete, whereas I can't always manage to walk in a straight line without tripping over myself. For some reason, though, I totally school Nick when it comes to freeze-frame pictures of jumping. For example, check out this picture of me jumping in front of Mont Saint Michel:



OK, now look at some pictures of Nick:







The awesome thing is, they're ALL like that. So when we go someplace scenic, I usually suggest that we do some jumping pictures. And then we go and share a beer and laugh while we look at them. And then I spill the beer on Nick's lap.

the last full measure of devotion

On Wednesday we toured the D-Day beaches. The combination of my history degree and Catch 22 had me kind of skeptical about all the Greatest Generation stuff. It's impossible to be a cynic at Normandy, though. Jason, who recently visited, describes pretty much exactly what I felt in his blog post on the subject, so I'll just quote him:

"Visiting Normandy was a great experience. As a California liberal pants-wetter I not only believe that all wars are regrettable but that war-making is something we should be able to transcend as a people. So being at the site of justly-celebrated use of American might made me feel a strange mix of emotions.... I can honestly say that in standing there I felt proud of being American for the first time in as long as I can remember. You're looking at a largely intact piece of German artillery and you know that this was the German Army and not the Nazis who were (you try not to over-dramatize) killing your people and you can't help think to yourself 'Yes, this is good. It's good that this was destroyed. The people who destroyed this were right and I'm proud of them for having done so.'"

Word.

One more note on my visit: as I walked through the American cemetary, lines from the Gettsyburg Address kept popping into my head. I realized that it's not only a kick-ass speech about America, but also a spot-on description of military cemetaries, and what they stand for. Check it:

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

That is SO true -- the overwhelming feeling I had at Normandy (and the Vietnam Wall, and Gettysburg) was that nothing I or anyone else could say or do would be equal to what happened there. So, thanks to Abraham Lincoln and Jason, two of my favorite orators, for expressing my feelings about our fallen soldiers better than I could. Tomorrow, back to our regularly scheduled programming of pictures of me jumping and elaborate descriptions of various foods I've consumed.