March 2014 – Page 2 – robinchartier

This is the end

My last day in Paris. Time to visit the one remaining landmark on my list.

The Arc de Triomphe. Eat your heart out Lance.

It’s in the middle of a huge roundabout and we had to cross several intersections to get to the stairs that lead to the underground tunnel that serves as the entrance.

The tunnel takes you under the street and back up to the base of the Arc. Then everyone climbs almost 400 stairs of a narrow circular staircase to get to the top. Exploring Paris is a great workout.

More great views of the city

Another view of the Eiffel Tower. It’s everywhere you look in Paris. On the right side of the photo you can see the edges of the huge scaffolding that covers about 1/3 of the view from the top. Another winter refurbishment. It’s a definite tradeoff, but coming in the off season meant that we didn’t have to fight lines of crowds to access the various monuments and museums. I’d rather enjoy an obstructed view in peace.

At the top of the Arc is an fun gift shop where I bought a few things including a mug with the Paris metro map on it (I smile every time I look at it) and an adorable children’s book called This Is Paris.

Next we decided to stroll down the Champs de Elysee and work our way back toward the Eiffel Tower. I found myself a Starbucks and ordered a cappuccino for the journey.

Walking along the Seine.

Beautiful walking paths are everywhere

Stopping for a group selfie with the ET in the background

Today was a day for relaxing, leisurely walking, and soaking it all in.

I’ve decided the Eiffel Tower is beautiful from any angle

We go to great lengths to get great shots.

(more photos with flat children.)

We walked through the Champs du Mars (the big green space that runs back from the ET) on the way back to the hotel, stopping for some window shopping and last minute souvenirs. Then it was time to pack before heading out for one last evening in Paris. We were scheduled for a night cruise on the Seine, taking off from the base of the ET, so we could best see the lights of Paris.

It might be even more beautiful at night.

My iPhone took some amazing pictures. It was so nice I didn’t have to carry a separate camera.

)

On the hour it twinkles for 5 minutes. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better . . .

(Are you sick of Eiffel Tower pictures yet?)

The view from our cruise. It was an easy, hourlong sail up the Seine and back with an audio guide describing the sights over the loudspeaker. Then one last (late) dinner — by day four we were eating at 11pm, just like real Parisians — before our day ended.

The next morning. Time to head home. I’m glad I packed light — just a backpack and my knitting bag. I still didn’t wear everything that I brought. It was a good amount of time to be away. I felt like I had seen everything I needed to see and was happy to go home and tell my family all about it. We arrived in the rain and left in the rain, but our 4 days in Paris were clear and sunny. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

Au revoir Paris!

crazy girl

Camille is funny, feisty, and highly opinionated.

She got a new leotard for ballet and insisted this was the right way to wear it because the sparkles had to be in the front.

And she was positive that 7am wasn’t too early to go over to her friend’s house to play.

This was an “I don’t want to go in the car” cry which turned into “sound asleep in the carseat.” Mystery solved.

It’s starting to get hot, but the pool is still cold.

She laughs at her brothers as they take turns daring each other to get wet.

I can’t believe she can swim when the water feels like ice to me.

Warm baths with bubbles and toys take the chill away.

See the crazy girl in action at ballet class. I think they were supposed to pretend they were off balance. At least I hope so.

Um, no. It turns out that was her special added touch.

Sweet!

A few hours after I uploaded the previous post, the highly anticipated emails arrived confirming our 2 year extension to NSA Bahrain. Now I can actually get on with the process of not moving instead of critically eyeing every item and mentally deciding: stay or go? Oh, I’ll still be decluttering — tis the season, but in a way that makes us even more settled here. Calvin will be moving to his own room downstairs so he doesn’t have to be plagued by Camille keeping him awake and getting into his things while he sleeps, and the 2 other boys may want to do a room shift too. We’ll have all the time in the world this summer when we’re hibernating during our 4th Ramadan.

We also are going to figure out where we want to travel in the next 2 years. Paris, Germany and Italy for sure — oh, and Spain! Can’t forget that. Once again 2 more years isn’t going to be enough time to see it all, but we’ll get to as much as we can. We’ll also want to go back to Oman and Dubai and I still want to figure out how to get over the bridge to Saudi Arabia at least once . . .

And two more years to get through our 101 things to do in Bahrain list. We still haven’t tried winter camping here or gone pearl diving out on the reef or been to a football game (soccer) at the national stadium, or gone to the horse races or . . . it’s definitely not going to be enough time to do it all.

Bitterness

This time of year in the military is much like spring of High School senior year, where everyone is waiting on pins and needles for various acceptance and rejection letters. “Ooh, so and so got Camp Pendleton! Does that mean they took our spot or were they selected from a different pool so we still have a chance? What?!! That guy is going to Hawaii? What sort of games did he play (or other, more colorful language) to make a job appear out of nowhere!? Thank God they got orders so we don’t have to see them any longer.” It’s not pretty. Or maybe that’s just what happens at our house and the rest of the Marine Corps patiently waits with no resentment, ill will, or malice. But I doubt it.

Just being real here.

Still waiting for someone to let us know what is up with our future. We are perfectly content to stay, and in fact were very pleased with our maneuvering to be able to stay based on the job possibilities that were available. Until we started seeing people getting orders to places on our dream list. Abu Dhabi?!?A job at the embassy?! (That’s the capital of United Arab Emirates — 40 minutes from Dubai and a 5 hour drive from Muscat). That wasn’t on any list and Josh has been wanting to move to Abu Dhabi for years. Germany?!?! There wasn’t any Germany job . . . oh, they put him in a job that was outside of his region of expertise. What!?!? We could have done that! Why would he be considered when all we’re getting is, “No!”? Bitter pills, indeed.

Then begins the second guessing: “Should we have pushed harder, jockeyed more, not settled for our “safety school?” Would that have made a difference? The truth is that we have known from the beginning that God’s will trumps the will of the Marine Corps. If we were intended to be in any of those places, we’d get orders there. I don’t know how people can do a 20 year career without faith in God’s provision because if my faith depended on the government deciding what was best for me, I would have lost it a long time ago.

So we wait in peace. With just a hint of bitter “what ifs?” at the back of our throats. We are human after all.

The Navigator

Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t have a natural sense of direction. I’m also not really a map person. Ask my mom about the time we were driving to Daly City and ended up an hour out of our way because “it wasn’t on the map,” when it was actually under my thumb. True story.

But since I hate being lost and like to be in control of my life as much as possible, I spent time getting familiar with the Paris Metro map and made sure I knew which monuments and museums were at particular stops and which color line to take before we set out each day. Some people like to wander — that’s not me, unless it’s intentional wandering and then I still like to have preplanned “escape routes.”

The page from my guidebook. The bottom circle is where we stayed and 2 stops up, Invalides, is where we were exiting so we could walk along the Seine to visit the Musee d’Orsay.

I had also already figured out that from there we needed to hop on the dark green line (Assemblee Nationale) and head north (not true North, just “up” on my map) to Pigalle (at the very top) and change to the blue line getting off at Anvers to visit the Sacre Coeur. From there we go back the way we came, but get off at the Madeline stop for our evening concert.

The fun thing about Paris is you don’t have to go anywhere to see the sights — everywhere you look it’s all, “Hey! Huge gold statue! Wait, that’s the Eiffel Tower in the distance!”

“And the river Seine! And cute joggers are running along the banks. It’s like a picture book — where’s Madeline?”

Sunday morning Parisians out for a stroll with their very well behaved dogs. Every dog I saw was off leash, but walking right by its owner, not running into traffic or chasing pedestrians. Even their dogs are dignified.

It was a perfect morning for walking. We finally tore ourselves away from the photo ops along the river and made it to the d’Orsay, known for its collection of Impressionists.

Including Degas’ famous ballerina

I didn’t take many photos because it’s kind of weird to take photos of pantings when I could look at them in an art book or online and see them in much better resolution, but I did snap one of Monet’s churches because I remembered we spent a lot of time on them in Art History class and I loved that they had them all side by side.

This was my favorite museum of the trip. The d’Orsay is not too large, the building is modern and beautiful in its own right, and it was much more peaceful than the Louve. Not just in numbers, but there isn’t the feel of “I have to hurry up because there’s so much to see and I’m going to miss something if I don’t.”

I spent all of Paris looking for cats for Caleb. They don’t have street cats anymore (didn’t even see one), but they had an exhibit with the artist of this famous cat.

Here is where I met up with a friend and neighbor from 29 Palms (also named Robin). She is living in Kiev, but had just been evacuated because of the conflict there so we had fun swapping evacuation stories.

After lunch at the museum we took the metro outside of downtown and up the hill to the Montmartre area to visit the Sacre Coeur.

A view of the entire city

Below the church is a bunch of trinkety shops where you can buy anything: magnets, t-shirts, keychains, purses, dishes . . . if you can slap an Eiffel Tower on it, they’re selling it. (Yes, even condoms.)

In with all the trinket shops was a fabulous chocolate shop that tempted everyone with a dual chocolate fountain (both dark and milk). She fills one side of the container with chocolate, the other with lightly sweetened whipped cream and it is eaten with a spoon or a cookie.

It was the best dark chocolate I’ve ever had — smooth, warm, lots of depth and bitterness. Mixed with the airy whipped cream it tasted like warm chocolate mousse. I really wish I could have taken some of that home with me.

Inside the shop was a gigantic dark chocolate sculpture of the Notre Dame.

Our last stop of the day was la Madeleine, the church where we were attending a concert of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It looks like a government building on the outside, but a church on the inside. I can’t remember why it was designed that way — I read about it in the program and promptly forgot.

I was not super excited about going to a classical music concert, but everyone else wanted to go and it seemed like a proper grownup thing to do so I went along with it. It was performed by a quartet and a violin soloist. I only have this photo because I wasn’t going to be one of those people holding up their camera and videoing or snapping away to the annoyance of everyone behind them (yes, there were people doing that here too).

We were about four numbers into the program (they performed a variety of well known classical numbers before starting on the Four Seasons) when I silently pointed out to my seat-mate that they had skipped Ave Maria. She drew my finger up to the top of the page where the first selection had four tiny little Italian words printed beneath it. Those four rounds of applause had only been for the first piece. Oh boy.

After that long bit, the rest of it went pretty quickly and they even played Pachelbel’s Canon which was my wedding song (along with everyone else who got married in the 90s) and had me contemplating how I couldn’t have imagined 17 years ago that I would end up being who I am, living where I’m living, having created 4 other humans, and celebrating with a trip to Paris. Surreal.

After the concert was over we headed back to our neighborhood (using the purple line, thank you very much) and had a late dinner before heading to bed to get some rest before our last day of sightseeing.