05.09.07
Posted in Travel at 1:00 am by rachel
We couldn’t drive through Provence without a stop to Avignon, a white walled city with distinctive architecture and a rich, turbulent past. The main attraction is the Popes’ Palace (seen in the photo at left), a Gothic structure built between 1335 and 1364, and the home of seven Popes during their 14th-century “exile” from Rome. After the return to Rome, a schism occurred and two anti-popes continued to live in the Palace until 1403.
Each July, Avignon is host to an entirely different crowd when it holds the annual theater festival. Although I had been to the city many times before, when I went to the festival in 2002, it seemed to have transformed into a different place entirely. Every nook and cranny, restaurant and church, alleyway and green-space, became a stage for both experimental, contemporary plays and now “classics” by Genet and Sartre. The festival was originally intended to bring theater to the masses, but the rebellious 1968 crowd deemed it part of the establishment, and thus created their own Avignon festival, called the “Festival Off.” To be honest, it all blends together in my mind, so I believe you can’t go wrong, as I was not disappointed with any of the plays I saw.
Lastly, who could forget the children’s song, Sur le Pont d’Avignon? “Sur le pont d’Avignon, on y danse, on y danse…” A quick google search yielded this interesting World-War I version of the song, Sur le pont des Nations (from the GreatWarDifferent website, an extensive online resource of primary WWI documents.) Click to enlarge images:
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05.08.07
Posted in Paris Life at 12:59 pm by rachel
“This is a solomn but glorious hour…” Thus began President Harry Truman’s speech announcing victory in Europe on May 8, 1945. Today we commemorate the end of the European conflict of World War II, V.E. Day, which is a public holiday in France. It does not mark the end of World War II, however, which would come with victory over Japan (V.J. Day), August 14, 1945.
Click here for a vintage movie entitled “Germany Gives Up!”, which begins with President Harry Truman’s speech announcing victory in Europe. This day came less than a month after President Roosevelt’s death. Roosevelt had worked for bringing an end to the war but did not live to see his goal realized.
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05.07.07
Posted in Family, Travel at 10:09 am by rachel
Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire occupied much of today’s France, reaching north as far a Lyon and leaving amphitheaters, temples, and an important aqueduct scattered throughout Provence. The city of Nîmes is particularly rich in Roman culture, which I had the chance to experience a few years ago working as an administrator for a study abroad program there. On our recent drive through Provence, we focused on two other Roman sites: the city of Orange, and the Pont du Gard aqueduct.
Founded in 35 B.C., Orange is today a pleasant little city with winding streets, colorful buildings, and a scattering of not-too-tacky souvenir shops. The main attraction is the gargantuan Roman theater, which still has it’s several-storey-high front wall lining the street. The theater and the triumphal arch are both UNESCO world heritage monuments.
The Pont du Gard is a bridge built in the first century C.E. as part of the aqueduct that carried water to Nîmes. It was used for several hundred years before being abandoned in the ninth century. Like many Roman ruins, some of the stones from the Pont du Gard were used by locals to build new structures, but the bridge nonetheless remains intact for the most part. We stopped here for a picnic lunch on the banks of the Gard River and in hot summer weather, it’s a great place for a swim.
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05.06.07
Posted in Paris Life at 11:10 pm by rachel
I interrupt my ramblings on our trip to the south to quickly comment on the French election. The polls correctly predicted a Nicolas Sarkozy win, and as I type this there are riots in the Bastille area of Paris. I’m too chicken to check it out, but a couple of investigative friends of mine should be there and will no doubt give me the full story.
This reaction comes as no surprise, since there has been a lot of anti-Sarkozy sentiment approaching the first and second rounds of elections. He is a divisive figure; an excellent speaker with a stubborn approach to his opposition and some very clear ideas about economic and social changes he wants to impose on a France stuck in a rut. Today’s election – the second round – was a run-off between the more right-leaning UMP candidate and his opponent, the socialist Ségolène Royal. Either way, France was to enter a new era, where politicians would no longer belong to the World War II generation. Sarkozy – although more conservative – has not been a part of the traditional French political élite (he did not attend the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, for example), and being the son of a Hungarian immigrant, his message of “controlled” immigration is a far cry from the strictly anti-immigration message expoused by the far right.
In France, the presidential changing of the guard happens less than two weeks after the election (16 May this year), so we’ll have to quickly develop an ear for the term “President Sarkozy.” It may not be a very peaceful transition, if this graffiti is any sign of things to come:
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05.05.07
Posted in Travel at 12:02 pm by rachel
We spent last week travelling south from Paris, to the Mediteranean Sea and then up through the mountains on the way back. I’m going to attempt to post an overview of the highlights, beginning today with our first stop: Lyon.
Lyon is one of my favorite cities in France. With two rivers (the Rhone and the Saône), majestic hilltops, gourmet food, and layer-upon-layer of archaeological history dating to 43 B.C., this third largest French city is well worth a visit. I find the architecture to be more interesting than Paris’s classic Haussmanian immeuble. Many lyonnais buildings are colorful and date back to medieval times, with winding staircases, arched windows, and open balconies. Rather than razing the old quarters, the Lyonnais simply added on to the city as the centuries progressed: two Roman theaters (over 2000 years old) still stand on Fourvière hill, with the medieval Saint-Jean area below, and 19th-century buildings and boulevards lay beyond the Saône.
The booming silk trade put Lyon on the map during the Renaissance, and the silk workers (called canuts) famously held uprisings there in the 1830s. Later in the 19th century, the appropriately-named Lumière brothers invented cinema in Lyon; there is a museum in their honor that traces the development of photography and cinema in France. Light plays an important part in the lyonnais cultural traditions: Since 1852, the 8 décembre feast of the Immaculate Conception has honored St. Mary with a festival of lights, which began with the popular tradition of placing votives in windows and has today evolved into a secularized, high-tech display of artistic lighting.
French children will find that Lyon’s most famous cultural contribution to be the creation of the Guignol puppet character. Guignol (often accompanied at times by his drunken friend) has entertained children since the beginning of the 19th century.
We only had a few hours in Lyon, so we focused on the heart of the city: beginning at the Saint-Jean Cathedral, we walked down rue du Boeuf and then up a very long staircase on the Fourvière hill. We then wound around the beautiful gardens on the hill and up to the late-19th-century Fourvière basilica, from which we had a breath-taking view of the city at sunset. After winding back down to Vieux Lyon, we walked by many bustling bouchons - traditional lyonnais restaurants serving classics like quenelles and saucisses. We then took a foot bridge over the Saône and made our way to Place Bellecour, the largest treeless plaza in Europe, with a statue of Louis XIV on horseback in the center. From the quays of the Saône we had a beautiful view of illuminated Vieux Lyon, with Saint-Jean in the foreground and Fourvière up above.
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05.04.07
Posted in Cuisine, Paris Life at 7:55 am by rachel
We tried macarons for the first time since moving here in September. That is, it was the first time we had macarons that were not from Picard, the frozen-food store (it’s not as bad as it sounds). The verdict? Delicious, but choose your flavors wisely. The hazelnut-chocolate ones were divine, as well as the coconut ones. Raspberry was made with read raspberry compote, as was the black current variety. The pistachio macaron tasted a bit like chevre cheese, for whatever reason, but my sister thought it tasted more like a (very expensive, 1.30 euro) birthday candle with a little frosting on it.
Rumour has it that the best Parisian macarons are to be found at Ladurée, the original inventor of the new macaron in 1930. Apart from the birthday candle, we were impressed with ours from Pain de Sucre, at 14, rue Rambuteau, which is also home to our alltime favorite baguette à l’ancienne.
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