Spring Trip 2013, Days 26 - 27: Amsterdam

I have been in Amsterdam for about a day and a half now, and I’ll be leaving and flying back home in about 14 hours. My initial thought about Amsterdam after my first half day here was that the city is very much like what Portland would be like if it were a few hundred years older and had canals. After today I have to revise that a bit – the Jordaan neighborhood of Amsterdam is very much like what Portland would be like if it were a few hundred years older and had canals. The rest of Amsterdam is more like what any generic big city would be like if it were a few hundred years old and had canals. The whole of Amsterdam is a cool city, but for me, it is the Jordaan neighborhood that makes it special. I was fortunate to have great weather when I arrived here, and after I had settled in I took a walk around the neighborhood, finding it to be vibrant and yet peaceful, relaxed, and beautiful. In place of the cars that cover most of America’s cities (and much of the rest of Europe), Amsterdam and the Jordaan are filled with bicycles, making what traffic there is in the neighborhood much quieter and less disruptive than what you would find in almost any other similarly-sized city. The neighborhood is draped over a network of canals, most buildings enjoying a waterfront view, with occasional flower-draped bridges and trees providing a lush green canopy overhead. The buildings themselves are all of nearly uniform height – usually three or four stories – and most have the characteristic gables of Amsterdam’s canal houses. Residents of the Jordaan stroll along the canals on sunny afternoons, set up small tables and chairs and hang out on the sidewalks, talk and laugh softly and almost never yell, and seem to just live well. In the Jordaan you do not see much of what gives Amsterdam its somewhat underserved infamy. Yes, you may occasionally encounter a cannabis-selling “coffeeshop,” or detect the odor of marijuana as you walk down the street, but no one is passed out in the gutter, there are no prostitutes in windows, and no one is there to stick a needle in your arm or blow smoke in your face. You do see some of that in other parts of Amsterdam, but not quite so much in the Jordaan.

A canal in the Jordaan neighborhood

The street in the Jordaan that my hostel was on

Like Bruges before it, my visit to Amsterdam was going to be relatively short, just a day and a half, and so I had a fairly full slate of sights planned for the time I had available. I also had to account for time to get myself ready to fly home (and also to finish up my blog, because posting from home as if I were still on the road seemed like it would be disingenuous). I planned on doing self-guided walking tours of the Jordaan neighborhood and of Amsterdam’s old city, along with visits to the Anne Frank House, the Rijksmuseum, and the Van Gogh Museum. As previously mentioned, I was very lucky to have perfectly sunny and warm weather on my arrival, and the Anne Frank House had long hours on that night (Saturday, open until 10:00 pm), so I was able to get a fair chunk of my sightseeing done on the day I arrived. 

The Anne Frank House was an excellent sight, giving you the chance to actually walk through the very same rooms that Anne Frank and seven other Jews hid in for two years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. I cannot say enough how well and thoughtfully done the Anne Frank House is. You go from room to room, with pictures and videos and excellent signage which explains the progression of events and which really immerse you in the experience that the Frank family endured for those two years. You get to walk through all of the rooms that the Frank family lived in for those two years, including Anne’s bedroom, and the connection that you feel to real history there is remarkable. It’s the kind of thing that you can only experience in Europe. The most moving part for me was the hash marks on one wall showing the growth of Anne and her sister. From start to finish, I estimated that Anne grew about six inches, and for some reason that sight more than anything else made the whole thing real for me. You learn that all of the Frank family except for Anne’s father Otto eventually died in the Holocaust. At the end of the museum there is an exhibit that I think very poignantly punctuates the experience. You enter a room with a whole bunch of posts that have “Yes” or “No” buttons on them and video screens on the walls. The video screens display short videos explaining different civil rights conflicts and dilemmas from the real world (such as, should freedom of speech and expression include the freedom to display emblems of hate, such as Nazi swastikas? etc), and after each video the group in the room is invited to vote their opinions on the question posed. I observed that in every case, the group was divided. The lesson is that those questions, just like many which surrounded the rise of Nazism and the persecution of Jews leading up to and during World War II, are not and will never be easy ones to answer. Like I mentioned in my Oradour-sur-Glane post, it is easy in retrospect to say that the world could have done more, should have done more, but the reality is and was that the considerations involved were more complex than that. Yes, unequivocally, the Holocaust and World War II were absolute tragedies. But the real lesson of sights like Oradour, or the Anne Frank House, or Normandy, or the concentration camps in Germany (all of which I have written about in this blog), is that the questions and problems which led to each are difficult and complex ones that, unfortunately, we sometimes solve through violence and persecution. When I say “we” I refer to humankind in general, which all of us are a part of and which is a fact we must keep in mind in order to avoid tragedies like those from occurring again.

After the Anne Frank House I walked around the Jordaan a bit more, got some ice cream (side note: “Pepper Mango” on Rozengracht in Amsteram, best ice cream ever?), and then turned in for the night. The place I’m staying at in Amsterdam is another hostel called Shelter Jordaan. It is a Christian hostel, a trait that I have come to appreciate immensely. Unlike the zoo I stayed at in Barcelona, this place is nice and quiet and mellow. It is pretty small which also helps keep things quiet, and the staff have been universally kind and friendly. They have a strict no alcohol, no drugs policy, which in a place like Amsterdam, where many young visitors are looking for a party, is another point in its favor for me. Aside from all of that it is very much like any other hostel – clean, affordable, and the best-value lodging in town. I won’t deny that I vastly prefer the comfort and privacy of my own room, but if I’m ever traveling solo again I think I will fit hostels in where they make sense. As a solo traveler it is hard to justify spending $100 per night at a budget hotel when I could spend $30 at a hostel.

There was a beach volleyball tournament going on at Dam Square

An Amsterdam canal bridge characteristically crowded with bicycles

A bicycle parking structure near the train station in Amsterdam - I estimated at least several hundred bikes

While I’m off topic I’d like to talk a bit about Dutch language and culture. The Netherlands and Belgium have been the easiest countries language-wise that I have ever traveled in. I never encountered anyone who did not speak English, and relatively few who were not fluent or nearly so. In fact at one point I observed a group of young Dutch people conversing interchangeably in Dutch and English, switching back and forth with perfect fluidity. The complete lack of a language barrier certainly makes travel in Belgium and the Netherlands easier, but perhaps a bit less interesting for those who enjoy learning and communicating in the local language. One could of course try their hand at Flemish or Dutch if they wanted to, but the ease and convenience of communicating in one’s native language can be powerfully attractive. Another thing about language that I noticed is that Dutch is very similar to English. I have read before that Dutch is the most closely-related language to English, and I definitely observed that close relation as I read Dutch signs and heard it being spoken. With a little bit of knowledge of other mutually-related languages (especially German) and some experience with languages in general, it was even possible sometimes to translate Dutch into English unaided. When I heard Dutch being spoken, especially when it was too faint to make out individual words, I often couldn’t tell whether it was Dutch or English at all, whereas with other languages you can usually tell. Even when I could hear it clearly, the similarity to English was apparent. In bits and pieces it sounded similar, enough that I felt like could almost make out what was being said, but not quite.

In other ways, however, Dutch and American culture are radically different, something that I also observed in Amsterdam. One well-known way in which that is the case is Amsterdam’s tolerant stance on drugs. In Amsterdam it is legal to possess and consume marijuana and some other “soft” drugs, and to sell them in designated, licensed establishments. I saw cannabis seeds for sale at the flower market, “magic mushrooms” advertised in a shop window, and very frequently encountered the odor of marijuana and/or marijuana smoke. I saw young people lighting joints at a bus stop, stepped in a puddle of vomit on the sidewalk one morning, and more than once observed people who were clearly under the influence of something much more mind-altering than alcohol or marijuana. At the same time, young people in the Netherlands do not have their lives so easily ruined by the consequences of youthful experimentation, violent crime is substantially lower, and Dutch society does not bear the cost of fighting what seems like a losing battle as ours does. Which way is better? That is no easy question to answer. But in Amsterdam I observed a different way of confronting the challenges posed by drugs to a free society, and it seems to work for the Dutch.

One less controversial way in which Dutch culture is different from ours - mail slots have stickers like these that say what types of mail (junk mail, etc) are accepted

Another societal challenge that the Dutch confront in a very different way is prostitution. I decided that for the sake of getting a full and genuine Amsterdam experience, I should take a walk through the Red Light District. I did so on my last night in Amsterdam, and even though I knew I would find it, I was still somewhat shocked when I saw the first prostitute standing in a window. That first one was right next to Amsterdam’s Old Church and within a few blocks of a daycare center, something Americans would consider absolutely unthinkable. There were families with young children walking not far away, homes nearby, and people simply going about their daily lives as if nothing was out of the ordinary. And for them, nothing was. Everything is out in the open, keeping the prostitutes and bystanders safe, making regulation easier, and ensuring that customers are on their best behavior. The prostitutes are self-employed and (generally) independent, helping to keep the involvement of drugs, organized crime, and exploitation at bay (although unfortunately not entirely, as I have read). Again, this is all very different from how we do things in America, and I’m not saying that either way is better or worse. But in Amsterdam you get a unique opportunity to see a different way, and I am glad that I took the opportunity to observe it. I don’t know that I’m ready for my own society to start emulating the ways of the Dutch, but it was invaluable to be able to broaden my horizons and see life and the world in a much different way than what I am used to.

The Anne Frank House (it's about in the middle of the block facing the canal) and the Westerkerk Cathedral - no red lights here

Another of Amsterdam's many picturesque canals

Dam Square - the Red Light District is right around the corner

While we talk about these differences between Dutch and American culture largely because they are hot-button issues in our own moral discourse, the fact is that Amsterdam and Dutch culture are so much more than, so much bigger and better than, all of that. Visiting Amsterdam, walking its streets and talking to its people, you hardly notice any of it. Like I said, no one is there to press a bong into your hands or lurk in the shadows and stick a needle in your arm. You don’t see prostitutes in every window (in fact, you generally don’t see them at all unless you go looking for them). Amsterdam is like any vibrant, atmospheric city, and getting hung up on the differences would be a real shame, because they really aren’t all that important or noticeable. Above all I think that in Amsterdam and in the broader Dutch culture people have decided not that it is okay to use drugs and to buy or sell sex, but rather that it is not the place of society to tell free people that they cannot do those things as long as no one else gets hurt. Beyond that, Amsterdam and the Netherlands are not much different from the rest of Europe. Amsterdam is simply a wonderful place to visit, and I hope that its different approaches to life would not dissuade anyone from visiting.

Some nice examples of Amsterdam's characteristic gabled canal houses

A neat shopping mall I found in Amsterdam

So that’s probably enough sociological rambling for one post, although I don’t have a whole lot more to say about Amsterdam. On my second day there I rounded out my sightseeing itinerary by visiting the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum and then taking my aforementioned walk through the Red Light District. I loved the contents of both museums, although I found that the layout and entrance signage at the Rijksmuseum, which has even been recently renovated, was terrible. But the art at the Rijksmuseum, starring great Dutch artists like Rembrandt and Vermeer, was great. The work of the “Dutch Masters,” as those and other great artists of the “Golden Age” of the Netherlands, roughly the 17^th century, are called, is all featured in a central wing of the Rijksmuseum. The cool thing about it is that it is some of the earliest artwork in Europe to prominently portray common people in their daily lives, and so you get a good idea in the Rijksmuseum of what people and daily life in 17^th century Holland looked like. The Van Gogh Museum was at least equally intriguing, if not more so, for it focuses on just one great artist and shows and explains the progression of his life and artistry from beginning to end. I had never fully appreciated what a talented artist Vincent Van Gogh was until I saw his work in person. I will admit that sometimes, especially with more modern art, it can be difficult to tell with the untrained eye what separates great art from the mediocre. But Van Gogh is one of those artists who, when you see one of his really great canvases, you can immediately tell that it is truly special.

I think that about wraps up everything I wanted to say about Amsterdam, which brings me to the end of my trip. I began writing this post in Amsterdam, but I am finishing it sitting on the floor in the Philadelphia Airport. I am glad to be back in my home country, although in typical fashion, TSA agents here in Philadelphia didn’t let me get too warm and fuzzy. In immediate retrospect, I feel like I can honestly say that I’ve just wrapped up the best trip I’ve been on yet. More than on any previous trip, I already feel eager to go back…or maybe to broaden my horizons and explore other parts of the world. I’m not sure where I’ll go next, but one thing I can guarantee is that I will go somewhere. Travel is in my bones, and I’m going to keep going until I can’t anymore. I just pray that the day when I can’t keep exploring the world is a long way off yet.

Thank you all, anyone who has read this blog, for doing so. I know my audience isn’t huge, but I am glad to be able to share and talk about my travels with other people. This will be the last post of my Spring 2013 trip. I don’t know when my next trip will be, but knowing me, it will probably be sooner rather than later.

Spring Trip 2013, Days 24 - 25: Bruges

After Paris I feel like my trip is in the home stretch. I feel like I have been on the road for long enough now that being on the road has become my new normal. Looking back, I cant believe how much I've seen and done over the last month. I think the adjustment back to regular, non-action packed home life will feel strange at first. It will be odd to not be constantly in motion, for my surroundings not to be constantly changing. But it will also be nice to rest, because travel can be exhausting. I can tell that I am slowing down a little bit and am ready for a break, but I have found that in those moments it is important not to put my trip on cruise control and coast to the end. I have to keep my foot on the gas, because I may never find myself in the driver's seat again. I have to keep doing and seeing everything that I can with the time that I have left, and I am. But I'll also be glad for the comforts of home and the chance to rest at the end.

Those thoughts were occupying my mind as I left France and entered Belgium. My stay in Belgium was going to be short, just two days, and so I had very little time in which to fit a whole lot of sightseeing. My plan was to go from Paris to Bruges, with a short stop in Brussels on the way. I got a fairly early start and had reserved a seat on the high speed train to Brussels, so I was there before noon. When I got there I found a raucous scene, with hordes of people dressed up in either green or red clothing blowing whistles and air horns, chanting, yelling, laughing, and drinking. I had no idea what it was all about at the time (although I heard later that it was some kind of political demonstration) and I wish I had asked a local. It was certainly entertaining anyway.

Brussels - Grand Place

My itinerary for my stop in Brussels was just a self-guided walk around the historic city center which was supposed to take 2-3 hours. I found Brussels to be much like other old European cities, with ample historic character and charm. Its main square, the Grand Place, was one of the most attractive squares I've seen in Europe. Brussels doesn't really have any big, must-see sights, but it was certainly a pleasant place for a break from the train. Belgium being known as the source of some of the best chocolate in the world, Brussels has artisan chocolatiers all over the place. I stopped in at one and bought a small selection; everything was sold by weight at a flat rate of about $5/100 grams, so I got a nice variety, including chocolate flavored with marscapone which was super tasty. My walk continued past the Brussels stock exchange and the Mannekin Pis, the famed fountain consisting of a baby boy peeing into a pool, before ending up back at the train station. I had noticed that train traffic in Belgium's train stations can be very quick, trains sometimes stopping for what seems like a minute or less, so I wanted to take time to make sure I knew which train I needed to get on and which platform I needed to be at. I did so and my departure to Bruges went without incident, getting me there in the early evening.

Brussels - a neat shopping arcade whose name I can't remember

Brussels Stock Exchange

Brussels - the Mannekin Pis

Brussels - a Tintin cartoon on a wall

Brussels - in a tapestry shop (Belgium has historically produced excellent tapestries - see some of my pictures from the Loire Chateaux for some other examples)

It is said that Bruges is "more Gothic than Gothic," which I found to be true to some extent. Much of the architecture is actually neo-Gothic, having the appearance of Gothic architecture while having actually been rebuilt in the Gothic style in the 19th century. Bruges' heyday was in fact the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the city was a thriving nautical trading center and one of the richest and most influential cities in Europe. Bruges and its neighbor and cultural cousin, Amsterdam, were both cities where business, in the hands of common people, thrived and began to replace the nobility and old feudal order of the Middle Ages. This region is where the first vestiges of capitalism in the form that we know it were born and where the power in society began to shift, going from the top down to the bottom up. You see those trends of history particularly reflected in Bruges, where emblems of the old trade guilds still adorn important buildings, where the city hall has been housed in the same building since the Middle Ages, and where an old market square is still used to host the daily fish market just as it has been for centuries. But what makes Bruges really cool is that in addition to its nicely preserved medieval-commercial character, it is strategically crisscrossed by a bunch of pretty little canals. The canals had a practical purpose in 16th century Bruges, when its low elevation made canals the most effective way to move people and goods into, around, and out of the city. Nowadays they really only have two purposes: to putt tourists around on expensive canal cruises, and to figure prominently in photos of the picturesque medieval city. They serve those purposes well though, making Bruges a charmingly atmospheric place to visit.

Bruges - the view from atop the bell tower

Bruges - a canal at night

Like Brussels, Bruges doesn't really have any major sights. You go to Bruges for its ambiance, which it has plenty of, and everything else is just stuff to do while you enjoy it. My one full day there consisted of a loop around the city, in which I climbed the bell tower on the Markt Square, looked around in the Gothic city council chamber in the still-in-use medieval city hall, toured a local art museum, and then ended the day with a tour of the De Halve Maan Brewery. The brewery, which has been in continuous operation since 1856, is the only one remaining in Bruges. Their beer, which I had the fortune to sample twice in my time in Bruges, is truly excellent, and you could tell that the people who worked there were proud of their beer and passionate about their craft. It was a fun and enlightening experience, and a nice break from the usual museum/cathedral/town square litany of sights. I particularly enjoyed talking to the tour guide, who I was surprised to find knew about the strong craft brewing industry and culture in the Pacific Northwest when I mentioned where I live. It was also really interesting to hear her perspective on how Belgium's membership in the European Union affects their brewing operation, and to see how citizens of EU countries view the union (she was clearly pretty conservative and didn't like it much). At the end of the tour we all got a free glass of the brewery's Bruges Zot ("Fool from Bruges"), a tasty Belgian blonde ale, which punctuated the day nicely. After the brewery tour I got myself some dinner, took some time to wrap up some writing, and then got myself to bed in anticipation of a long day journeying to Amsterdam the next day.

Bruges - another canal

Bruges - the city hall chamber

Bruges - an old fish market

Bruges - a view from the top of the De Halve Maan brewery

Bruges - city hall

Bruges - one more canal shot

I am in Amsterdam now, the final destination of my trip, with about 14 hours left before I fly home. I've really loved Amsterdam, and I'm hoping to find time to write about it and share my final post of the trip with you all tomorrow.

Spring Trip 2013, Days 21 - 23: Paris

Twice now I have tried to visit Paris in just two and a half days, and on both occasions I’ve found that it just hasn’t been enough time. Paris demands at least three full days and four nights to really do it justice, and I hope that I learned my lesson this time. That is not to say that I haven’t had a wonderful time here, because I absolutely have, but on my next visit I’ll definitely try to give it more time. As I prepared for my stay in Paris I made a list of the different things I wanted to see and do, which I knew would be ambitious and tiring but which I thought I could pull off, but as it turned out I only got to about half of the things I had wanted to. It was good in a way though, because it gives me an excuse to come back once again to this wonderful city.

Paris - Pont Alexandre III

It is hard to say what exactly it is about Paris that makes it such a great place to visit. But for me, Paris and Rome are tied for the honor of the best city in Europe. Paris just exudes this infectious energy, and before long you feel like you belong here as much as the Parisians do. Rome makes you feel the same way, and both cities do so better than any other I’ve been to in Europe. In Paris I think there are several factors involved. One is the Metro, which is like God’s gift to tourists in Paris. Paris has the best metro system (Europeans universally refer to subways as “metro” after the original, Paris’ own, which was originally called “Le Métropolitain” or “Metro” for short) in Europe, with more than a dozen lines crisscrossing the city and very frequent trains, making it quick and easy (and cheap) to get from anywhere to anywhere else in the city. One you master the Metro you definitely feel like a temporary Parisian rather than an ignorant visitor. Another factor involved in the appeal of Paris is that it is like an urban garden, with trees and parks and gardens just about everywhere. And not just parks and gardens, but some sizable and truly beautiful ones at that, such as the Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens, which are like urban oases and are important tourist destinations in and of themselves. And finally, Paris just has a spirit, a certain… je ne sais quoi, to use a French term, and you can’t help but feel it seep into you as you spend more time there. Paris is a gigantic city, a truly global cultural capital, but unlike big global cities like New York, Berlin, or Tokyo, in Paris life comes first and work and business come second. That is not to say that people do not truly live in other big cities, nor that people do not work and conduct important business in Paris, but rather that in Paris, life is a priority, and you can absolutely feel it when you visit.

Paris, an urban garden

I say that I had two and a half days in Paris, but in reality I had two days and part of an evening, thanks to the difficulty I had getting in to Paris and then getting to the city center. Paris was where I had elected to drop off my rental car, and I thought it would be fairly manageable because I had arranged to drop the car off at one of Paris’ peripheral airports, Orly, from which there was supposed to be fairly quick and easy transportation to the city center. That plan began to seem less stellar as I encountered heavy traffic even in the outskirts of Paris. By the time I got to the outer ring road, traffic on the freeways was at a standstill. Driving in traffic like that particularly sucks in Europe, and especially in Paris, where drivers are ruthlessly assertive and downright selfish. So I got to Orly more than an hour later than I had planned on, found the car rental return area, and dropped off my car. That part was pretty easy and straightforward, but the fun continued when I found that the shuttle that would have quickly and easily gotten me to the Paris suburban rail system, and from there to the city center, was closed for the week. Instead I had to take a bus, which hordes of other arrivals were also angling for spots on. This being Europe, there was no formal line for the bus, just a mob of people at the spot where the bus stopped all pushing and elbowing for a spot on each arriving bus. I ended up getting a spot on the second bus that I saw, and about 30 minutes later I was at an outlying Paris Metro stop. 20 minutes after that, and about 2-3 hours after I first entered Paris on the freeway, I arrived at my hotel. Lesson learned: never drop off a rental car in Paris, even at an airport. If it ever comes up in the future I’ll try to drop off the car at my last destination before Paris and take the train from there. I used the few hours of daylight I had left on that first evening in Paris to get situated and take care of some trip business. I bought a carnet of Metro tickets (a pack of 10 tickets which you get at a nice discount, ideal for tourists) and a 2-day Paris Museum Pass (entry to about 60 different sights in Paris, including just about all of the major ones, and the privilege of being able to skip the lines, for €40). I got some dinner at a grocery store, did some laundry, settled in to my hotel room and planned out my two remaining days in Paris, and then went to bed.

I only carry enough clothes for 5-7 days, so laundry is an occasional chore

My top sightseeing priority on this visit to Paris was Versailles, because I had screwed up on my last trip and went to Versailles on the wrong day when the palace interior was closed. I was going to be in Paris on Monday evening and then all day on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I had read that Tuesdays in Versailles were best avoided because Tuesday tends to be one of the busiest days there, so I set aside all day on Wednesday as my Versailles day. That left Tuesday for pretty much everything else, so I designed an ambitious itinerary for the day. I also wanted to do some of the more fun, off-beat things in Paris this time around, since last time I stuck to the more “major” and “important” sights (like the Louvre, Orsay, Champs Elysees, etc). So I started out on Tuesday at the Paris Sewer Tour, a self-guided trek through the Paris sewer system. The tour, which has lots of clear and informative signs in English, takes you through the sewers and explains how it all works and the history of the Paris sewers, from the days before there were any sewers here to the present day. It really was very fascinating and fun, aside from that it definitely smelled very much like a sewer. After the sewer I visited the Rodin Museum, dedicated to the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, who lived and worked in Paris in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. I was very much impressed by his work, which in my view kind of combined the artistic style of Michelangelo and his humanist physical realism, with the French Impressionist style which was popular in Rodin’s time. The result is sculpture which simultaneously appears very strong and vibrant and lifelike, like Michelangelo’s, but also at times rough-hewn and like moments of real time frozen in stone, like in the Impressionist style. After the Rodin Museum I ventured out to the Montmartre neighborhood on the north side of Paris. If you’ve ever seen the French film Amélie, it was set and filmed in Montmartre, and really represents the neighborhood pretty well. It feels kind of like suburban Paris, a little quieter and more relaxed than other quarters of the city, but also a little more appealingly ramshackle and working class. Montmartre is up on a hill, and at the top of the hill is the Sacré Cœur Basilica, a 19^th century Byzantine-style (unusual for Paris) church that reminded me very much of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. I accomplished all of that, along with stops for breakfast and lunch, by 5 pm or so, at which point I had to hurry back to my hotel to get ready and get a bite to eat for dinner before the day’s finale, an evening bicycle tour I had booked that morning.

Paris sewer

Rodin's Le Penseur ("The Thinker")

Paris - Montmartre

Paris - Montmartre, Sacré Cœur

I’ll just say right now, the bicycle tour ended up being the highlight of my time in Paris. I had read about it in my guidebook and also in a brochure at the tourist information office, but even then I was a little unclear on what exactly it would entail. All I really knew was that it would involve riding bikes around Paris and then a boat ride down the Seine River at the end. The tour was scheduled to meet at the south pillar of the Eiffel Tower at 7:00 pm, although when I got there at about 6:45 there were already plenty of people there being split up into groups. There must have been 60-80 people total, but we were all divided up into more manageable 20-person groups with a guide for each group. My guide ended up being a guy named Max, and I really lucked out, because he was simply awesome. I learned that he was 22 years old, a recent college graduate and lifelong Parisian. He spoke English fluently, about as well as any American (although not without a strong accent), and had traveled a bit in America (and, I would learn, had even been to Vancouver at one point in his travels). Like good guides tend to be, he seemed genuinely enthusiastic and interested in sharing his city with us, and also in making sure that everyone had a good time. From the Eiffel Tower we made the short walk to the tour company’s office, picked up our bikes, and then hit the streets of Paris. We rode along Paris’ excellent bike lanes from the area of the Eiffel Tower up to the Notre Dame Cathedral, around Île de la Cité and the Île Saint-Louis (the two islands in the middle of the Seine River), down to the area of the Louvre, over and back on a few of the bridges crossing the Seine, and then wound up on the Right Bank (which is what Parisians call the city to the north of the river) where we would leave our bikes behind for an hour long cruise on the Seine. Max ably handled the pack of riders, all of whom were new to riding in Paris and many of whom were novice riders at best, and the ease with which we traversed the very busy city streets was impressive and due entirely to his excellent leadership. I have rarely had so much fun in Europe, zipping around and through busy traffic on a bike like that. The tour was pretty light on actual information about the city, but really the whole point and appeal of it was the opportunity to see the city in a different and exciting way, and in that respect it absolutely delivered. Another reason why I joined the tour was because it included a boat cruise on the Seine, which would normally cost more than the entire cost of the bicycle tour. The cruise was fun, and made all the better by the perfectly warm and dry weather (Max actually commented that the day had been the first really good day of spring in Paris this year), and provided stellar opportunities for pictures of the City of Light after dark. Also provided on the boat cruise was a supply of wine, a surprisingly good red wine which the group enjoyed from plastic cups. Luckily there wasn’t nearly enough for anyone to get smashed, otherwise I imagine the final leg of the tour, where we had to briefly ride the bikes back from the boat’s mooring point to the tour office, might have gone less smoothly. But it went without incident, and we all made it safely and happily back to the tour office. When we got back I checked the time and realized that it was after midnight – I had been riding around Paris for about five hours, but the time absolutely flew by. It was an experience that I absolutely recommend to any able-bodied visitor to Paris.

Max instructing the bicycle tour group

River boat cruise in Paris

The Eiffel Tower from the river boat

Our tour group gathering up at the Louvre

I slept well and late that night, and the next day I visited Versailles, the palace of the French monarchy from the 16^th century up to the French Revolution. Pictures do not convey how massive, nor how grand and lavish, Versailles is. It makes the chateaux I saw in the Loire look like Barbie’s Dreamhouse. Beyond that, and sharing a few pictures with you, I don’t know that there’s much of interest that I can say about it though. I will say that I am very glad that I went back and saw the interior of the palace, because it was at least as impressive as the exterior.

Versailles

Versailles

Versailles

Versailles

That’s about all I have to say about Paris for now. My fingers feel like they’re about to fall off from typing, and this post is getting lengthy, so I’m going to leave it here. I could say and write so much more about Paris, but I don’t know that I could do it very succinctly without more time than I have at my disposal. Right now I am in Bruges, Belgium, which has been another great destination and which I am eager to tell you all about. Tomorrow I’m leaving for Amsterdam, and then in just two short days I’ll be flying back home. It feels like I’ve been away from home for so long, and yet I feel like I could keep on going if time would allow it. I’ll be happy to be back home, but I can already guarantee that I will be back.

Spring Trip 2013, Days 18 - 20: Normandy

Yesterday I was standing in front of the guest book at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial trying to think of something to write in it, and I came up with the following: "Never more proud of my country than here and now," followed by my name and my home town. That was how I felt throughout my visit to Normandy over the last few days. Time and again I felt more proud than I ever have of my country, and appreciative of what a privilege it is to call it home. Those who know me well know that I have frequently been a critic of the United States, particularly of its interactions with the rest of the world. I will never stop telling the hard and objective truth as I see it, nor will I ever stop trying to do my part to make our country better, but I gained a new appreciation of how great America is as I saw in person the living history of one of its great deeds, the liberation of France during World War II, there in Normandy.

I spent three days in Normandy, two of them around the D-Day beaches and the various WWII sights, and one of them at Mont Saint Michel. I actually visited Mont Saint Michel first on my way up from the Loire, but since I'm already on the topic of the WWII sights, I'll talk about those first and then say a bit about Mont Saint Michel after. As anyone who has read much of this blog has probably noticed, I like to interweave the history of the places I visit along with my accounts of what I saw and did, but for Normandy it seems unnecessary to go into my usual level of detail. I think most know as well as I do what was going on in Normandy in 1944 and why the United States sent its armies there; Nazi Germany had seized control of most of continental Europe and it was up to the United States and is European allies to liberate it. The beaches of Normandy, on the northern coast of France, were the chosen starting point of the Allied invasion. In the early morning hours of June 6th, 1944, more than 150,000 Allied troops landed there and successfully established a beachhead from which they would drive the Nazis back and achieve victory in Europe. That much is known to most Americans, but most never get to see Normandy, where one has the privilege of experiencing that history firsthand and of seeing in person the setting of one of the defining moments in American history. Going there and standing on the cliffs and beaches, walking through the bunkers and seeings the guns and the graves of thousands of young people who gave everything for the cause of liberty, one gains an appreciation for the magnitude of the American effort and the great, though grim, accomplishment which came as a result.

Without planning it, I ended up touring the D-Day sights in probably the most ideal order possible, starting with the Utah Beach Landing Museum. Utah Beach was one of the five landing points of the D-Day invasion, where the U.S. Army 4th Infantry Division landed and, due to ocean currents misdirecting them from their intended target, ended up meeting relatively light enemy resistance. The museum succinctly and engagingly tells the story, with an assortment of documents and photos and videos and artifacts, of the events leading up to the war, the progress of the war up to the D-Day invasion, the preparations for the invasion, and then of the invasion itself. At the Utah Beach museum you get a particularly good idea of how complex the invasion really was and how precisely the many different parts of the invasion force had to work together to pull it off. For example, crews on the final bomber runs over the German coastal defenses were given two minute windows to drop their payloads which had to be precisely adhered to, because within five minutes the first troops were landing on the beaches. Before troops had even made landfall, supplies and equipment were en route across the English Channel to support them. Naval artillery, troop and supply transports, tanks, infantry, aerial fighters and bombers, support divisions, communications, command, etc., all had to operate cohesively in order for the invasion to succeed. Somehow they made it all work, and at Utah Beach you get a pretty good idea of how they did it. At the end of the museum you get a chance to walk out on the beach itself. Were it not for the knowledge that you come with, you would never know that a battle had taken place there. It is a peaceful and beautiful stretch of land, but made all the more poignant knowing what occurred there nearly 70 years ago. It was at Utah Beach that I realized that the beaches of Normandy look very much like the beaches back home on the Oregon and Washington coasts. It would have looked familiar to any Oregonian or Washingtonian who landed there on D-Day, although the familiarity of the scene ws probably the furthest thing from their minds.

Utah Beach Landing Museum - a diagram of the invasion points

Utah Beach Landing Museum - dresses sewn by French civilians

Utah Beach Landing Museum - landing craft

Utah Beach

After Utah Beach my next destination was Pointe du Hoc, a place where the U.S. Army Rangers executed a special mission on D-Day to disable a German artillery battery overlooking the Normandy coast. The artillery at Pointe du Hoc was considered particularly dangerous to the invasion because its position would have allowed it to rain down shells on a significant portion of the landing zones and also on Allied ships close to shore. In the days and weeks leading up to D-Day, Allied bombers had dropped millions of pounds of explosives down on German artillery batteries like the one at Pointe du Hoc to try to destroy or disable them, but the German defenses proved resilient. As a result, however, Pointe du Hoc is dotted with gigantic bomb craters, which along with the defensive emplacements there makes it a great place to get a feel for what the battle looked like for the men who fought that day. The artillery battery was up on top of a high cliff, and it was the task of the Rangers to scale that cliff and then assault the emplacement and disable the guns. Using grappling hooks and ladders, even in the face of German defensive fire, the Rangers made it to the top and secured the battery, suffering significant casualties. When they got to the top, however, they found that the guns had been moved further inland, but they did ultimately accomplish their mission and disable the artillery, removing the threat to the troops fighting for a toehold down on the beaches. Pointe du Hoc made a great second stop on my Normandy tour because it shed a different and more intimate light on the D-Day invasion, giving you a better idea of what the fight was like for the boots on the ground than probably any other sight in Normandy.

The cliffs at Pointe du Hoc

A bunker at Pointe du Hoc

German artillery - this isn't at Pointe du Hoc, but this is the type of gun the Rangers were trying to disable

Aerial photo of the bombing at Pointe du Hoc, showing what caused the massive craters

A crater at Pointe du Hoc

The battlefield at Pointe du Hoc

After Pointe du Hoc I had one other biggie to check out, the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. The cemetery is the final resting place for more than 9,000 American soldiers killed during World War II. It ended up being such a great sight that I actually visited it twice, once to stroll through the cemetery itself and once more to tour the excellent museum. The cemetery is operated and maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission on land donated by the French government for its use, and the site has got to be one of the most scenic and peaceful I've ever seen. I found myself constantly thinking that I could not imagine a more beautiful place to be laid to rest. The site is situated on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach, another of the landing points on D-Day. The cemetery is appropriately simple and somber, just a sea of headstones surrounded by trees, flowers, chirping birds, a light marine breeze and the dull roar of the surf nearby. The headstones are all perfectly uniform, mostly white crosses with a few white Stars of David for Jewish soldiers, and each bearing the name, rank, unit, home state, and date of death of the person buried there. An especially moving feature of the cemetery is the many graves of unknown soldiers, which are all marked with the inscription "Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God". The cemetery is an incredibly moving sight, on par with places I've written about like Oradour-sur-Glane or Dachau, only with a more reverent, pride-inducing sobriety than the sorrow those places evoke. The cemetery had the greatest concentration of Americans I had seen in Normandy so far (and, understandably, Normandy had the greatest concentration of Americans I've seen on this trip so far), and most other visitors seemed to feel a similar reverence and pride. I took some time to wander among the rows of headstones and read the names and tried to imagine what those men would have been like in life. It occurred to me that although they lost their lives nearly 70 years ago, most of them were much younger at the time than I am now, and perhaps more than anything else that thought made their sacrifice the most real for me.

An unknown soldier's headstone at the Normandy American Cemetery

The Normandy American Cemetery

It's getting into the early morning hours here in Paris and I have a full day ahead of me tomorrow, so I'm going to abruptly stop this post here. There is so much more I could say about my days in Normandy, but time is short. I do hope I can find time to write a bit about Mont Saint Michel, which was a unique and spiritually moving sight. I spent a few hours today in Paris and I'll be here for the next two days, so I know I won't lack for material to write about in the coming days. As always thanks for reading, and until next time, bonne journée et au revoir.