La Réunion photos

Here are some photos from the trip to La Réunion.
Family, there are more personal photos in another album. Email me if I haven't already shared it with you.

La Réunion - a full two weeks

My apologies. I was sleepy and sloppy in my first post from La Réunion and got the days of the week mixed up: arrived on Thursday, Hell-Bourg and Ste. Suzanne on Friday (east), St. Philippe and the southern coast on Saturday.
Sunday, we needed our rest and the Thomas clan arrived early in the afternoon. They needed their rest, too.

Cirque de Mafate

Monday morning, Paul, Anne, and I had our helicoptor tour of the island. It's splendid. Our tour took off from behind St. Paul. The company is Helilagon. There is another company based closer to us at l'Ermitage, Corail, and they seem to be just as good. We had scheduled the 7:00 tour because we had been told that one must do it very early so as not have the view obscured by clouds. It turned out that they rescheduled us for 8, which we only found out because we also discovered they would pick us up at our hotel at no extra charge and I phoned to arrange that. The pick-up was at 7:20 and when we arrived at the héliport, we discovered the 7:00 people and the 8:00 all still waiting for the all clear signal.

Take off for our group of 6 was at about 8:30 and the sky was wonderfully clear. We flew over St. Paul and picked up altitude to enter the Cirque de Mafate via the Maïdo peak. From there, we dipped into the Cirque. The cirque is one of the three caved-in calderas of the Piton des Neiges volcano, the one that has been dormant for long enough for people to feel safe living in the cirques. The Cirque de Mafate is only accessible on foot or by helicopter. There are villages on the plateaus that are separated from one another by deep gorges and the cirque is surrounded by almost vertical walls. The inhabitants voted against having a road built along the canyon entrance and against having electricity brought in. As far as electricity is concerned, they were right, because now, they all have solar panels and do not need the heavy installations. Mafate was originally settled by run away slaves. Apparently one was called Mafate and in Malgache, that means either "qui pue" (who stinks) or "qui tue" (who kills). Once the run aways made it into the cirque, no one really bothered trying to capture them. They were followed, later, by the poor second or third sons of planter families, and by Chinese shop keepers.
From Mafate, we went over to the Cirque de Salazie, which we had driven through the week before. It's so much greener! It's canyon entrance is on the eastern side of the island, where all the rain comes from. Still, in spite of being on the rainy side, the waterfalls are just trickles this year.

Turning south we flew over the Piton de la Fournaise, the active volcano, although there's no activity right now. There's a valley, a plain between the two volcanos and we could see the large farms.
And then over les trois Salazes into the Cirque de Cilaos, not quite as confined as Mafate, because there is a road and electricity, but still signs of rugged living.

Les Trois Salazes 

Tuesday, we (quite a group, now) made our way back to Ste. Philippe to visit the Jardin des Parfums et Epices. That was a beautiful visit. I recommend it. The guidebooks say you need to reserve for the guided tour, and you do. That said, they accept too big a crowd on a tour, so you kind of wonder if they do have a limit. Our tour was the 10:30, but by the time they got us all rounded up it was getting closer to 11 and they had opened a tour for 11, so, since there seemed to be fewer people on the 11:00 tour, we switched. It was well worth the wait; our tour guide was the owner! Of course, there's vanilla, curcuma, ginger, mangoes, papayas, bananas, and more. There's so much more, if you go, take notes in order to remember it all. The tour is an hour and a half, but ours seemed to go on a bit longer. The parents of small children dropped out a bit half way through because it's just too much information and stationary pauses. For those of us unhindered by babies, it was an enlightening tour.

 This hole in the ground is what is left when the lava cools around a hardwood tree. The tree burns slowly enough for the lava to cool around it. Once the tree has burned away, the hole is left. This is useful to determine the depth of the lava flow. It is also useful as a natural toilet. The people would choose to build their houses near two such holes, so that when one filled up, they could use the second, until the first had composted, and so on.

Notre Dame des Laves

NWhen we left the garden, we drove past the Grande Coulée, to the east coast. At Sainte Rose, there is this church, now called Notre Dame des Laves. In 1977, a new caldera formed outside the Piton de la Fournaise enclosure and its lava flowed into Sainte Rose, stopping just in front of the church (and a little around the sides). It scalded the building but that was all the damage done! A miracle! The rest of the town was pretty much destroyed and has been rebuilt on top of the lava flow. They've cut steps in the flow for access to the church. 

We continued up the east coast, to Sainte Anne, where we cut across to the road that cuts through the plain between the volcanoes. The "plaine des palmistes" is not as flat as its name sounds. The road winds up and down between the pitons. It's agricultural country. Towards the southern end, it's much more urban and less interesting. As the road descends to St. Pierre, the villages are named for the number of kilometers to St. Pierre: Dix-neuvième, Quatorzième, Onzième. I must say that in the metropolis, there are not so many pharmacies and medical centers or service stations. The roads here are in excellent condition.

On Thursday, we drove up to the top of Maïdo to the viewing rampart for the view into the Cirque de Mafate. It's a beautiful drive. And there are some magnificent views. I envy the hikers that go into the Cirque. There are places to eat and even spend the night. We are no longer up to such hiking. I hope that some of my friends who do hike and who read this blog will consider it as a future destination!

We came back via St. Paul. This is the first capital of La Réunion. It's a big town, but not as big as St. Pierre, and certainly no as big as St. Denis. There are only a couple of shopping streets. There's also a market on Fridays and Saturdays, but this was on Thursday. We did stop for lunch. And we stopped along the coastal road on the way to St. Gilles. In fact, it turned out to be where we stopped on our return from the wedding on Saturday, at Cap La Houssaye.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were taken up with the wedding activities. Monday was Anne's last day with us. We did not feel like doing very much. It wasn't really a nice day for the beach, either. We has lunch at Salines-les-Bains and then spent the latter part of the afternoon with Louis, Gwen, and Sacha, who came over to our hotel for a dip in the pool. We then took Anne to the airport..

Le Marché Couvert at Célaos

Tuesday was a nice morning, so we headed south, along the coast, to St. Louis, where we turned and went into the Cirque de Cilaos. It's a beautiful drive, but there are too many S curves to count. You don't have the impression you are going up a mountain because you keep going up and down, following the meander of the river. There are villages here and there, not along the road, but always a little distance off. There are staircases carved into the rock along the road that lead to paths to get to the isolated farms. There are hiking paths to take hikers into the Cirque de Mafate and the Cirque de Salazie.
At the town of Cilaos, there is a little covered market with local produce: melons, lentils, mangoes, peaches, wine, ... and some local crafts, like the embroidery. Further along the road, at the end, is the Ilet à Cordes, on the opposite side of the cirque.

Célaos embroidery

Wednesday was another rather lazy day, spent pleasantly with the Thomas clan. It rained during lunch.
There was a big storm during the night but we woke up to a beautiful morning and decided to take one last drive. We went back to St. Louis to see the Museum of Decorative Art of the Indian Ocean. What a disappointment! The site is an old coffee plantation, Maison Rouge, and they've started cultivating the rare café bourbon again. A small tin of the coffee, 125gr., costs €22! We would have loved to taste a cup of coffee (€2) but the snack bar was closed. The museum exhibit was of Chinese furniture and porcelain that the locals imported -- very beautiful, but nothing made locally. We didn't stay long. We read the posters describing the particularity of Boubon coffee and the life and death of the coffee market in La Réunion. After this very brief visit we got back into the car and decided to see where the little road ended. That was a drive on a little road cut through the fields -- fields of sugar cane, bananas, a bit of pineapple, and more. Some banana plots were empty of fruit; others had fruit already in bags, but still hanging from the plant; and others had tiny fruit just starting. Some of the cane has already been cut, but there is plenty left. We saw four workers in one field cutting. These hillside fields are not good for mechanical harvesting. This agricultural path led to the Department road 3, slightly wider. Beautiful. There's a break in the road, though, where we had to go down the mountain to cross the ravine and then go back up to the D3, which is marked in green from this point on to indicate it is picturesque. Well, the preceding portion was very picturesque, but this bit, which runs parallel to the main highway, but at about 800m. altitude, all the way to St. Paul, has house on each side. We could imagine that there must be nice views of the coast from time to time, but since we were caught in a cloud, we couldn't see. Tired of all the twisting and turning, we called it a day and returned to l'Ermitage.
Tomorrow, we hope to go to the St. Paul market. It's a big tourist attraction. Almost all the Réunion souvenirs are made in Madagascar, though. I hope it's not a tourist trap. We also want to see the Sailors' cemetery. We've passed by it several times and this time we want to stop.

On to La Réunion

Louis and Gwen are getting married! In La Réunion! Not many of the Lebelle side are going to be here. In fact, it's just Paul, Anne, and me. Claire just gave birth to Constance, and besides, Aurelia just started school and can't really be taken out outside school holidays. Emma is just getting down to work on her house and taking time for a trip to La Réunion. It's a long way and merits a long stay. (wikipedia article in English, in French)
Today, Sunday, is a day of rest. At least, the morning is supposed to be. The rest of the family, Louis, Gwen, Sacha and the whole Thomas side, arrive later this morning.
It's a night flight. Taking any flight from Orly suggests an exotic destination, much more so than leaving from CDG. There are no lines; there are crowds. We got to the airport a full three hours before the scheduled departure and the crowd in front of our check-in zone was so big that we didn't see there was a sign for a line for people who had their boarding passes already. We just got into the crowd that slowly became a line for check-in and in over an hour, we were checked-in. I wonder what time the first people in the check-in line got there. We went straight through to the security check and came out at the other end in about half an hour. Our flight was already announced with a delay, so we had time to get a little something to eat. It was already 8:30 and who knew when we'd get our flight dinner! Our Corsair flight was on a recently refurbished 747. It looked and felt new, very comfortable, but we didn't really leave the gate until after 10:30 and it was past midnight by the time dinner came, so it was a good thing we had had a bite beforehand. There's a two hour time difference with La Réunion, so it was about 10:00 a.m. when we arrived on Wednesday morning.
For some odd reason, the local travel agency did not have our voucher for the car, but apparently that happens a lot; our car was indeed reserved and waiting for us, but it was almost noon by the time we got it.
Needless to say, we were a bit tired on arriving at l'Ermitage, just south of St. Gilles, on the west coast of the island. We walked over to the beach, had lunch, and then collapsed for a few hours.
We walked over to the shops and got some breakfast things and some pasta for an eventual dinner in. There is a bit of sticker shock when in the supermarket; almost everything is imported from metropolitan France, but even local produce seemed expensive. Back to the beach for the sunset and back to the studio for a light dinner and plan for our first real day.

Thursday morning, we headed to the west coast and inland from St. André to Salazie and on to Hell Bourg on the rim of the Cirque de Salazie. (photo) The cirques here are really the calderas of extinct volcanoes. This volcano is the Piton des Neiges, which has been sleeping several thousand years. The other one, the Piton de la Fournaise is still very active, almost annually! The landscape changes dramatically as you drive up the dry west coast, past St. Denis, and down the lush east coast. The rain comes from the east. All the towns along the coast around the island seem to be Saint something or other. They were founded by the French. Other towns, inland, have more picturesque names. Something that is striking about this island is that it is rather big, but was totally uninhabited when the French arrived in the 17th century. It, along with Mauritius, Rodrigues, and the Seychelles, are far enough west of Madagascar and east of Australia or southeast of India, that no one had ever settled there. So, the French didn't take it from anyone. No previous civilization was extinguished. The French Compagnie des Indes created the first outposts and then planters and slaves from Africa and Madagascar, followed by low-paid workers from India and China, brought in when the slaves ran off into the cirques -- a rather typical colonization for the period. In addition to the runaway slaves, many second sons, who would not get a piece of the plantation, also went up into the cirques. A few generations along and everyone was a beautiful mix of colors and religions and they had their own créole language.

Hell Bourg was developed in the 19th century as a spa, up in the highlands, away from malaria. It is a pretty little village that has maintained the houses (cases) from the 19th to early 20th century. We visited the Case Folio. It's an interesting guided tour. Isabelle "non-stop" (because you pick up the tour as you arrive and she just keeps going) told us the uses for all the local products: bamboo, different trees, plants, etc. Almost every plant can be used entirely from the leaves to the fruit to the roots, and when no longer productive, the wood.

On our drive back, we stopped in Ste. Suzanne, to visit a vanilla plantation. This is a recent plantation and actually it's a sugar plantation with a vanilla production showcase. The vanilla is grown in the forests. What we saw, here, was just for demonstration purposes. Vanilla is an orchid plant. The flowers, though, only last one day. So the flower has to be pollinated during that day, or there's no vanilla pod. Now, October, is the flowering season, so we got to see how they do it. The technique was invented by a 12-year-old slave, Edmond Albius, in the mid-1800s. He got no compensation other than his master, a botanist, did give him the credit for the invention. Since slavery was finally abolished in 1848, I suppose he didn't have to wait long. It's an interesting visit and a long process for good quality vanilla. The vanilla grows in the forest. It has to be detached from the tree trunk and so that the workers can reach the flowers and then the pods. They have to manually pollinate the flowers (The bees that can do this work are Mexican bees that did not adapt to La Réunion. Vanilla is originally from Mexico.) The pods must be hand harvested as they ripen, just at the right time, 9 months later. The crop is put into baskets and plunged into hot water, not boiling water for 3 minutes. Then, the pods are put into wood trunks and covered with blankets to steam. When they come out of steaming, they have turned brown. They are sun-dried for 6 hours a day, 10 days, and then continue drying in the shade. When they are dry enough (and we were shown how to determine this), they are put into wood trunks to age for a year. During that year, they are inspected regularly in order to throw out any pods that show mildew. After the year, they are sorted by size and tied into bundles and stored away again in wood trunks for further ageing. In all, the process is 2 years. We were cautioned against "fresh" vanilla that hasn't been dried. It looks nicer, but won't last. And the vanilla from Madagascar is sun-dried too long and not aged, so it becomes brittle and doesn't last, either. By this time, one is no longer shocked at the price they are selling their vanilla and is prepared to pay.

Yesterday, we headed south, to St. Pierre and beyond. La Réunion is not yet fully tourist-friendly. There are not many signs to the attractions and it's hard to find street names. St. Pierre is a bustling town with a couple of main shopping streets that measure up to any you would find in any sous-préfecture or préfecture in France. The city hall is located in an old warehouse that belonged to the Compagnie des Indes. We tried to find the market and there was an old colonial house to look at, but the house gates were closed, so we couldn't see it, and the market was on a street we didn't find. We left to visit the rum distillery.
Finding the rum distillery was another adventure because the guidebook did not say which exit to get off the highway and as we were in town, we didn't know from which direction they were giving the little instruction they did. It's a good thing we had a real map and managed to find our way to the main road and finally found signs for the distillery. There, too, is an interesting story about the difference between rum agricole, made directly from sugar cane juice and is more common in the Antilles, and rum traditionnel, made from molasses, which is already a by-product after the juice is separated to make sugar. The bagasse, the fiber, is used to fuel the electricity plants, thus supplying the sugar plants with whatever energy they need and a bit extra for the local grid. They also claim that the sugar cane consumes the entire CO2 production from cars on the island. The guide took us through the distillation process, distillation, condensation, ageing... to tasting and, of course, buying. The specialty on La Réunion is rum "arrangé", with fruit. It's really quite good.

From there, we continued along the southern coast to St. Philippe, where we saw our first lava coastline. The village has been here quite some time, so whatever flow created the beautiful hillside and coast, it was a long time ago. We had a very good lunch at La Bicyclette Gourmande. I had a "sauté vanille" -- a mix of lots of vegetables with shrimp (but I could have chosen meat or chicken) in a vanilla sauce, with rice and lentils. Then we had ice cream for dessert, from a local ice cream maker -- a scoop of ginger and honey and another of pralines. Excellent lunch.

After lunch, we continued all the way to the Grande Coulée, the 2007 flow. Plants are just starting to come up. We stopped, on the way, at le Vieux Port, where the forest has grown considerably since the 1986 flow. The floor of the forest is all fern and then there is a variety of trees and other shrubs. It's very tropical, virgin forest -- but young. Anne and I walked all the way down to the ocean. There are some spectacular sights and, a bit further on, a volcanic beach. We didn't go that far.

Finally we got to the Grande Coulée, but we couldn't see the Piton the Fournaise, because, like so many volcanoes, it was shrouded in fog.
On the way back, we stopped at Le Puit des Anglais, a volcanic swimming pool for safe swimming. Looks like fun! And another stop at Le Cap Méchant, more volcanic seaside.

It might sound as if we covered great distances, but really, no, we didn't. We left in the morning at 8:30 and would have been back at 5:30 if we hadn't got caught in a traffic jam at St. Gilles. We quickly turned around and came back to l'Ermitage for our third sunset.

Philadelphia Weekend

I went to Philadelphia on Friday to attend a class reunion on Saturday. I arrived home this morning, Monday. No time for jet lag!
I am not really going to talk about the reunion, here. Not much. It's the first real high school reunion event I've been to. Five years ago, a group of us who have remained friends over the years got together for a weekend in the Catskills and three years ago, a larger group, 16, spent a weekend at Barnegat Light. In the five years, an email group and then a Facebook group have grown and grown and I've made lots of virtual friends. Some have become real, in the flesh friends on their trips through Paris and I've made an effort to meet up with them on my trips -- old friends and new ones that I never knew in high school. I've said it before and it continues to astound me how strong and supportive a group of women friends can be. I'm very glad I made this special trip for this reunion. There were around 120 of us.
Thank you again, Tony and Barbara, for picking me up and driving me from NY to Philly. I'll try to remember the next time I'm looking up flights and have separate browser windows open that I should not click so quickly on the least expensive flight. I loved seeing you. If I had flown into Philly direct, we could have met there and not had that long drive. Of course the long drive did give us time for a good chat and I loved it. Best to avoid Friday rush hour out of N.Y., though!
Jon, thank you for driving over. I enjoyed dinner with you and Eric and the speedy view of the Barnes.
I almost missed going to the Barnes and if Jon hadn't gone through the trouble of getting himself a ticket, I wouldn't have gone. I arranged for a shuttle ride back to JFK and for my 7:10 flight, with the recommended check-in 3 hours before, so the shuttle was to pick me up at 11:30! You kind of forget that you get a tour of Philly as the shuttle picks up customers all over town. I was not the first, so I can't complain. We got a nice tour of the Northeast before heading for the first drop-offs at Newark. The traffic delays on the N.J. turnpike going north were as bad as the ones we had southbound on Friday and we got to JFK at 4:30.
Back to the Barnes. I liked it. One hour is not enough. The museum building is interesting; the reproduction of the rooms of the original house is well done, so the works are shown as they were in the house in Merion. Barnes' disposition is, in my opinion, coherent. I could see the way the colors flowed from painting to painting to Pennsylvania Dutch chest. I liked the chairs and the pewter ware. I could see how the door hinges and other hardware guided the eye and framed the works on the walls. I could connect the works of different origins, different painters, and see their similarities.
I was not surprised that viewers are not allowed to photograph the rooms, but I was surprised that you can't draw or sketch, either. There's a lot of Renoir and I am convinced that I don't like Renoir as much as I thought I did years ago. I merely mentioned back in 2009 that Paul and I had been to see the Renoir exhibit and that it was too crowded, but I forgot to say how disappointed I was in seeing so many Renoirs. Barnes collected a lot of Renoir - the portraits of little girls, the family paintings, nudes. When I see a lot of Renoir all together, I just don't like it all that much. Cézanne is different. I like some of his landscapes and stilllife paintings, but I get depressed when I see his portraits. Barnes collected a lot of Cézanne, too. He also collected a lot of other painters, so I let my eyes wander away from the familiar Renoirs and Cézannes to look at the others. I'll take a notebook next time to jot down thoughts as I go through the exhibit. And I'll make it to the second floor!
Honestly though, a weekend trip to another continent with considerable time zone differences is not a reasonable thing to do.





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In the Economist

I'm so glad that the FATCA, banking, tax dilemma has hit mainstream media recently. The most recent article is in this week's Economist. I got mentioned, about the Fidelity (and other brokerages) behavior. Most of the comments are excellent, too.
Today, I'm in Philadelphia to meet a bunch of high school mates. As I've said many times before, I can't really say "reunion" because I feel as though I'm meeting most of them for the very first time. We've been having a great time getting to know one another on Facebook these past 4 or 5 years, though, so I'm looking forward to this lunch.
Then Jon is driving in, and I'm looking forward to having dinner with him, and with a bit of luck, Eric, too, and maybe a couple of Tobi and Jon's friends. I am sorry Tobi can't make the trip this time. I even got to see Tony and Barbara on this short, short trip, as they were so kind to arrange to be on their way home from a trip to Boston and New York. I had (stupidly) gotten myself a ticket to New York, rather than Philly. I got in three hours late because of mechanical problems that held up our flight in Paris. The shuttle into the city took about twice as long as expected, so we got caught in Friday rush hour traffic down to Philadelphia. The upside of that is that it gave us more time to talk!
I'll write more about this reunion in another post, later, maybe on my way back, tomorrow.

Bum shoulder

Still snowing as I finish up this post

Here we are, mid-March, and it's snowing again. Before the snow, we had freezing rain, so it's very slippery out. I think I'll not go to the library today. I have to return the video projector to the AARO office and I think that can wait until tomorrow, too. Tomorrow, I want to spend some time with Gwen and Sacha. So, I hope the weather cooperates. 

What really astounds me is that OAW was a full month ago! Before that week started, I had a couple of very nice, even snowy, days in Swarthmore. J and E live very near the college campus in a beautiful, comfortable house with their two Basenji dogs, who entertained me thoroughly. We went to see "Silver Linings Playbook" and it was strange to recognize the local places. Well, I didn't recognize them, except that I knew it had been filmed nearby, but J & E certainly recognized the high school, the diner, etc. That was followed by a light supper with K & J. K is another discovered Girls High mate! I can't say enough how wonderful it has been, these past few years, to discover these wonderful women I never knew before. What is great about having never known them in the past, or having no memory of ever knowing them, is that I have no pre-conceived ideas of what kind of people they are -- none of that "we weren't in the same crowd" attitude. The ones I do remember are also wonderful; I'm very pleased to meet so many more.  Speaking of light supper, that was a fantastic homemade minestrone, a complete meal, hot and filling, followed by a thick, homemade pumpkin pie. Whoever complains about how badly Americans eat (French friends do that), they just don't get fed in homes! They certainly don't get fed by J!

Leaving them for Washington, in spite of the snow, I managed to catch my train to D.C. It was so cold, some fo the train's doors were frozen shut and some refused to close once they opened, so we were a few minutes late getting in. Connecting to the D.C. metro, though, is easy and I called T & B, who met me at the Hyatt, which is just at the exit of the Bethesda station. Good thing, too, because it was very, very cold and I didn't have to wait outside. We had a good lunch, there. Of course, we ended up with doggy bags because the servings were too big. On Sunday, we went to a local art show and then they dropped me off at the house my OAW mates and I had rented via airbnb. Ben, the host, was there waiting for me and showed me around. It's right across the street from a supermarket, but we didn't need to get any food. M, one of my housemates, arrived with a ton of food from Costco that she'd bought in anticipation of our kickoff get-together that evening at G's appartment. We had too much food, way too much. We left some of the leftovers with G and brought the rest home with us. Even after we had a mid-week get-together at our place, we still had leftovers, which I hope our hosts managed to finish off. J and I each had our own rooms and M had the sofabed and we did not get in each other's way getting up, using the bathrooms, etc. We had a nice dining table to do our evening prep work and just chat around. It was a short, direct walk to the metro station (Potomac Ave.) and only two stops to Capitol South. We were definitely the closest to our daily destination. I would certainly try to get this house again for the next OAW!

The jigsaw puzzle

All things come to an end and I left DC on Friday to go to Boston to see E & M. E is a true Girls High friend, one that I've never lost touch with, one I love and we can just pick up our conversation. At last I got to relax. It was relaxing at J & E's, but I was jet-lagged. It was relaxing at T & B's, but I was excited and a bit anxious about the week to come. At E & M's, the week was over; jetlag was over; I could relax. Besides, it was going to snow, so we didn't go out. We talked, and talked, and talked and started a jigsaw puzzle, and listened to "Car Talk" and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me". I have now programmed my nice internet radio to NPR podcasts, and to a several stations in the US and the UK, too. 

E & M digging out to take me to the airport!

Since just before Christmas, my shoulder has been hurting. I started out taking something for the pain and inflammation, but there was no change in the pain, so I didn't keep it up. In addition to the shoulder, the biceps hurts constantly, as if I were By the end of January, my right arm could hardly move, but our trip to England, followed by my trip to the States was coming up, so I went to see an osteopath here n Nogent and he worked more than an hour on my locked joints and got my arm to move. He sent me home with a recommendation to put ice on my shoulder and warned me it might hurt a bit more for a few days. We went off to England and my shoulder hurt more and then settled to its regular pain. In the couple of days home, before leaving for the States, I decided not to go back to the osteopath so soon, because I really couldn't bear having it hurt more again when I needed to wear a backpack and pull a suitcase. I had a very good massage at the airport in Boston on my way home; I could feel the knots undoing. And on arriving home, I went straight to the osteopath, who did his thing and remarked that it was easier to manipulate the joints. It was not more painful in the following days and I managed to lift my arm and use it. The next week was even a bit better. I still needed to make an appointment with the doctor because this is not the first time I've had this and I need to have the underlying cause of it taken care of. With the school vacation, though, I can't get through to her. This past week, I've regressed to where I was two months ago and I realize how time flies. I guess, too, that I'm trying to compensate for awkwardness and straining my back in the process. Tomorrow -- return to the osteopath.

Sorry to complain. But that's why I haven't felt like writing much.  I have managed to get back to scanning the negatives and I came across more than 200 black and white negatives of Paul's that go back to before we met. I scanned those yesterday and am trying to figure out some order to them. I'll put a few up on Picasa to share with D.L., P & J, and K. B. -- some pictures of the Pierwige from 1967-69! Only a few more days to go with the negatives and I'll be all caught up on what I have. But still can't find the ones that got me started on this -- from the trip out West in '93. I found the first part of the trip -- Jon and Tobi's new house, Claire holding the baby, Eric, Louis' birthday party at Terry and Roger's, some beautiful black and white shots of Roger's furniture...and scattered photos from the West.

The trip we didn't take to Barcelona

A little over two weeks ago, Paul and I decided to get away for a few days. The Nov. 1 holiday, All Saints Day, meant that I didn't need to go into the library and since it always coincides with school holidays, my other activities were off, too. Where to go? Well, we could go east and visit our friends in Freiburg, Germany and Basel, Switzerland, or south towards Montpellier where we also have friends and then on to Barcelona. We chose to go south. 

We left on Wednesday morning and took the highway that goes through the Massif Centrale, through the volcano area beyond Clermont-Ferrand, through Ardeche to Millau, where we got off the highway to take smaller roads. From Millau there is a beautiful view of the new bridge on the highway. It is quite a high and long bridge. Since we got off before the bridge, we got to see the view. We knew we were heading for Aniane, which is a town north of Montpellier where Emma is interested in settling. There should have been a road that went though the hills of maquis, but we got to T intersection instead of being able to cross. So, really we ended up going on a big detour because we ended up on the highway again. 

Aniane is a town that seems to have a permanent population and activity. Nearby is St-Guilem-le-Desert, with its abbey. St. Guilem is all shut down for the winter. It's beautifully restored, but very touristy. There are gigantic parking lots as you approach and in season you have to park there and take the shuttle to the village. The shops, most of which are shut, are all tourist-trap type businesses. Almost every house is a "guest" house. On the far side of the hill -- go left instead of right -- is St. Jean de Fos, where the grape and olive growers live. There are lots of vinyards and olive groves all around the area. We spent Thursday morning driving and walking around those two towns and then headed down to Montpellier to see our former neighbors. They lived next door to us for a few years; he's American, from Cherry Hill, and she's Spanish, from Barcelona. They have a little boy, 6, and twin girls, 3 1/2. They certainly made a good move to a spacious house near the center of Montpellier and not far from the university. It was a pleasure to see them and have a nice family lunch with them before they themselves headed off on a holiday the next day. After lunch, and on their recommendation, we visited the Valmagne Abbey. Beautiful. The architect created the illusion of greater depth by making the pillars thinner (almond-shaped) and closer together at the far end. The stone is old seabed limestone, so you can see the shell incrustations. And it's a nice faded ocre color. It was raining off and on and by the time we got back to the hotel in Aniane, it was pretty non-stop.

The rain was heavy the next morning and the weather report was for heavy rain all day and the next few days, and according to the map, we figured it was going to be that way all the way to Barcelona. However, it looked like it might be clearer towards Toulouse. So, we headed westward towards Toulouse. We went to see the Lac de Salagou, which is another area Emma has been interested in. We could drive around the lake over the dam, so it was a long drive to get to the other side and see Celles, the village that was abandoned when they built the dam, but which did not end up under water in the end. In the rain and out of season, it's really desolate.

We continued, taking the smallest roads, zigzagging through the Montagne Noire, which was indeed dark in the rain. But it was a beautiful drive. The leaves are changing color (late, this year) and most of the trees still have their leaves. The road was sometimes tiny and it took us almost 8 hours for this short drive to Toulouse.

The next day, we spent the morning walking around Toulouse (St. Sernin, les Jacobins, the museum, ...), and then it was time to go see our old friends. We spent a few hours with them, catching up on families. We even saw their two girls, one, who lives near Pau now, and the other, who is a lawyer in Paris. 

On Sunday, we left a little early in order to reach the Lebelles in Pau for lunch. Again, we wanted to take the leisurely pace of the smaller roads. Unfortunately, I had left my notebook computer at the parking lot (I guess I put it down when I paid) and we had to go back to get it. Since I had handed in a voucher from the hotel, the parking lot attendant called the hotel and they called me -- oof!), so we headed back, picked up the computer, and then had to take the highway to Pau in order not to be late. We didn't want to miss lunch because Emmanuelle's parents were there and heading home after lunch. We hadn't seen them in 10 years, so it would have been a shame to miss saying hello, at least. 

Emmanuelle and Alexandre are great hosts; we did make it for lunch and stayed on over night. The next morning, under cloudless skies, we went for a nostalgic drive to Bagnères-de-Bigorre and then through the Vallée de Campan to the Tourmalet and then on to the Col d'Aubisque. As we left the mountains, we hit rain again and stopped for the night in Mont de Marsan. 

We headed home on Tuesday, through the Périgord and Dordogne. It was raining the whole time, so we didn't feel like visiting much of anything. Sarlat looked pretty full of people; we couldn't find a parking spot. We stopped for lunch, an excellent lunch at Les Viviers St. Martin, which seemed to be one of the very few restaurants open on the holiday.

At some point we ended up on a highway, the old N 20, but as we got closer to the toll road, on the approach to Paris, we got off again and meandered home.

I hope you open some of the links to the places I mentioned. 

Last week was an uneventful week at home and now I'm at Claire & Geoff's! I'm going to see Beth Levin later in the week when she comes to Manchester. Haven't seen her in 43 years; I hope we manage to find a little time to chat ;-)

And we are home now!

It's been a week since I last wrote and we've been home since Sunday! I keep telling myself I should finish up with the trip blog, but then other things, like sleep, keep getting in the way. Today, I'm up at a normal time and I have a little time before I have to get to other things to do, so here I go; I'm going to finish the trip log.

I last left off when we had arrived in Saigon in time for dinner and bed. We left early the next morning, heading for Can Tho, on the Mekong Delta. The rice paddies are bigger than further north; the houses are not packed into villages with the paddies all around, but rather sit individually in the middle of paddies. There are many more family tombs in the paddies, too. That's an old custom that had died out, more or less, in the north. The houses are bigger, but sometimes just look like shacks made of corrugated tin set together like playing cards. Our guide told us that in the south, people don't care much for what their houses look like as long as they provide adequate shelter. He explained that many people build without permits, because getting a permit is a long, dragged out affair and can be expensive. They go ahead and build -- quickly -- hoping to be finished before the local police notice. And if the police do notice, they'll pay off and get a receipt, which is cheaper than the permit. If the government decides to take back the land, they will not get any indemnity for the house.

We got on a boat that took us through a floating market on one of the main branches of the delta river. We stopped to see how they make coconut milk caramels! We also saw how they refine the salt collected from the salt paddies -- it comes loaded with lots of sand and other impurities and is diluted in fresh water, which is heated and then the salt other solids separate, leaving the salt to form a crust that can be collected. They use rice husks for fuel. We also saw a woman make paper-thin rice wrappers, both the sweet version and the regular one used for spring rolls. We saw the caramel making and the rice popping for sweet bar cookies. And then we were set at a table for tea and tastings. Finally, we were set free in the shop and allowed to ask the price and look for what we liked. No pressure. Under such favorable conditions, we bought plenty!

We had lunch - a home-cooked meal. Could have fooled me. It sure looked like a restaurant, with three or four sections that could each hold two or three boatloads of 20 or so people. That's an elephant-ear fish, deep-fried with its scales. The scales are easy to scrape off when you're ready to serve. You make your own little spring rolls with a bit of fish, cucumber, salad and mint. That fish was enough for six of us. Of course, it wasn't the only dish for lunch; we also had pork and beef dishes, as well as vegetables and some vegetable soup.

We stopped at a tree nursery, too, before getting to Vinh Long, where we boarded the bus again for the ride to Can Tho.

Can Tho is a booming riverfront town, very pleasant. It's filled with tourists, both foreign and Vietnamese. We had a little time to walk around before dinner. Paul went exploring, but I rested. We walked to dinner on the river front, had a very nice dinner and then strolled back to the hotel for a drink up at the rooftop bar with a view of the city lights at night.

The next morning we set off in a boat again to see another floating market. These are wholesale markets. The bigger boats have tons of melons or cabbage or sugar cane, etc. and the smaller "retailers" come by to pick up what they need for their shops. Other people, like the woman in the photo, come by serving soup or drinks. This is a region of churches. There seem to be more Catholics here than Buddhists.

We left Can Tho after the morning river jaunt and headed for Saigon. According to our guide, about 75% of the population still refer to the city as Saigon; another 20% will just say "the city", leaving only a few people calling it Ho Chi Minh City. We stopped at a luxurious roadside restaurant stop for an excellent lunch and got to Saigon in the afternoon. We had dinner/traditional music show at the Majestic Hotel (famous journalist meeting place during the Vietnam War). The hotel is a 1924 masterpiece and is beautifully maintained. Our own hotel was strange; it was a suite hotel, so we had plenty of room, but they put up a fight before giving us a couple of small bottles of water (an obligation in countries where the tap water is not potable), the electrical outlets are few and hard to find and UK-standard once you find one. 

(About electrical outlets -- in Cambodia, they've got real multi-standard outlets, so Europeans and Americans can generally get their plugs to fit. I think Australians can, too, as can the Brits. In Vietnam, it was usually continental European standard, but sometimes US, sometimes a US-European hybrid.)

Back to Saigon. We had Saturday morning free. I went to a spa with Mireille and we had full-body, oil massages followed by a manicure and pedicure. A lovely, relaxing morning. Lunch at a Chinese restaurant and then, finally, a quick tour of the city (the Reunification Palace, formerly the Presidential Palace, the Cathedral and the Art Deco post office) before 5:00, when Monique and Gerard left the group to continue for an extra few days in Cambodia visiting the Angkor sites. The rest of us waited in a 5-star hotel lobby for our own bus to the airport.

Terry and Roger, I can't help but think that you would love visiting Saigon and Hanoi. They have kept some of the most beautiful pre-WWII buildings!

For some unknown reason, just before boarding, Paul was given an upgrade to Premium Economy (same economy seats and meals, but more leg room). Very kindly, he refused unless I, too, was upgraded. They said, "no", but a few minutes later came back with the upgrade for me. We still don't know why. Why the upgrade in the first place, why they couldn't, then could upgrade me. We certainly appreciated the leg room.

Emma picked us up at the airport; Anne came over for lunch; we slept. Louis and Gwen came over last night for a light dinner. Paul's cold has turned into something a bit worse and he's going to see the doctor, finally, today; my cold has run its course. The insulation work has started in the attic; they've gotten rid of the old insulation. I'm working on lunch reservations for our big family birthday weekend in 10 days. Back to normal.

In an around Buon Ma Thout - Central Highlands

We left Nha Trang, stopping at a fishing village where the wind was too strong for the fleet to go out, but the women had managed to catch a few fish in their nets close to shore. They spread them out on the sidewalk for the other women to haggle over who got what. It was from tiny ports like this that the boat people left in 1975; the boats are tiny and it's 600 km. to the Philippines. It is estimated that about 1,000,000 made it to safety, though rarely all the way that far (they got to Thailand or were picked up by other boats like the one from Medecins sans Frontière). It is also estimated that at least as many died trying. This is a beautiful site and will probably disappear fairly soon in the name of tourist development. You can see vast spreads of land along the coast that have been cleared for hotel resorts.

We drove through some very interesting countryside as we entered the mountains: bananas, sugar cane, corn, rubber trees, teak, and coffee. There were more and more traditional houses. This is where many of the ethnic minorities live. We picked up a local guide, an obligation, but a nice one, and proceeded to a M'nong village for lunch, an elephant ride through the Lak lake (an unnecessary attraction as far as I am concerned, especially when our elephant ducked in the deeper water and our seat was not high enough). The ride ended with a walk through the village. This is enlightening; the people still live in their long houses on stilts. The houses have one window if there is a woman and then a window for each girl. Closed windows mean "unavailable", open windows mean "ready to marry"; most windows are shut. There are animals all over: hens with their chicks close behind; sows with their piglets; cows, sometimes with a calf; dogs all over the place. The disturbing thing is that, although the kids go to school, like all Vietnamese children, they are expected to continue to live in their villages. They have satellite TV and school, so they can see modern living standards, but are expected to remain where they are, with a hose outside for a shower and toilet in the woods behind the village. It seemed to me like walking through an exhibit in a national park.

Buon Ma Thout is a nice town, with clean, wide streets. On waking up we had another surprise -- sunshine! The museum of ethnic music and crafts was closed but we stopped to look at the new building, and admire the big camphor trees in the garden in front of the Bao Dai's house. He was the last king of Vietnam, who lived in exile in France and died in the late 1990s. It was so wonderful to stroll through this park in the sun and warmth.

We then headed for the waterfalls at Dray Sap and that was a short hike, but it was so good to be out of the bus and walking, no one complained. 

We returned to the city for lunch and a visit to a modern pagoda. There's a public school next to the pagoda and the kids were out on recess, so we stopped to say hello. They wanted our autographs. It was amusing. They were all screaming "hello", but you can't go any further in a discussion. We ended with a visit to the local market. I felt very confined and not comfortable at all. Once we got through the poultry section, I had to leave fast.

We are now in Saigon, on route to the Mekong delta.

Photos up to date

Here is the photo album, up to date to yesterday. It's the same as the one currently showing on the menu on the side, but since that will change, I'm posting it here.

Warm but stormy in Nha Trang

I've got internet access in the room and I've got time before dinner! I just read an article in the Washington Post, "Spring Travel: Old war wounds give way to a new Vietnam". Can't be the same country. This article was written from the perspective of high-class hotel accommodations, no mention of the constant pressure to buy. The pressure to buy is not the same as the vendors coming up to you and asking (pleading with) you to buy; that kind of begging you have everywhere, it seems. Here it is a matter of the guide saying you're going to have a stop to pee and then have you spend 45 minutes in the adjacent shop. Yesterday, in Hoi An, I skipped the morning visit of the city because I've caught a cold. I stayed at the hotel and rested. Our guide had been called away for something urgent, so we had a substitute, a nice girl who sped the group through the museum in 10 minutes, whereas Paul and Alain would have liked to spend a little more time, to drop them all at another shop/factory for 45. They finished the tour by 10!

This morning our bus took us back to Da Nang to get the plane to Nha Trang and the guide suggested we stop on the way to see the marble sculptors. I think there was a unanimous groan of "NO!" from us and she got the message, so we did not stop. The Nha Trang airport is Cam Rahn. These place names are so familiar to me. They've turned the old US air base into a sparkling new international airport. After the Americans left in 1975, the Soviets rented the naval base until their regime change and they decided it was too expensive. The Vietnamese finally said "enough" and have decided to make the bay the luxury vacation destination of the future. It's just beginning, but you can see the lay of the land: intersections and streets in the middle of nowhere, some buildings going up, golf courses being laid, the beach, the beautiful sand.... It really could be pleasant.

One of the problems is that this is such a quick-paced tour. We are seeing a lot, and really, it is a beautiful country, but we can't seem to do more than scratch the surface.

Hué to Hoi An

Hué
Early rise, 3 a.m. In order to leave the hotel with our box lunches at four to get to the airport a little before five for our flight at 6:10. Looked like only western tourists are so crazy; the flight was full, though.
We arrived in Hué – not just gray; it was raining. This, apparently, is normal Hué weather. All the scooters were covered with multi-colored ponchos. Sometimes there was a second person sharing the back seat and the poncho. That is the only color on the streets. Hué is already the south. The houses are wider and not so high. They also look better built and more colorful.
We had a 45 minute boat ride on the Perfume River. Why call it a boat; it was a floating shop and we were a captive audience. It was unpleasant in spite of the adorable little girl who must be about 3, no more. The family lives on the boat. We visited the citadel and forbidden city – just like the Chinese one, in miniature and much simpler originally. Very few of the original buildings exist and have been restored. The citadel was destroyed during the the Vietnam War , the Tet Offensive in 1968. As the symbolic center of power, dating back to the nineteenth century and until 1945, each side wanted it. It had no military significance whatsoever. The North won. After the war, the Communists were not particularly interested in restoring vestiges of the kingdom and western (French) domination. Furniture disappeared; what buildings hadn't been destroyed by artillery fire just collapsed from neglect. The empty spaces became parks. Now that tourism is the big money maker, they are busy trying to restore, but the work is shoddy and the new roofs leak; the lacquer paint is fading. Such a shame.
After a very, very nice lunch, we headed to the kings' tombs in Hoa Lu. We only made it to the first one,  and it is set in a beautiful site, with a lake and gardens. We were wet and cold and not very energetic. We had to walk to and from the tomb through a gauntlet of vendors. Even the babies were chanting “buy banananeus”. (that's not a typo; that's the local pronunciation.) Cute babies, younger than Aurelia, chanting in English! We speculated that these were their first words. We got to our hotel and, for once, we were able to walk to the restaurant for dinner. This was the first day we've done any walking in Vietnam. We've been in the bus too much.
This morning we headed out at 8:00, a late start! It was raining, but Mr. Dung promised that we were heading to warmer weather and clearer skies. It was a long drive that took all morning through the mountains, but once through the tunnel, on the other side, the sky was light gray, no rain. Da Nang was a short distance. It's a relatively clean city, the third largest in the country. It's still a major port. They are clearing the waterfront to make room for resort hotels and casinos. The old US airbase is currently a lot of forest with the old airplane hangars, but all that is going to be turned into golf courses and more resorts. We visited the Cham museum (vestiges of the Hindu period, 7th to 13th centuries) and then had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. We passed by a lot of marble sculptors, mostly of funeral monuments and tombs, on the way to Hoi An. When we arrived, we stopped at a silk factory. They don't really weave the silk there; it's too noisy, but they do the standard demonstration. Then you get to visit the shop. You can see the embroiders, the seamstresses and so on. They even have wood-carving and lamp-making. Again, a prisoner. We stayed and stayed. Eventually people buy, so when everyone had finally made our purchases, ordered our custom clothes (I escaped that), we were taken to the hotel. Now, I'm going down to the lobby to send these last few posts.
I don't want to complain. I'm having a good time and the visits are interesting. It's just this constant pressure to buy is irritating. I'd probably be much more inclined to buy if there wasn't so much pushing. My instinct is to say “no”. There's no way you can admire anything without the immediate price. And many of the things are too expensive for the shoddy work.

It's cold here

Hotel Star in Hoa Binh. Where to start? On the outside, it looks like a modern hotel. When you walk into your room, it looks perfectly normal. But if you look closely, the carpet is disgusting. There was an air conditioner that should have also served as a heater. I turned it on, and when it finally decided to start, it blew out several months of accumulated filth, almost like soot. Fortunately, it fell mostly on to the extra bed. I immediately turned it off. There was no hot water. Dinner was a joke. I had to ask for eating utensils (any kind would do) five times, before I got a dirty fork and spoon. Breakfast was no better – moldy bread, a cold, fried egg, ….

We left the hotel, all anxious to be on our way to a ride in an ox-cart and then a bark in rice paddies. Little did we realize it was a four-hour ride on rough country roads to the restaurant for lunch (very good lunch, but cold) with the ox-carts that came by to pick us up and take us through the village to the rice paddy. It was a slow ride, nice to see the interior of the village, though. The houses are not so dreary as along the main road. In fact, some of them are quite nice. But the ride is long and uninteresting after a while. Also, the minimum per person is $1, which makes the woman who drives the ox-cart disproportionately rich with a few rides of 4 people per cart several times a week. After a long while, you get to the dock where women are waiting in their bamboo barks to take you for a glide in a rice paddy along the mountain. It's beautiful and there is a cave (ah, la Grotto Azura? Not quite. You take a little tour of the cave and then head back. The whole ride takes a little more than an hour. We were freezing by the time the whole thing was over.

The driver kindly turned the heat on in the bus and we headed back to Hanoi, three hours away. Well, with traffic and bad road conditions, it was more like another four hours, with a stop to see the temples of the founding dynasties Dinh and Lê. Dinh founded his dynasty in the early 10^th century and named his son as heir, but he was assassinated and the prince was too young, so his mother became regent and married Lê, the head of the army, who became king and named his own son heir. Sounds like a pretty familiar story, very Shakespearean.

We got back in time to go straight to dinner, which was good. There seems to be a system. At lunch we had pumpkin soup; at dinner we had pumpkin soup. Yesterday, we had vegetable soup at lunch time; at dinner we had vegetable soup. The same repetition happens with desserts; we have watermelon day, pineapple day, crème caramel day and so on.  

A day in the mountains

You can't visit two contrasting countries like Cambodia and Vietnam without making some comparisons. So far, Cambodia is coming out the winner. Vietnam is busier and more industrious, but Cambodia is more harmonious. As in Cambodia, the houses, at least in the Hanoi region, are narrow and long. In contrast, they are built of brick and those gray building blocks made of a mixture of coal, sand and clay. Gray, like the sky. The facades are all different, though and as the family gets richer, they add another story or two. It's not very pretty, really. There is coal dust everywhere. Almost everyone wears a mask to filter out dust. In vietnam, they wear cloth masks that they wash out; in Cambodia, in the cities, they also wear masks, paper, to filter out traffic pollution.
In Hanoi, the streets are packed – cars, scooters, trucks, buses, bikes, pedestrians – all trying to move smoothly without having to stop. It was the same in Cambodia, without the pedestrians, but here, they honk warning honks constantly. The sidewalks are just as packed – people walking, people sitting on stools having a quick meal, smoking, getting a sidewalk haircut, reading the paper. There is also merchandise flowing out of the tiny shops and thousands of scooters parked, sometimes three deep.
The north has been very chilly and I don't have the right kind of clothes. My sweater and raincoat are not warm enough. On Wednesday we headed into the mountains.  Since we left very early and made decent time, we stopped at a town market to walk through. They were selling sections of sugar can to suck, bamboo shoots, eggs (chicken, duck, and quail), meat (pig and dog mostly).
We stopped at a Muong village where Mr. Dung knows the people and some of the group had tea with one of the families. We did not. It's one thing to be invited into someone's home; it's another to have the impression they are selling their intimacy. Even if they are his friends and perhaps it was an authentic invitation, it didn't seem that way. All the children expected candy and were not content to take just one or two, they ended up with almost a bag's worth of candy each. We and a few others of the group felt very uncomfortable. That said, the village is quite beautiful. They live in wood houses on stilts. The floor is made of unrolled bamboo.
We had lunch in a Taÿ village, just outside Mai Chau. This is a tourist town. They still grow rice, but the town is really a lot of restaurants, guest houses, and souvenir shops. The weaving is beautiful, but the feeling of being trapped is there. The more I feel trapped, the less I am inclined to buy anything. Kind of like New Hope or Sausalito, Mont St. Michel or Lourdes. This is what they call a White Taÿ village – black skirt, white blouse buttoned down the middle. Black Taÿ wear a black blouse. The Muong wear any color they like, buttoned down the side. Frankly, I think these vestimentary differences are dying out; we didn't see them. None of these ethnic groups wears the conical hat, though. The women wear turban-like cloths around their heads. We had lunch in this Taÿ village/shopping center and it was very good; the men do the cooking, here.
Not far from there, on the way to Hoa Binh, we stopped for an ethnic folk dancing, music show. Again, it was a show in a shop. The show was very pleasant and I bought the video CD, so I can probably discard the little film clips I took.

Ha Long, Hanoi

On leaving the Halong Bay we went through lots of villages – all dark and bleak. Coal dust covers everything. They use coal powder pressed into briquettes for cooking, mixed with clay and pressed into briquettes for heating, and mixed with sand and gravel to make building blocks. We stopped at the Bah Trap pagoda, “Tour du Pinceau” in French for some reason that escapes me. We got to Hanoi just in time to put our baggage in our rooms and set off for an early dinner, followed by a stroll through the old quarter, the 36 streets, where each street used to have a specialty, like silk or leather, but now it seems like it's all electronics, tourist souvenirs, and baggage. I wish I could remember the size of Emma's backpack that has been through its lifetime of travel; it can retire if a good replacement were found.
Early the next morning, we set off in pousse-pousse to go to the National History museum, where we got a concise visual reminder of the different periods and dynasties in Vietnamese history. Hanoi became the capital in 1010 and the king set up a mandarin elite, like the Chinese. So, it was a merit society in which the best elements from all over the kingdom were eligible to take the annual exam to enter the administration. To that end, he also created the Literary Pagoda, where the exams were held and the names of the doctors (our PhDs) were inscribed on steles. Before lunch, we stopped at the Tour du Nord, built to protect the city from the dragon from the north (China).
After an unexciting lunch, we went to the Ethnology Museum, which was very interesting. The ethnic groups are broken down by language groups; the Vietnamese make up 80% of the population and the other 20% are minorities of ancient migrant groups that originated in Indonesia (the Cham, for example) or southern China (Mao, Yao, for example) or Thailand. Further distinction comes from where they live: high mountains (H'mong), mid-mountains (Taÿ), valleys (Muong). The Vietnamese stick to the plains and deltas. Of course, this is over-simplified, but it gives a rough idea of how society is set up. We had just enough time to see the “Pagode au Pilier Unique” with a stop on the way at Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum This monument to Ho was built in contradiction to his most explicit wishes. In good  or Confucian tradition, he'll be venerated, then adored. We're getting a good education on this process, the same as in China, when the king died, a tomb, a model of the palace, was built for the king's spirit to live. And people pray to king and make offerings.

Preparing to travel

In all our married life, I have been the one who packs the bags. I've always been very good at it and even when we traveled with the four children, we never had much baggage. If we were not staying with family (and their laundry facilities) we always managed to stop at hotels or in towns that had laundromats. Now, we always have a tube of detergent for washing by hand and as soon as we stop anywhere long enough or dry enough to allow whatever it is to dry before packing again, we do a little wash.
The thing is that, until a few years ago, I didn't need to think about all this until a day or so before the trip. Then, for some unknown reason, I started to panic as I was packing. This time I'm not panicking, but I must admit that having Paul participate in the preparation has been stressful for me. Aside from the very last-minute stuff, we are packed. In fact, the suitcases were ready for filling a full 3 weeks before. We've got lists that I compiled into a single list, but I've felt pressured beyond all reasonableness to do all this long before we need to. Not all the pressure has been bad -- we have been to see our doctors; we've had or have scheduled vaccinations; filled our prescriptions well in advance. We've done our reading. If we were leaving tomorrow, I'd say we could manage that. But we're not leaving tomorrow!
We don't need the same wardrobe. That helps. Here, it's cold and rainy. There, it'll be summery and, we hope, the dry season. I say it's cold, but really it's not that cold these days. You can feel spring is on the way. The forsythia is in bloom and there's a reddish tint on some budding bushes and trees and light green on others. When we get home, it'll be a completely different scene!
We haven't been completely immersed in the upcoming trip, though. We went to see the play "L'amour, la mort, les fringues" (Love, Loss, and What I Wore) by Nora Ephron last Tuesday. It was excellent. Minimal set, five excellent actresses, and a story women can all relate to: "what I was wearing when...." or what dilemmas we've faced, like stockings (or later, panty hose), lipstick, the first bra, shoes, handbags, and so on. From the laughter in the audience, I could hear that men know our story pretty well, too. This was one of our Christmas gifts. We've got another show coming up in April.
We also went to the movies last week, to see "Les femmes du sixième étage", which we enjoyed very much. The setting in Paris in the 1960's seems perfect. I arrived in Paris in the early '70s, but the bourgeois apartments with the maids' rooms on the top floor were still just that. It wasn't until a little later that most of the maids' rooms were rented out to students or bought up by a single owner who tore down the walls and made beautiful little apartments up under the roofs. The attitudes towards the (mostly) Spanish maids are just what I remember. The Spanish maids replaced the Breton maids and were then replaced by the Portuguese maids, but by that time, it wasn't so much maids as it was cleaning ladies who worked for more than one family. I've had Portuguese cleaning ladies on and off, but more recently, it's been Eastern European women, although our most recent cleaning lady was French. She had come to the conclusion that she could make better money house cleaning. She left us when she had enough customers closer to her home and we decided, once again, to try to keep up with the housework on our own. From the looks of baby buggy pushers I see, it looks like the nanny market has been taken over by African immigrants. I guess if one had been thinking ahead and taking pictures of cleaning ladies, concierges, and childminders over the years, we'd have a nice history of social mobility. I doubt this movie will make it to the US, but if you have a chance to see it, do.
I met up for lunch with a couple of friends from my KDS days. That's always nice. P's son is in New Zealand and we had lunch the day after the Christchurch earthquake hit. He's ok, but I bet he'll consider earthquake zones negatively when it comes time to decide whether or not to settle somewhere. C's busy setting up her business; she's got a few contracts under her belt now, so she seems well on her way.
Last night, I got invited to see a play, "Les lois de la gravité". R got cheap tickets. It's a tiny theater, and it was packed. Packed and overheated. I thought the acting was very good, but that the play was stretched out a bit too long. After the play, we met up with S, who lives near the theater, and had a little talk-fest at the café across the street from her place. I didn't get home until a quarter to two! It was a fun evening.
Now, it's time to fix lunch!

Got a cold

painting by Joan Becker

I've got a cold. The kind that makes your throat scratchy and your eyes tear up constantly. I spent last weekend doing nothing except watch TV and try to read. Before that, though...
Last week, on Saturday, Paul and I went to the Salon de la Photo. We had invitations and just as we were leaving the house, we called Louis and Gwen and discovered that they were also on their way there, so we met them at the entrance and visited it together. There were too many people to do any real shopping around. I did manage to stop in at the Darqroom stand and see the different paper quality they use. (If you watch the  Salon de la Photo  report, it shows Darqroom at the end.) Nico V. wasn't there on Saturday and I was sorry to miss seeing him. After about an hour, we left, had lunch, and then headed over to Louis and Gwen's for a while. It was a nice way to get out on a gray and drizzly day.
Monday,first I went to see Candace. We were supposed to have met at the dubbing studio on Saturday, but that got cancelled because she had other meetings and on Monday she was recovering from a bout of something and not yet in condition to go to the studio, so we met up at her hotel. She worked a bit -- caught up on phone calls and e-mails, but mostly we were able to chat. I introduced her to Joan Becker's site. (Erica's sister-in-law). I hope she doesn't mind my plugging it here on the blog with a picture reference. Candace and I zoomed in on several of her paintings (especially the one above), trying to identify the details. I think I would love to have one of her paintings.
I went to see the movie, Sarah's Key (Elle s'appelait Sarah). I had read the book last month. I must say, for once, I think the movie is better than the book. I felt the characters were too cut and dried in the book, too predictable. They seem to have more depth in the movie. The acting is excellent.
On Friday, Paul and I headed into Paris to see the Monet exhibit. When we got out of the metro, the line was already there, at the corner. The entrance to this exhibit is about half a block away. Our Sésame card allows us to cut the line, but the entrance for that was also full and we figured that it would be mayhem inside, so we decided to go to FNAC voyages to set up the reservations for the big birthday weekend at Disneyland Paris in April. I have now cancelled the option I had with our local travel agency -- they were so useless thinking outside the box!
Then came the cold. After the weekend indoors, on Monday, Paul set off for Toulon to help Pierre take the small pieces and knickknacks from their mother's apartment, so it'll be more presentable to prospective buyers. I went to painting, but spent most of the morning coughing and not very up to painting. In the afternoon, since I was all alone in the house, I decided to put some papers away.
Tuesday I did some more organizing on the computer and then went to the library, but the book dust setting off coughing spasms was such that Ed sent me home early. I went to bed early.
Wednesday, the cat had me sequestered in my room a good part of the day. We can't let him in the house unless it's under complete supervision, now. There have been too many accidents, so unless he's in our arms or laps, he's to stay outside. And ouside, he meows constantly. He does seem to know if we're home, or not. It's unnerving. My only solution is to hole up in my room with the door shut, so the meowing only comes in faintly. I did manage to read, though. I'm almost finished with A Life of Picasso, Vol. I.
Thursday -- Paul was supposedly coming home this evening, but apparently he's staying down south another day or two. Not that he called me to let me know. I called to ask if he had indeed left and at what time in order to know when to expect him, but Gillette told me he was staying. To think, I cleaned up the house for nothing! Well this gave me time to catch up on the blog.

So far, a wonderful trip

It's so good to just be able to spend some time with Tony and Barbara! I got in a bit late on Tuesday because my connecting flight to Washington was delayed two hours. I tried to use my phone, but it won't work in the US. I'm angry about that because that is the one thing a really insist on when I change phones, that they work in the US. It doesn't work with the US SIM card or the French SIM card, so it's not the card, it's the conversion to the US system. But, that little communication snafu being what it is -- little, I managed to find a pay phone to let them know I'd be late. I was thinking how it was a shame I hadn't just picked up the car in Philly and driven to DC. It would have saved time on the return trip next Tuesday.

Once at the DC airport, I picked up the car with its GPS and, having arrived after rush hour, made it speedily to Bethdesda, where a lovely Jumbalaya was waiting for me for dinner. We talked for a little while, but I was tired and went to bed early.
On Wednesday, I showed Tony the wiki. We set up his username and password so that he can now go on and enhance the narrative and correct mine. Just opening one document sets off other memories and I love listening to him. Yesterday, we opened a letter he had written to my parents from Germany, full of events that he still remembers.
We had lunch on Wednesday at Sweetgreen, a salad bar restaurant in Bethesda, the third of a chain created by one of N's friends from Georgetown. Rita told me to look it up, so we went there for lunch. The salads are fresh and tasty and since it was a bit past lunch hour it wasn't crowded. Not empty, either. Aside from the music being too loud, forcing one to speak too loudly to converse, it was good and I'd recommend it. I had a tasty dessert of frozen yogurt with fresh fruit toppings.
From lunch we went into DC to see an exhibit. We couldn't find a parking space close enough to the Renwick, so we went to the Smithsonian and saw the exhibit of Madelaine Albright's pins, "Read my pins". Very, very interesting. It's a huge collection and yet she managed to find or buy yet another pin to fit exactly the message she wanted to get across for each meeting. Of course, she also received quite a few pins as diplomatic gifts. Really, click the link for the exhibit website and take a look. It's fascinating.
By the time we got out, it was rush hour and we crawled to the movies to see Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the new Oliver Stone sequel to Wall Street, from 1987. The actors were excellent, but the story was confusing. It does all come together at the end, but it's frustrating to follow. A good movie, but not worth all the hype it's been getting.
Yesterday, Thursday, I went into DC on my own. Tony drove me to the metro station and I got off at Union Station, where I spent a little while just looking around. The station looks beautiful. I don't remember it as so majestic. Of course I guess the building always was, but I just never really looked. They've got quite an upscale shopping center in the station. It was too early, so the shops were not yet open, but I could imagine it well. There's a vast food court downstairs. It's just a short walk to the Russel Bldg. where I stopped to visit Senator Casey's office. I was there as a member of AARO and a constituent from Pennsylvania and was able to meet with his staff person most in tune with tax and financial issues. It was a pleasant meeting and she told me that they are, of course, aware of the unintended effects of tax reporting and banking regulations and welcomed hearing about them personally.... I then went on to the Rayburn Bldg. on the south side of the Capitol, to see someone in Representative Fattah's office and was equally well met. So, I accomplished what I set out to do on the hill.
It was beautiful yesterday, sunny and warm. I walked over to the new Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian, of course. It's a beautiful building of rough sandstone, part of a western landscape. The exhibits are fantastic, but it's too much for a single visit. After an hour, you can't concentrate on what you are seeing or reading. This is definitely a place to come back to over and over. I decided to continue walking and ended up walking all the way over to 17th St. That's the mall, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, up to the White House (where the helicopter was taking off just as I got to the Ellipsis), then up past the Executive Office Bldgs and to the Renwick. Claire and I had been to the Renwick several years ago to see the craft exhibits. This time, my purpose was to see the Bresler collection of turned wood. It was, indeed, a beautiful collection. Some of the wood bowls looked like porcelain. I don't know how they can do such fine wood turning for such a thin shell. That was my purpose, but I discovered another exhibit going on there now: The Art of Gaman. This is a moving exhibit of art - drawings, paintings, sculptures and craft work - done by the Japanese internees at the detainment camps during WWII. Beautiful work in such a desolate setting.
Then, I continued walking to the nearest metro station and, stupidly, I got off at Bethesda instead of the Medical Centers and walked back to the house. Except, very close to the end of this very long walk, I missed a turn and ended up making a phone call from a retirement/nursing home. When I looked at the letterhead to tell Barbara where I was, it was Carriage Hill, where Nana lived for the last few years of her life and died almost 25 years ago. It did look vaguely familiar to me, and of course Barbara had no trouble finding me to pick me up.
We ended the day with lots of reminiscing and looking at pictures after talking a while with Terry and then Jon and Tobi. Tony took down their wedding album so I could see it. My mother was going on 32 when Tony and Barbara got married. She was stunningly beautiful and had such a gorgeous smile. Anne looks so much like her! I've always thought that that's who she takes after, but seeing those pictures makes it obvious.