Game Over

Exactly one year ago (September 11, 2006), we were taking off from California to Costa Rica.
And so, as it was set out from the start, it is now time to get back to our Hawaiian lives.
We returned to Hawaii on August 24, at which time I was quickly swallowed up into university administrative mumbo jumbo, while Paul was returning to the North Shore with obvious delight!


Leaving France was definitely much sadder for me than it was for him, as it reminded me of the constant compromise of having two homes and living away from my family.



At the same time, I was looking forward to seeing friends again, getting back to the idyllic weather and turquoise waters of Hawaii, and finishing up school.



So this is it, the trip has come to an end and with it ends my blog. Thank you for reading and keeping me from getting lazy and not finishing it!

The fruit of our hard labor...

As I mentioned earlier, a part of our activities at my house in Milhac was to plant flowers and tend to the garden. When we returned in July, we saw the beautiful fruit of our labor...






Actually, with the unusually rainy weather of late June and July, it was more work keeping the weeds from outgrowing the garden than keeping the flowers blooming! The weather this summer in France has been unusually cool and wet... the weather in July and August is usually hovering near 40 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit), but this year, none of that!! we had a few days of beautiful hot weather and then a lot of cooler, cloudy and rainy days... today, in Paris, it is about 16C (60F), windy, cloudy and it feels like November!! That is unheard of!!


Anyway, during the first week of July, we attempted a last excursion to the ocean, this time near Bordeaux, in the Bassin d'Arcachon. We had decent weather but the wind was very strong for two out of the three days we were there and made the ocean prohibitively rough! However, there are a few very cool sights in that area, including the Pila Dune, which is an enormous wind-generated sand dune, which is still growing and engulfing whatever is on its path. Despite the many tourists that are lining up to get up on top of it, once you are up there, the size of the dune dwarfs the crowds!




On our last day at the beach, we attempted a surf session... it was interesting... the waves were still quite rough and the wind still blowing, although much less than the previous days. There was a powerful side-shore current and wave after wave after wave, which basically was just too much... after trying unsuccessfully to catch a wave, we stayed on the inside and caught white wash instead!! :) It'll be interesting to return to good waves in Hawaii, i don't remember what it's like!



During our stay in Milhac, in addition to working on the yard, we also did a number of outings in the area, including to two old castles... One of them has been kept up over the centuries and is a beautiful building, still occupied by private owners, but with some areas open to the public.




The other was forgotten after the middle ages and left to crumble for a few centuries before someone attempted to unearth the past.



So it was left in its original form, as a war construction. In a lot of ways, that castle resembles ancient greek or Roman ruin sites, and is a really interesting archeological site, very unusual for this region, where most castles have evolved with time.

Unlike the fickle waves of France, the castles did not disappoint!

Doing the Paris Thing

We are now back in Paris... where we were, a little over a month ago when we got back from Italy. Paris is such a nice city for the visitor... I remember when I used to live there as a high school student and I really did not like it all that much: school there was tough and stressful, and there was little time to enjoy what the city has to offer.

View from the top of the Buttes Chaumont

But as a visitor, it is quite amazing. My father's apartment, where we are staying, is centrally located and from there, we can walk for hours and just go from quaint streets to stunning parks, to great monuments almost endlessly.

Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris

This what we did a few nights ago, when we walked for five hours from the Eiffel Tower, to the Obelisk (the start of the Champs Elysees), to the Louvre and back home. We started our walk at sunset and were out until late in the night, at which time I was completely exhausted!



When we were here last, in late June, we viewed many of the city's landmarks from the river, on a boat tour, which offered less photo opportunity but was much less tiring! At the time, my sister was eight months pregnant, so a five-hour walk was out of the question! Since then, she's given birth to a beautiful baby girl named Tilia.




During our last visit to Paris, we also visited the Orsay museum, which houses the largest impressionist art collection worldwide. The impressionist paintings, which are usually large formats, are really impressive in real life. The colors of those paintings, especially Van Gogh's, are so bright!

My lovely niece needs to get new sunglasses!

This time we will try to go to the Louvre, to pay respect to the ancient and classical artists (the Louvre's collection spans from ancient Egypt to the 19th century)...

Siena

Last but not least in our Italian trek was Siena… probably one of my favorites among the places we saw.




It is a little town south of Florence, in the heart of the Chianti valley in Tuscany. It is a really beautiful town on the top of a hill, and no matter what angle you look at it, it is pretty… from inside or out…




That ended our Italian journey; we took the train by night back from Florence to Paris. The train official checked everybody’s passport and did not have any problem with Paul’s overstayed visa… oh well, this sure isn’t the US! ☺

Florence, Pisa...

Florence, the historical archenemy of Milan, is much prettier and also, quite a bit more crowded than the latter. A really great attribute of the city is its condensed historical center where palaces, statues, and marble cathedrals abound, in a mostly pedestrian area. The train station is just a 10-minute walk from the Duomo, the most prominent cathedral of the city and its most famous landmark.

And from the Duomo, it is a 10 to 15 minute walk to almost every landmark in the city – and yet, somehow, we walked for hours each day!


The Duomo is an imposing cathedral made of polychromatic marble – pink, white, and green –, which give it a distinctively cheerful look. It is squeezed into a relatively small square compared to its size, and getting a nice photo of it was a real challenge… not to mention the construction that was also happening on a portion of the dome.
Compared to the rich marble decorations on the outside, we were surprised to see that the interior of the Duomo was rather plain… not even a bit of marble on the walls or some oversized Michelangelo frescoes! ☺



The second most prominent building in Florence is the Medici fortress. It somewhat resembles the Sforza fortress in Milan, although a bit smaller and with higher fortified walls. Unlike the Duomo, the Medici fortress is fronted by a large square, which has its share of art with many statues, including a copy of the famous David of Michelangelo – it was the closest we would get to the real thing, which is hidden away in a gallery assaulted every day by too many tourists.


That was actually the only real disappointment I had in Florence: the line of tourists outside good museums was horrendous. Many works by the famous Florentine artists - Michelangelo, Botticelli, da Vinci, Raphael to name just a few – are at the Uffizi Gallery, where it appeared people wasted half a day just waiting to get to the museum entrance… so we just walked by.



While we stayed in Florence, we also went to visit a couple of neighboring towns. We went first, by train, to Pisa, just an hour away from Florence. The town is much smaller and more laid back than Florence, until you reach the enormous square where seats the Leaning Tower…

The Leaning Tower doesn’t seat by itself but is in fact only just the bell tower of yet another really beautiful Italian cathedral. The cathedral, its baptistry, and bell tower are all made of white marble sculpted in hundreds of arches and statues; and they seat surrounded with large green lawns, for a very stunning view.

Tourists apparently mostly flock to the Leaning Tower (although only a select few can go up on it) by tour bus and don’t even bother with the rest of the town, which indeed seems a bit small for such grand architecture! We enjoyed the small streets of the town though, and the stop for a most excellent gelato!