Photo Link:
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So I had an extra day in Paris before my sister flew in, and took a day trip to Tours and Chenonceaux. It was a ~2 hour train ride southwest. Tours itself was honestly nice but forgettable. Nothing too special, and the Gothic cathedral was just eh for me by France standards. Though the cloisters were pretty cool as I got to get a close up view to the gargoyles which was pretty neat. Beyond that, it was a sort of standard old town to walk around for an hour or so. From Tours, I took another 30 minute train to see the Chateau de Chenonceaux, which according to Google is considered the top chateau to see in the Loire Valley, which is apparently world famous for its’ chateaus. To start, I am not really a palace guy, but this was thoroughly underwhelming. It looked sort of cool from the outside, but I mean honestly I can drive near my house back in New York and see fancy mansions if I wanted to. The one cool thing was the crazy Christmas decorations they had inside which sort of gave it a Yule Ball (from Harry Potter) feel, with the old school interior architecture. But I don’t know, if this is considered the best of the Loire Valley I really don’t see the need to explore the rest of that region.
My sister flew in on a Saturday morning and was “working from home” from Paris for a week, which was basically ~4pm-midnight on Mon-Fri, before flying back home the following Sunday night. We’d been to Paris twice before for a week each time – once in December 2014, and the first time back in like 2002 or something so that doesn’t really count. That first night, we went to a couple of actually memorable bars. The first was this cool one called Bisou where there was no menu, but you just tell the bartender what you like and they make you a cocktail. The second was this “hidden” bar that was terribly done called Lavomatic. You walk into a laundry machine, but the real entrance has clear door hinges that you can see next to the machine, and there’s one button only by that machine. Would have liked a bit more effort but I guess then people actually wouldn’t got to the bar. But the inside was really fun and they had some good snacks (which wound up being our dinner) and cocktails. They also had swings inside to sit on which seemed lowkey dangerous, but that was part of the fun.
We took a couple of day trips together, to Amiens and Chartres. Amiens has France’s biggest cathedral (even bigger than the Notre Dame in Paris), and it was definitely a fun place to explore. Though I definitely enjoyed the Reims cathedral more, this was still a nice quick half day trip. Besides the cathedral, Amiens was forgettable, just a bunch of nice street food from the christmas market stalls and a whatever old town. Chartres, on the other hand, had a really enjoyable old town, especially the section along a quite canal brook that actually felt rustic due to the absolute lack of people and the suburban houses off the water. The Chartres cathedral was also pretty cool – the stained glass designs were probably the second best I saw in France, distantly behind Saint Chappele in Paris (which was my favorite thing in all of Paris by a longshot).
Despite not being a palace guy, we did also take a day trip to Versailles, which was not as bad as I thought it would be. But this is also “the best” palace in Europe to see, so any further palaces I see will definitely be underwhelming. The artwork inside was cool, especially the giant paintings of all these military victories in France’s long history, and all the Napolean ones. And there were some gorgeous baroque rooms and theaters in there that were just as pretty as any section of Rome’s best churches. Definitely worth the day trip and I’m glad we took time to see it.
The definite highlight of Paris for me was Saint Chappelle, which is this old gothic church with gorgeous colorful stained glass windows lining the entire space. You’re also up close to these windows unlike in the massive cathedrals, so you can really examine them. It was just a brilliant blue hue in there, and we spent like 30+ minutes in the one chapel room sort of gawking at everything and taking it all in. Stained glass is just such a cool type of medieval artwork. Beyond that, I also really enjoyed the Saint Denis cathedral, which is up north in an ex-suburb (that is now a part of the city), and is where all of the French kings and queens are buried. A notable exception being Charlemagne who is in the Aachen cathedral in Germany, but his grandfather Charles Martel was here, along with the Sun King Louie XIV and, more infamously, Marie Antoinette.
Another highlight was obviously the Louvre and Orsay museums. The Louvre might have surpassed both the Vatican Museum and the Uffizi for me in terms of the quality of the overall collection. My favorite painting was definitely Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, which is probably best known nowadays for being the cover of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida album. He had a bunch of great paintings in there, and I’d honestly place him up there with Raphael and Diego Rivera as my favorite painters whose pieces I have seen in person over the past couple of years. Speaking of Raphael – he had some great pieces in the Louvre as well, with the most notable one for me being his La Belle Jardiniere, which featured the Virgin Mary with John the Baptist and Jesus as kids. This was basically an identical painting (with different poses) to his Madonna of the Goldfinch painting that I saw in the Uffizi. Obviously saw the Mona Lisa, and it was cool, but again after seeing this and the other Da Vinci’s in the Louvre I maintain that he is vastly overrated. Literally every other Italian Renaissance painting in the Louvre was just as good as any of Da Vinci’s. I don’t get the hype. Another incredibly overrated piece in the Louvre was the Venus de Milo…there are tons and tons of more impressive Greek and Roman sculptures in the museums of Athens, Rome, and Naples, just as a small example. One other really cool part of the Louvre was seeing the Egyptian and Mesopotamian collections, especially after having been to Egypt last year and Iraq a couple of months ago. The Egyptian stuff was standard cool, but the Mesopotamian stuff was really really neat. Especially liked the massive and incredibly well preserved Lamassus from Nineveh (the ruins by Mosul which I didn’t see), an originally colored lion brick wall from Babylon (though this would have been even cooler to see in situ obviously), and of course the original stelle of Hammurabi’s Laws which was also found in Babylon. Seeing these artifacts after visiting Iraq definitely made it cooler. Also saw some cool colored palace walls from Darius the Great’s palace in Susa in Iran, which I’ll hopefully visit next year!
The Orsay museum was also amazing. There was a really cool temporary exhibit that had a bunch of fin de siecle film clips playing, along with tons and tons of photos, posters, and paintings from that era. I just love everything about that era and Paris, especially paintings of cafe culture and city life (speaking of which – Paris cafes are awesome. Might only be mediocre food by French standards but the whole ambiance and vibe just checks off every stereotyped box so I loved it). I honestly think I like Paris cafes because of how much I like impressionist artwork of French cafes from the turn of the century, so it’s nice that the cafes here have sort of kept that look. Beyond that really cool temporary exhibit, there was the usual amazing impressionist and turn of the century art. I’m also a sucker for “exotic orientalism” type paintings (that apparently might or might not be problematic depending on which woke person you talk to, though I am brown so maybe I get away with it), so I enjoyed the decent selection of late 1800s style painting (more brushwork) of places like Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisa done by French painters that were exhibited here. There were also some cool art-noveau sculptures that honestly reminded me of almost like a precursor to Soviet Art, with the themes being very much “for the people” and sort of lionizing the everyday laborer/miner/etc. But overall, Orsay was up there with the Louvre for me – obviously for very different reasons as the art in each is not at all that similar.
One specifically underwhelming thing in Paris was Montmartre (surprisingly, the Eiffel Tower was actually cool! Though we didn’t go up but even just walking around, I was shocked that I enjoyed it). It’s weird because Montmartre was absolutely my favorite part of Paris back from 2014, but maybe having been to places like Alsace in France now, Montmartre just struck me as a worse version of that? Not sure. But there was nothing special in it for me with the narrow streets and cafes and artists…it was almost like “just another” old town. I was definitely surprised by that. Like still worth spending half a day in but I got a lot more out of other parts of Paris.
I also ran into a high school buddy for dinner and drinks one night while my sister was working. Hadn’t seen Teddy in a decade but we were vaguely in touch via Instagram DMs over the past year+ since he’s a huge huge history nerd as well so from my sporadic travel posts (I try not to post too much so people don’t hate me, since obviously my life is pretty sweet). He’s actually the kid I reached out to when I found a Roman coin in Petra, and he responded in like 5 minutes with a detailed bio of that coin and the literal city it was minted. Anyways, it was pretty nice to catch up though I definitely had a little too much to drink at the bar we went to after which made the next morning fun.
Honestly, my whole week in Paris with my sister flew by, which of course is a good thing for any city. After the past month and a half in Greece, Italy, and now France, I do have to say that I totally see the appeal in wine. To be honest, getting a 35 euro bottle of wine here is more cost efficient than 2 cocktails or 2 beers on a per person basis, so that’s my main reason. But it does taste good, though good wine is also a lot cheaper out here than in the US so not sure if these habits will carry over. But Paris was a blast – my sister and I spent almost all of our time walking around talking in shitty French accents, which was probably just a tad more obnoxious than me always doing that hand gesture while in Italy. She flew out on a Sunday evening, and I had a few more days which I used to take day trips out to Normandy, to see Bayeux, Mont St. Michel, and Rouen. Funnily enough, the best meal of Paris was our very last lunch together at an Italian spot, La Maison de la Truffe. They had <25 euro pastas with shaved black truffles on them (this usually runs for like 50+ USD in the US) and it was incredible.
My day trip to Bayeux wound up being a very happy accident. I had meant to book my flight to Spain on the 15th but did it on the 16th and didn’t realize until >24 hours later, so I couldn’t cancel and rebook. Needed an extra trip and figured I’d stick in Normandy and go to Bayeux, and I’m really glad I did. The main highlight here is the Bayeux tapestry, which is a 1000 year old, 70 meter long (!!) embroidery that chronicles the Norman invasion of England in 1066. The museum included an audio guide which narrated the entire tapestry which was very helpful. The general gist of the story is that King Edward of England allegedly named William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, as his heir. He sent his son-in-law, Harold, to tell William this, and Harold and William have some military adventures together in northern France. Harold returns to England, Edward soon dies, but then Harold claims the throne, and William sets off to “claim his right” and defeats Harold at the Battle of Hastings to become the King of England. Among other notable things, this event is single handedly responsible for the massive influence of French in modern English.
Anyways, the tapestry (which is really an embroidery) is in shockingly good condition for its’ age. It literally took 30 minutes to walk down the 70 meter long fabric as the audioguide was explaining each and every scene. Tons and tons of amazing details in there. Random ones that stuck out for me: the Normans had short hair with no facial hair, the English had long hair and mustaches; the crude illustrations of armor and weapons have helped historians determine what medieval soldiers wore in battle; Haley’s comet (this was illustrated as a bad omen for the usurper Harold – reminded me of Europa Universalis IV where a comet sighting leads to -1 stability); how the soldiers had to take their pants off when going on and off their Viking longboats so they wouldn’t get ruined by the water. It was just such an amazing thing to see. And the detail was obviously more like amateur drawings, but that was a part of its’ charm. Though it is literally sewn into the fabric, and it almost resembled a giant comic book strip as you follow it from one end to the other. The only other time I have ever seen something even remotely similar in terms of the comic book feel is probably in the Angkor Ruins for some of the illustrations there (speaking of which…Angkor might be the only place I will ever want to revisit again and again. I already want to visit again next fall/winter when I’m in Asia again hopefully). In general, just the whole medieval vibe of the tapestry, with the Monty Python and the Holy Grail-esque illustrations, was awesome. One of my favorite illustrations here was a scene of William and his army eating, with the very next scene them getting ready on horseback for the climatic battle. It was straight out of the scene from the movie “The Trip” where there’s a scene parodying medieval movies, with the speech ‘Tonight we feast, for we rise at daybreak for battle’.
Bayeux is also famous for being the first French town liberated from the Nazis, by the British the day after D-Day. Because of this, there’s a really impressive D-Day museum in town, along with a giant cemetery for the Commonwealth soldiers who died in France. There was a monument in the cemetery for Commonwealth soldiers whose bodies could not be found, and the Latin phrase on it was pretty interesting – it said something along the lines of “William the Conqueror invaded our land, and now we return to free yours”. The cemetery was somber – goes without saying, but the most shocking part for me will always be the age of most of the kids who died here. Like literal children, almost all under 22 years old. Beyond that, the museum was very very well done. Wouldn’t say it was the best WW2 museum I’ve been to – that would be the Great Patriotic War museum in Moscow by some distance – but it was still educational and thought provoking while keeping me engaged.
The next day, I went to Mont St. Michel, which was a 4 hour day trip from Paris – 3 hour train ride followed by a 1 hour bus ride. And the train station in Paris was a 30 minute subway ride from my hostel. Though I will say, Mont St. Michel was just about cool enough to justify the commute. It’s in western Normandy and basically straddles the border with nearby Brittany. The main reason I wanted to see it was due to its’ similarity to Minas Tirith – it apparently was one of the inspirations for the design of the city in the LOTR films. Despite the foggy weather, it definitely was quite the sight. The walk from the bus station to the actual abbey was about ~45 minutes, at almost 2 miles. And yet, for the entire walk, you can see it towering above the surrounding plains. During high tide it is surrounded by water, but this was low tide so it was surrounded by a mucky clay/silt/sand sort of ground. Of course, I waded in to get some pics, so it was a good thing that the only shoes I have on me now are my Kili boots that can handle all that junk. The abbey itself was weirdly underwhelming – just a couple of narrow touristy preserved medieval streets, followed by a giant, austere church and surrounding buildings that had literally zero decoration. I will say that if there’s one type of zero decoration building I enjoy, it’s Gothic cathedrals, so I still did enjoy the trip. But given the magnificence of the exterior, I sort of expected more here. Interestingly enough, overall it did remind me a bit of a Christian version of Khiva, from Uzbeksitan. Same idea of a medieval walled city, though I do have to say that I enjoyed Khiva more. The cherry on top of this trip was just listening to the magnificence of Howard Shore’s LOTR soundtrack the entire time I was here.
On December 15th, the French COVID pass no longer recognized my 1 jab of J&J – I now needed a booster on top of that 1 jab. Luckily, the 15th was my last full day in France, which I used to take a trip up to Rouen, also in Normandy. I had actually been here with my family on a day trip back in 2014 so I did remember bits and pieces. The main claim to fame here is that this is where the English burned Joan of Arc at the stake. It was a pleasant medieval town, with tons of narrow cobblestoned streets lined with wood framed buildings. In a way, I would say that Rouen was a poor man’s Strasbourg, which is in itself a poor man’s Colmar. Not sure if I can quite put my finger on why, but despite the wood framed buildings everywhere here, Rouen still felt distinctly French, while the same type of architecture in Strasbourg and Colmar felt distinctly German. The cathedral here was actually pretty cool – it’s famous as being the subject of numerous paintings by Monet. I think I’d go as far as to say as the exterior of the Rouen cathedral is probably my second favorite French exterior, after Strasbourg (with both behind the Duomo in Milan in terms of Gothic cathedrals). Interior wise, I think Reims takes the cake, followed by Chartres and Amiens. Overall, Rouen was a nice day trip to just wander around, but wouldn’t say it was anything excellent. Still a worthy trip if you’re in Paris.
My 3 days in Normandy after my sister left were really nice. Could easily spend a ton more time here doing WW2 stuff, like seeing all the beaches and more of the liberated towns. Plus cities like Giverny if you’re into Monet/art history. But it was nice to visit a heavily medieval area, since I feel like I haven’t seen quite as much of that in Europe before. I feel pretty confident in saying that France is probably the most diverse country in Europe that I’ll ever go to…just so much stuff to see here. I know I said earlier that Italy was my favorite country in Europe after Russia, but I’d go as far as to say that France is on par with Russia. All else equal, I’d take France, but the exorbitant cost of France combined with how cheap Russia is really helps even it out. But there really is just so much to see in France – the South of France (it’s been almost two years!), Normandy, Alsace, Paris, the food of Lyon…another area on my list that I’ll hopefully see later is some of the Roman stuff and prehistoric cave paintings in Southwestern France. And each region here really does feel distinct, which is cool to see. I don’t know if any single location in France is up there on the Moscow/Saint Petersburg/Rome/Pompeii+Herculaneum level, but there is so much excellent across the board stuff where I’d still place France well above Italy and alongside Russia. Paris is obviously a grand and amazing city, and I enjoyed it just as much as, say, Shanghai, so still a bit below somewhere like Delhi/Rome/etc. I think Paris is a microcosm of France for me – just tons of amazing stuff but nothing quite standout. French food is the same – consistently very good but not the mmph of Italy, let alone India, China, or Mexico. With the obvious exception of Lyon of course – the more time goes by, the more I feel confident in saying that was the best food I’ve had outside of India. And French desserts are interesting…the famous stuff like eclairs are incredibly overrated (the patron saint of this is macaroons. They’re like the Dalai Llama of desserts in terms of how people overrate them). But I’m a huge huge fan of their baked pastries that incorporate almond flavors into them. Had so many random baked goods whose names I have all forgotten with delicious almond flavors. And of course, Lyon’s praline tart is still the best. Definitely on par with Mexico and the Arabic world for desserts.
So after this, I am flying to Spain. Plan is basically the Madrid area, Barcelona area, and Andalusia, up until New Year’s Eve. I want to fly to Scotland and England to spend most of Jan in afterwards, but I’m going to wait until after Christmas and see, since there’s a chance my J&J one jab won’t be accepted there. My backup plan is to either go to Oman or Tunisia after Spain if I can’t do the UK, but we’ll see. Or maybe stay in Europe for a quick trip like Sicily before bouncing to India…in any case, want to get to India by late Jan at the latest (earlier if I don’t go to the UK) to do some more sightseeing there + a tentative tiger safari in February in Kanha National Park with my sister, who is planning on flying out to meet for that.