Rating our Sabbatical

Okay so being who we are, we can't just enjoy a two month vacation. We have to rate it. :) Here's the final tally:

• Sweden: 9
  Great weather, wonderful country, and the incomparable Rune Svensson made this leg amazing.
• St. Petersburg: 8
  Beautiful city, and the Hermitage rocks. But it was packed with tourists, and our hotel was lame & smelly.
• Moscow: 9
  Tons to do in the modern megalopolis. Fabulous, historic hotel.
• Trans-Siberian: 7
  We enjoyed the romance, but the train was only so-so, and the view a bit monotonous.
• Siberia: 10
  Seeing Oleg was a highlight, and we explored Olya's old digs. Great friends and lots of outdoorsy activity made this leg a real highlight.
• London: 6
  It was great seeing my family, and Gautam, Ali and Will from school. But we didn't really have enough time/energy to explore things properly, and I got sick on the day of our trip to Cambridge to see Ahmed.
• France: 8
  Naim's family apartment is perfect. We had a great time exploring Paris's colorful neighborhoods and museums. And seeing Nadine, Pierre and Sylvie was great, including our little jaunt to Normandy.

Grand total: 57
So if you're keeping score, that's 57/7 = an average of 8 per experience. Are we psycho or what? :)

Supersize Moi

After months of leisurely pursuits, Olya and I felt we needed a real challenge. So today we attempted a feat so daring and dangerous it will be talked about for years.

Survive 24 hours eating nothing but French pastries.

Yes, pastries, as in butter-laden, artery-clogging, sugar-high-inducing deliciousness’s the French are so fond of. For 24 hours. No fruit. No meat. No veggies, or cheese, or fish. Just pastries all day. Then see what happens to us on the scale. For fun. For science. Call it Survivor Paris.

Note: All voting was done privately to avoid undue influence. Results were rounded to the nearest integer from 1 to 10.

9:00am Weighing in
Woke up hungry. To the scales! Piero weighs in at a "healthy" 183.5 lbs. :-p Olya
is 123.5 lbs. We're off to find the first pastry of the day...

10:00am Fauchon
Fauchon is a super posh food store right by our house. Everything they do is beautiful to look at. But will it be tasty?!

• Two Madeleines (Raspberry & Chocolate) (1.40€)
  Hmm, not that great. They were a bit dry and heavy, and scored low on buttertude. Fauchon, we expected better!
  Final Verdict: 5

10:30am Paul bakery
Wow, this day is off to a bad start. Service was awful, and we waited 30 minutes for a Pain au Chocolat and a Pain aux Raisins. Both were heavy and bread-y, and the Pain aux Raisins was over-glazed. This day has nowhere to go but up!

• Pain au Chocolat (2.00€)
  Final Verdict: 3
  
  
  
  


• Pain aux Raisins (2.00€)
  Final Verdict: 3
  
  
  
  

1:00pm La Durée
Sylvie joined us for leg three of our pastry marathon. And wow, what a leg it was! La Durée has been perfecting it's craft since 1862, and it shows. Everything we had was top-notch, if very expensive. Highly recommended!

• Tarte à la Rhubarbe et aux Fraises des Bois (8.90€)
  Forrest strawberries are a childhood favorite of mine, and this tarte delivered. The strawberries were perfect, but the rhubarb filling overpowered their gentle taste a little.
  Final Verdict: 8
  


• Croissant (2.10€)
  Sylvie stuck to the basics and ordered a beautiful-looking croissant. It was magnificent, with crab-like arms. But it lost a point in the butter department. A croissant *must* deliver the butter!
  Final Verdict: 7
  


• Religieuse à la Rose (6.30€)
  Olya hates rose flavor, but loved this pastry - high praise! Creamy and delicious, the rose taste is gentle and offset nicely by a raspberry-cream filling. Top marks!
  Final Verdict: 9
  

2:45pm Angelina bakery
Sylvie took us to Angelina's for their world-famous Mont-Blanc. By then we had a pretty severe sugar high, and we eyed the sweet mountain with trepidation.

• Mont-Blanc (4.15€)
  Wonderful creamy filling, but the Maroon-flavored outer paste is *way* too sweet.
  Final Verdict: 6
  

3:10pm Jean-Paul Hévin
We went to JPH to try their famous cheese-flavored chocolate, but they were out. :( We ended up trying one of their chocolate-pistachio macaroons.

• Chocolate-Pistachio Macaron (1€)
  Smooth, not too sweet, just the right size. Loved it!
  Final Verdict: 8
  

4:00 Le Pain Quotidien
By now we are both feeling weird and dizzy. We have sugar on the brain and butter in the veins. The thought of another pastry makes us both queasy, but strangely we are both hungry. Guess all those empty calories didn't do the trick. We order two of Le Pain's famous croissants. But Olya breaks down and orders a tomato juice!! I tell her to be strong but she's not having it, at this point it's an emergency.

• Two Croissants (1.50€)
  Wow, these things are awesome! Buttery, flaky, super light. They practically melt in the mouth. They're not much on style, but they're the best croissants we've had in France yet.
  Final Verdict: 9
  

5:15pm La Maison du Chocolat
Finally back at home, we stop by La Maison du Chocolat to buy pastries for late at night. Of course we can't resist trying one of their macaroons on the spot.

• Macaron au Caramel (3.50€)
  Bam! This place doesn't disappoint. This is the best macaroon we've had in France. Beautiful to look at, with a delicate skin and an amazing caramel cream inside. I could eat this cream from a bowl. And the ratios between cream and pastry are just right. Macaroons are insanely expensive in France, and their recipes a well-guarded secret. Now we know why!
  Final Verdict: 9
  

8:17pm At home
It's "dinner" time! I must say by now the cheese, prosciutto and Gazpacho in the fridge look very tempting! But we must be strong and soldier on. It's pastries all day, dammit! Luckily we've stocked up for the night.

• Brioche from Le Pain Quotidien (1.50€)
  Okay LPQ is batting 400. This brioche was fantastic! Buttery & just a little sweet. It was the closest thing we had all day to "food."
  Final Verdict: 9
  


• Palmier from the patissier downstairs (1.50€)
  Okay that was a mistake. I wanted a Palmier really badly, but we had forgotten to buy one. So we just grabbed the first one we could, from a crappy little patisserie nearby. What a mess! Tired, overly thick, with a big ugly dense center. It was flaky enough on the outside, but a real mess on the inside. Never again!
  Final Verdict: 4
  

12:05am At home
Ah, time to finish off this day with a little midnight snack. We have saved the prettiest pastries for last! We have a Togo from La Maison du Chocolat, and amazing-looking éclairs from Fauchon. These éclairs are in all their ads, and we have high hopes for them!

• Togo from La Maison du Chocolat (4.60€)
  An orgy of chocolate! We're shaking as we eat it... It has an orangy flavor, and is really beautiful to look at. The cholate crust (and dust) is amazing, but inside the filling is too sweet. Maybe we're just sensitive to sugar at this point, but it's too much to eat - almost. ;)
  Final Verdict: 7
  


• Fauchon Éclair au Limon (5.50€)
  Fauchon Éclair Aquatique (5.50€)
  MINT! LEMON! The fillings for these are simply amazing. The Aquatique is especially surprising, with it's minty-fresh insides. The cream and pastry are top notch. And these definitely earn the best presentation marks of the day. Unfortunately the beautiful glazes turn out to be completely inedible. What a disappointment! We had to remove them with a knife before finishing.
  Final Verdict: 7
  

Final weigh in
After a day that included over 17 pastries and 28,000 calories, Olya is up 0.1 lbs and I'm up 0.5 lbs. Not so bad, maybe we should keep at it!

Phew, it's finally over! What a crazy pastry-filled day. I know it's hard to believe, but sticking to it was surprisingly difficult! All that sugar and butter is really hard to digest... Next time: a week of sushi! :)

You get what you get, and you don't get upset

Nicole says that to Adrian sometimes when he's being fussy, and it's a fitting description of Paris. Sure, Paris has tons of great shopping, food, and things to see. But one thing we've learned in our time here is never to leave the house wanting something specific.

Say for example you've heard there's a market nearby on Tuesdays and Fridays. You want some fruit and you want it now (say you're Olya and this is a Really Big Deal.) You head there on Tuesday, only to find out it was a morning-only market and you just missed it. You head back Friday at the right time, but the market is closed for the mandatory month-long Holidays.

Paris is like that, you just have to live on her rhythm. So far we've learned:

• Paris is closed on Sundays. All of it. Parisians vanish into the countryside, and tourists walk around aimlessly, and presumably hungry.
• Museums are closed on Mondays. Or Tuesdays. Or both. Or whatever day you head there.
• Shops are closed on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays. And in August.
• Strikes happen. Often. Telltale signs include groups of Policemen hanging around smoking.
• No groceries or toiletries after 6pm.
• Fire drills happen on Wednesdays. Always. Presumably, fires do not.

Prepare for Invasion!

Silent and greedy, they have been infiltrating our cities. With leacherous pixelated eyes, they watch our world and covet. Major art centers, financial institutions, busy thoroughfares; no urban corner is beyond their lust. In the dark of night, they climb our buildings and bide their time. Any day now, the army of Space Invaders will awaken!

    

We first started spotting these cool urban critters in Provence, but turns out the invasion is in every major city in the world. Hunting them can be dangerous though, as staring up at the sky in Paris can get you stuck in the proverbial merde! Hehe... :-)

Sunset at the Louvre

Just some pretty pictures from the Louvre for y'all...

    

              

One thing a day, max!

We've been trying to stay very low key in Paris, spending as much time lounging in cafés and relaxing. One thing a day max, that's our rule! Ya right... Of course we're crammin' it all in, checking things off this huge spreadsheet we made... *sigh*

Today was especially busy. We walked around the colorful Marais, then had lunch in the Jewish quarter. The atmosphere was fun and relaxed, despite the troubles in Lebanon and the occasional "Death to Hezbollah" graffiti. The food was simply amazing. Hillel would love this place - he probably has. :)

From there to the Musée Carnavelet, which has to be one of the prettiest, most accessible museums anywhere. The collection is eclectic, from gaellic-roman ruins to fanciful art-déco rooms. And they have a whole wing on the French revolution, which was especially interesting to me, filled with paintings I remembered from my old schoolbooks.

    

    

To top it off we stopped at the original Mariage Frères tea-shop, which has been bringing tea into France since 1854. We stocked up on so much tea we're now worried about dogs at the airport.

When in doubt, wear your Pompon

Today we woke up bright and early to get a good spot for the Bastille Day parade. It was quite a spectacle, with a long procession of military men & equipment.

Wow, the French have a uniform for everything. There's the tan-desert-fatigued Foreign Legion, the ski-toting Alpine rangers, the jungle-camo-deadly special forces, the ice-pick wielding mountaineers, the red-pomponned navy men, the swashbuckling cavalry. There were even a few frog-men thrown in, ready for watery action. We could only wonder at the army of specialized seamsters and dry-cleaners needed to maintain such an arsenal.

    

In the evening we headed to the Champ de Mars to watch the fireworks. The show itself was average, but I must say it was quite magical with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop.