Estes Park, Co and the Demise of Rosie

Saturday, April 16

We are off on another adventure, this time to Estes Park, CO. It is nestled in the Rocky Mountains on the east side of Rocky Mountain National Park. We came over to meet our friends from Georgia: Marguerite, Preston and Ginnie, who are here for a family wedding.

Rocky Mountain National Park

It was a long 8 hour drive over here from Salt Lake City, most of it on I-80 through Wyoming along a high plain. Actually, no more interesting than Kansas after the first 30 minutes. We stopped for lunch in Laramie. Not much else to say on that. 

Ft Collins was a surprise; very prosperous with a pretty hip, though somewhat touristy, downtown. I would be interested in spending a little time there. I did notice a surplus of coffeehouses and liquor stores, due, no doubt, to the presence of the university.

We met up with Marguerite and Preston for a GIANT steak dinner after we finally made it to Estes Park. The folks at Nicky's Resort Cattleman's Restaurant and Lounge know how to grill a great steak! It is right on the creek (which probably qualifies as a river out here in the West) though it was already dusk when we arrived, so we couldn't see much of the water. Fabulous raspberry cheesecake was had by the piggy ones in the group – the MacGregors – for dessert.

Sunday, April 17

Our very cute little cabin has these great skylights that let in the morning light, so we were up at 6:00 this morning. We went for a run to help work out yesterday's long drive. It was a bit breezy. At one point we turned into the wind while running downhill and I felt like I was making no progress at all: Nature's treadmill. It was not a long run, but I think I got a really good workout none-the-less.

Knotty or Nice Cabin

Cabin

We are heading out for brunch with Marguerite, Preston and Ginnie in a few minutes and then plan to go to the visitors center at Rocky Mountain National Park. I think we will drive the loop and do a little strolling on some shorter trails. Then back here to the cabin to grill out and plan tomorrow's activities....

Later

So the temperature dropped and the clouds rolled in while we ate an obscene amount at brunch. By the time we were ready to head to the Park it was raining lightly but steadily. We pushed through and drove along the loop that is open this time of year. The views were still spectacular despite the rain and higher elevation snow. No hiking, just quick forays out of the van at pullouts for photo ops and to look at the view. We did see little bighorn sheep and a bajillon elk, both inside and the park and all over town. In fact, we have seen so many elk that we are now bored with them.

Little Bighorn Sheep

On our way out of the Park we stopped at the Visitors Center and shopped at the adjacent colossal gift shop full of completely needless items. Doing our part for the local economy! We managed to kill a pretty good amount of time for a car full of people who don't really shop!

Monday, April 18

We ran down to the restaurant to meet for breakfast before the Georgia contingent headed to Denver to the airport. Great place called The Eggs and I with eggs cooked anyway you could possibly imagine. We all ate a lot again. Needless to say, we walked back to the cabin.

Rob and I plan to hike/snowshoe up to Chasm Lake after he finishes sleeping off breakfast. Like yesterday, it started off sunny, warmish and calm this morning with the temperature dropping and the wind picking up as the sun has gotten higher in the sky. At least the sun is still shining today, for now anyway.

(The above was written, though not posted, in real time. The rest was written well after the fact once we got home and got resettled.)

Elizabeth on Chasm Lake Trail

The hike/snowshoe was definitely a snowshoe! The wind was blowing with some seriousness, but it wasn't too bad while we were in the trees. Once we got above the tree line, the snow was extremely deep, the trail disappeared and the wind howled. We only spent a few minutes out in the open before we headed back down. Made me realize how quickly you can get in trouble out there if conditions change. I was very cold, very quickly out in the wind.

Bridge on Chasm Lake Trail

After the snowshoe we went back to the cabin and read in front of our fireplace. Very cosy and comfortable! We watched the rain come and go through the skylights and were glad to be in where it was warm and dry.

We left Tuesday morning and headed due south from Estes Park on Highway 7. The road was slow, but took us through small towns and stunning scenery. Much more interesting than I-80 across Wyoming!

We dropped down to I-70 just below a little old mining town called Central City that has had a rebirth as a casino town. It was built in a very narrow canyon and is quite picturesque. Kind of like Park City, only more so.

We got on the interstate east of the Eisenhower Tunnel so we had the fun of going through the tunnel and passing the Continental Divide sign inside it. Snow and ice started to stick to the road as the elevation dropped on the west side of the tunnel.

We spent the night in Vail, rented a car on Wednesday morning and drove back to Salt Lake City. Vacation over.

Rosie the Mini has gone to the great car crusher in the sky, may she rest in peace.

But up until that last part we had a great time and would love to go back to Estes Park! We also had a great time visiting with our friends Marguerite, Preston and Ginnie and look forward to seeing them again soon.

Our Final Full Day, Days Later

On our last full day in France, we took the train out to Versailles; this was way back on Tuesday. So, so long ago.

France has several train lines. There is the metro system within Paris, the RER that originates in Paris and goes out to the edge of the suburbs, SNCF that goes further out and then another one that goes really far afield, including across country boundaries. At least as far as I could tell. Anyway, put me in the ranks of people who are mightily impressed by the train system.

Once we got to Versailles, we found, you guessed it, a really long line. We noticed people following signs to the left that led one to Le Jardin Aux Musicales and that line was really short and moving quickly! It turns out we bought tickets for the garden, which is really huge and amazing.

So while I still have not seen the inside of Versailles, I have spent 5 or 6 hours touring through the garden. Or gardens, I suppose. Fountains and statuary, orangerie and chestnut trees, cats and daffodils, lilacs and pools. And music! Each little garden area has a different baroque-ish soundtrack going. Rob kept looking for the band and we discovered that they were tiny little people inside those boxes!

There was also a water show with music at one particular pool/fountain that was really nice. It was in front of the Royal Garden, which was my favorite garden. It was full of flowers and rare trees and was really well laid out.

We had our last lunch in the garden and shared it with a very cute cat that was a champion beggar. We both ordered pizza because we had not yet had a French pizza with a soft boiled egg in the center. Sounds weird I know, but it really is good. And I finally had my crepe nutella; yummy!

After we had thoroughly examined the internal garden, we went outside to the part that is open without a ticket. The full grounds for the chateau are enormous and include the Grand Canal.

We did finally get a bike ride in around the Grand Canal. You can rent a bicycle right at the back gate of the ticketed area. So we rode all the way to the far back wall and discovered that we can arrive by a small, secondary road and slip in through the back gate on our big bike tour, whenever that happens.

We stayed at the gardens until almost closing time and then did some quick shopping at a tacky souvenir shop. Then our private car picked us up in front of Versailles - actually, it was Rob's friend Florent, whose business is in a small town about 10 miles away.

Florent took us back to his workplace and gave us a tour. It is quite impressive; there are cars in process of being transformed into custom race cars, big tools that mean nothing to me, but made Rob jealous, ovens for baking carbon fiber parts. Rob was like a kid in a candy store.

We rode back to Paris with Florent and went to his apartment for a drink. We got to meet his father-in-law, who has been staying with them during the week to do work on the apartment.

Once again we were fooled by how late it stays light in France and realized that it had somehow gotten to be 9:30pm. We skeedadled out of there and headed for the metro; we still needed to eat dinner and pack.

We ate at a little restaurant down the street from the apartment that had this great cat mural. We both got steak frite (steak and fries) since we had not had that yet. It is a small serving (actually a reasonable serving) of a not great cut of meat served with fat fries that is traditional bistro or cafe fare.

Then we headed back to pack and get ready for our departure.

Au Revoir with Sadness

We are off to the airport momentarily for our flight home. Some airports in Ireland and Scotland are closed due to the volcano, but so far France is unaffected.

We had a late final evening last night - dinner was at about 10:30pm - so I will update on yesterday's activities later. It involved a lot of wind.

The Louvre

Today dawned cloudy and cold, so it was the perfect day to spend at the Louvre. We actually slept in a little and didn't get there until 11:00am or so. Of course there was a line. But we stood in it and got our tickets.

We spent several hours looking at the excavated foundation of the Medieval era Louvre, Egyptian antiquities, and Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities. We dragged our poor starving selves to a cafe at about 2:30pm, had a wonderful respite from standing while we ate our lunch and then went back out to look at paintings for the duration of the visit.

We saw Jesus and others bleeding and suffering a lot, German, Flemish and Dutch painters, as well as some of the Italian masters. We saw the Mona Lisa from afar and other Da Vinci's close up. We also saw several Vermeers from behind a few people.

As far as action goes, it was rather a dull day. But for stuffing our brains, it was very busy! The Louvre itself is amazing. For those that don't know or have forgotten, it was originally a palace that has over time morphed into being exclusively a museum. It actually served the dual purpose of palace and museum once. Some of the rooms have amazing ceiling frescoes and I had a hard time figuring out whether to focus on those or the paintings.

Once they pulled out the cattle prods and forced us out at closing time, we took the metro home to Montmartre. We have shopped for dinner items again and Rob is creating another masterpiece in the kitchen. We will likely do a little laundry this evening, passing the washing time with a little dessert in a cafe. I saw someone eating a nutella crepe yesterday and have wanted one ever since.

Old and New Friends

Dinner last night with Rob's friend Florent was a delight. He still lives in the same apartment on Rue St Denis he had as a student 20 years ago, but it has been greatly improved. According to both Rob and Florent, it was a bit of a pig sty way back when. But Florent is married with two small children now, so it has to be a bit more liveable! It is a work in progress, much like all the places we live. (I would tell you there names, but other than the four years old - Ronan - I have no idea how to spell anything. Will work on that and try to report later.)

I discovered that I do not have the vocabulary to follow the random conversations of a four years old! Florent's son and I played with play dough after dinner, but I could not understand what he was saying most of the time. Our evening was an interesting mix of English and French. Florent's wife speaks some English while he is quite fluent.

We will try to stop in the town in which Florent works on Tuesday on our way back from Versailles.  They make custom upgrades, etc for race cars for people all over the world, hence his fluency in English; he says bad English is the universal language. Rob is eager to see the business.

We got up early this morning despite our late night; we managed to make it up the Eiffel Tower this morning and only had to stand in line for a few minutes. We took the stairs to the first and second platforms and enjoyed learning about the construction of the tower. New elevators are being put in - they are using the original compressed water technology of the first elevator installation. We did not make it to the top platform - you had to stand in line for a second ticket, then stand in line to ride an elevator and then ride the crowded elevator with the masses of other people. We moved on to the next sight instead.

There was a Jewish celebration and parade of some sort going on in the middle of the gardens leading up to the Eiffel Tower, so we got to enjoy our time there to the rhythms of the klezmer band. Rob kept threatening to dance.

We grabbed sandwiches on the way to the Musee Rodin and picnicked on a bench. The museum happened to be free today, so it was a little crowded, but still enjoyable. Many of the sculptures are outside in the garden. The garden is full of blooming flowers and we got to enjoy a springtime rain while hiding under a densely leafed tree. It even hailed!

In fact, in rained on and off most of the day. One minute it was sunny and warm and the next the wind would pick up and bring in the clouds and a shower.  We would just duck under something or just walk through it if it did start to rain.

After the Musee Rodin, we headed over to Ile de la Cite and Saint Chapelle, with a stop at the gardin at the west end of the island. We had an ice cream and waited out another rain shower under a big chesnut tree. 

Saint Chapelle is one of my favorite sights in Paris. It is smaller than some of the other churches, so it is on a much more human scale. I love the painted walls and the stained glass windows. We also visited Le Concierge, which neither of us had been to. It is below street level now, but was once the level of the island. Embankments have been added over time, raising the level of the street considerably. The age of both is just amazing and sometimes hard to wrap your head around. They are both part of the Palais de Justice now, which is on the site of earlier residences of the kings.


We then walked over to Notre Dame de Paris, but the line was really long again. We decided to head back to Montmartre to the apartment, but got waylaid by the entrance to La Crypte de Archeologique. We took a quick pass through. It is an excavation of foundations and lower parts of houses and other buildings that lie below the level of the current street near Notre Dame. It was fascinating. Some of the later buildings used stones from the earlier buildings. We would have like to have spent more time, but they closed about 40 minutes after we got there.

We finally headed for home on a different subway line from our normal route. We got waylaid again by a church, Saint Jean de Montmartre, in the square where our regular metro stop is. The doors were open and we both made a beeline for the church without even talking about it.

It was built in the very late 1800s and was one of the earliest concrete buildings. It's construction - like many buildings in Paris - was very controversial at the time. It even involved the builder going to court to finish it because it was claimed he did not have the proper papers; red tape would get you even back then!

It too is very beautiful and much smaller. I might even be persuaded to go to church every once in a while if I could just sit and look around the whole time. It has some wall paintings, which were never finished due to loss of financing (sound familiar?) and is fairly dark but something about it really appeals to me.

Then we hit a few stores to get supplies to make dinner and got to cooking. Rob made a version of his pasta called Spaghetti Robert Montmartre. Very good, but, of course, a bit spicey!

We followed up dinner with dessert and coffee at a cafe a little off the beaten track just up from the apartment. There was a big, beautiful wisteria vine covering the outdoor seating area. Rob had a warm, gooey chocolate cake thing with caramel ice cream and I had a tarte tartin with creme fraiche-sort of a not very sweet apple pie without a top crust. Both were delicious!

Now we are ready to go to bed so we can get up bright and early and try for the Louvre again tomorrow.

Plan B

So it turns out that May 1, is a major holiday in France and all the museums are closed. We got to the Louvre only be to turned away. The Musee d'Orangerie was also closed so we figured the closure would turn out to include all the museums, which was the case. We did get the chance to walk through Le Jardin Tuileries twice - once on the way to the Louvre and once on the way back toward the Musee d'Orangerie

We began to make our way over to the Eiffel Tower with the idea of going to the top since neither of us had ever done that. We strolled around the outside of Le Grand Palais; the building is highly ornamented with lots of bas relief sculpture and mosaics on the outside. We also took a picture of the main hall on the inside through the glass doors. The interior ironworks is beautifully decorated in the art nouveau style.

Across the street is Le Petit Palais. It is no less ornamented - in this case "grand" and "petit" mean large and small. In fact, the inside of Le Petit Palais - at least what is visible through the front door if you press your nose up against the glass - is even more grand. It has a mosaic floor, decorated walls, and murals on the ceiling.

We also saw Les Invalides, though the army museum housed there was closed, as was Napoleon's tomb. But again, the building itself is very interesting.

We stopped for lunch in a cafe across from the military school - Cafe des Officers (sp?). Our waitress was great fun; she opened bottles of beer by putting the opener on the top and then bracing the bottle over her shoulder. She definitely had young French attitude. We also observed a youth riding over the pave (paving stones) on a bicycle wearing what appeared to be a smoking jacket, pipe in mouth, and sporting long dreadlocks. He later took a table with two friends at our cafe! We were not sure what look he and his friends were going for, but they were certainly going for something. (Do we sound old, or what!?!)

We finally made it to Le Tour Eiffel after walking through Le Parc du Champ de Mars. The lines to go up into the tower were mind numbingly long. We did not stand in line. Knowing us, is anyone surprised? We plan to show up there at 9:30 am tomorrow when it opens. Instead we walked through a little garden in the shadow of the tower and watched baby ducks and some other baby swimming bird we did not recognize frolic in the pond. Much better than standing in line.

After we watched boat traffic in the Seine for a bit, we decided to head for home for a few hours. When Rob was in school here in 1989-90, he made friends with a classmate named Florent. We are going to Florent's apartment for dinner tonight.  We are resting and blogging before our evening out. And continuing to download those dang pictures. The problem is that we keep taking more!

Au Revoir!

Domestication

we spent the day as promised getting ourselves all settled. Clothes have been washed, travelers checks cashed and groceries bought. Some pictures have been uploaded, though they are not yet ready for public consumption. Takes a long time to upload 300 or so pictures.

 
We slept in a bit this morning, then got a three cheese quiche to split and a pain au chocolat apiece. We hopped on the metro down to L'Opera to the American Express office to cash our travelers checks. Of course the office was not quite where we thought it would be, but we found it eventually. And boy, was it a madhouse down around the Opera. Tourists, hustlers, crazies, you name it!

We left our clothes washing at the laundromat and did today's shopping. It was lots of fun. You go to lots of different stores for each kind of thing you want. A bread store, a veggie store, a cheese store, etc. I think we made about seven different stops in all. Great people watching as we went. Back to the apartment to put things away and then back down to the laundromat to get our clothes to bring back to hang to dry. Lots of walking and stair climbing.

We had gotten these great bread, tomato, feta cheese, basil things that we had for lunch. Then I had to take a nap. Our apartment is great, but the bed is not so awesome. It is a futon that sags in the middle, so I spent most of the night hanging onto the edge for dear life. If I turned on my other side, I would roll down into the hollow in the middle and smother. Not terribly restful. Plus, it is vacation and I can nap when I want.

Rob made the infamous Big Salad that he perfected mere blocks from here when a poor student without a real kitchen. I think the one we had tonight was  bit more high brow - roquefort blue cheese, white anchovies, fancy olives.

We went for a stroll after dinner, hoping to drop into the Montmartre Cemetery, but all the gates were closed for the night. So we went up to the top of Montmartre and down over the other side a bit into the really expensive neighborhood. We window shopped for an apartment or house over there - they are going for $2-3 million. That's actually euros, but I have no idea where the euro symbol is on my computer. So, a lot.

According to our hostess, the movie Amelie has had a huge impact on real estate here in Montmartre, much like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or Fried Green Tomatoes. Apparently, it has had a lot to do with Montmartre getting trendy and yuppiefied.

So we are off to bed early tonight. We plan to hit the Louvre tomorrow, which will likely be an all day event. I hope to finish the pictures tomorrow, but, hey, I'm on vacation; I'll get to them at least by the time we leave.