Zumstegs on the Go

Paris – Part II

Posted on June 5, 2015 by John

We came back to Paris this week, as the weather here was forecast to be excellent. It has been that; in fact, too excellent, as the temperature is forecast to be 90 or higher today (Friday). That’s just a bit too much; I do okay in such hot weather, but Laurie wilts, and even for me, it’s not so enjoyable. “Strong storms” are forecast for this afternoon, so we’ll probably head back to Bois-le-Roi a day earlier than we’d planned. But we got in a great two days of rambling around and here’s a (longish) report on them. I’ll include lots of pictures – you can double-click any of them to get a full-size picture.

Some Paris Architecture – New and Old

Paris has maybe the most diverse architecture of any city in the world. Because Paris has never been seriously bombed or attacked over its history, there are buildings here from the 14th century to today. Many are beautiful and some…not so much. Thursday we saw a brand-new addition to Paris, and we think it is spectacular.

A Ramble Around Bassin Villette

La Villette is an old working section of Paris, in the north part of the city. Bassin Villette is the north end of Canal Saint-Martin, where it becomes Canal Ourcq and Canal Saint-Denis splits off. Laurie and I took a walk from our book of architectural walks in Paris, and saw some cool stuff. Here are some pictures:

: On Bassin Villette

: A Church modeled on 16th-17th century Italian churches – don’t see many like this in Paris. In fact, you won’t see any but this one.

Habitation de Bon Marché (HBM)

Years ago – heck, centuries ago – France decided that all people should have good housing. As a result, the county has built lots of low-income housing and workers’ housing. We encountered this block of workers’ housing on our walk. Built in the early 1920s, it still is some sort of low-income or subsidized housing. It is very nice and beautifully kept up.

But not all Paris buildings are so beautiful. This is a brand-new government building. I shudder to think what might have been torn down to make room for this monstrosity.

Ugh

Louis Vuitton Foundation Building, Bois-de-Bologne

Frank Gehry is arguably the most innovative architect today, and inarguably the best known. We were introduced to his work some years ago when we visited Bilbao, Spain to see the Guggenheim Museum he designed there; we returned a couple years later to see it again. For me, it’s the most beautiful building I’ve seen – just amazing. On the other hand, Gehry designed Seattle’s Experience Music Project building (for Paul Allen, of Microsoft fame) which the New York Times’ architecture critic described as “something that crawled out of Puget Sound and died.” He was, in my always-humble opinion, being charitable; I think the EMP building is atrocious. (Even Gehry has expressed reservations about it.) Gehry has designed so many fabulous buildings that we were excited to see what he’d done for the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris; the building has received rave reviews and, as soon as we caught a glimpse of it, we joined the raving crowd. This is a spectacular building.

: Getting hot standing in line? Louis Vuitton has an answer: loan an umbrella to anyone who wants one.

Any day there will be piq-niques along the Seine, but on a hot day – it was over 80 today – things really liven up. Imagine what this will be like Friday night, when the temps exceeded 90F.

We loved the entrepreneur spirit of the guys who were going among this crowd selling wine and beer. They probably didn’t sell much, as almost everyone had brought plenty of their own.

We also went to Chateau Vincennes this morning, but I’m tired of writing and I suspect you’re tired of reading. Tomorrow for that post.

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Château Courances

Posted on May 31, 2015 by John

France has a lot of châteaux – a LOT of châteaux. Although the best known are in the Loire Valley, there are beautiful châteaux everywhere around us; yesterday we visited Courances, a Renaissance château best known for its beautiful water garden park.

View as you approach the front of Courances château.

This château has quite a history. The Gallard family took over the property (175 acres, with a rustic house on it) in 1622 and soon had the château built and the gardens started. However, the family was trying to impress people with how much money it had by building and running both Courances and a hotel particulier (a huge private mansion) in Paris and went bankrupt doing it; evidently they didn’t have quite enough money. The château then was auctioned off to a junior line of the family and, through a marriage, came to the Nicolay family in the mid-1700s. The Nicolays made more changes to the garden, but lost Courances (and their heads) in the French Revolution (1789-1795). The remaining Nicolay fled and, in 1830, gave up trying to maintain the château from exile.

Courances sat empty and the park untended for the next 40 years. In 1872, Baron de Haber bought it and started rehabbing it. At that time it was a mess – there was even a tree growing in the dining room. The good Baron wanted the château to solidify his standing as a French aristocrat; he was a German banker but an aristocrat wanna-be. His descendents still live in it.

Throughout its history, owners have spent a huge amount of time and money on the garden. A lot of money. The Baron was no exception; under his management the entire château and park were completely renovated from their untended-for-forty-years condition to what we see today. I might point out that his family lives here only sometimes, splitting its time between the five or six other châteaux they own and their hotel particulier (translated: huge private mansion) in Paris.

The water garden of Courances sets it above many other château in France; the house itself is beautiful but not extraordinary. The gardens, with many ponds and lakes and canals created by the many owners over a period of five centuries, are extraordinary, as you can see:

A formal garden, and the main reflecting lake of the park.

The château and one of the canals.

Courances from about halfway to the property border.

Courances from about a quarter of the distance to the property border.

One of the water features.

This statue has been watching the château for a long time.

Courances has a beautiful Japanese garden. My Dad taught me a little about pruning; I think this Japanese Maple is the most beautifully pruned tree I've ever seen.

Courances has a beautiful Japanese garden. My Dad taught me a little about pruning and I think this Japanese Maple is the most beautifully pruned tree I’ve ever seen.

A walk through Courances’ property.

Posted in Architecture, Châteaux | 2 Comments

Boat Name

Posted on May 28, 2015 by John

Now, maybe it’s just that I don’t understand how a person names his or her boat, but it certainly seems to me that the owner of this boat could have chosen a better name…

Nice name for a boat…

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Les Fromions

Posted on May 28, 2015 by John

French has a phrase for a geographical area so small that it may not even be inhabited: lieu-dit. Driving on back roads of France you’ll see hundreds of signs for lieux-dits, places that might have a house or two, or might just be a place that was given a name centuries ago that the local inhabitants have kept alive. The last couple days we stayed in such a place: Les Fromions. There is, of course, a story…

You’ll remember that the day we arrived – almost two weeks ago – we were met at Mary & Gilles’ house by their neighbor and good friend Valerie Appell. She showed us the house, left us food and invited us to lunch the following day; quite a nice introduction to France. At lunch Valerie’s husband Yves served a Sancerre red wine and we mentioned how much we love the wines of Sancerre.

Valerie and Yves then told us about their family house near Sancerre and, as they were going to be there this week, invited us and Mary & Gilles for a night. So – voilà – we spent Tuesday roaming the region of Sancerre, eating the Chavignol cheese for which the area is also famous, trying and buying Sancerre wine, and then arriving at the bustling lieu-dit of Les Fromions:

Les Fromions, in total.

Yep, that’s it. The closest house is Valerie and Yves, the one to the left of it is the house of Yves aunt, and in the third house is a non-Appell family man.

Now, to say that Les Fromions is peaceful and beautiful understates the situation. Here’s the view on the other side of the house:

View out the north side of the house. Peaceful? Oh, yes.

No neighbors, no highways, no planes overhead, no trains roaring by. Just beautiful, quiet French countryside.

Roses everywhere.

On a walk.

We love seeing the poppies.

A reminder of the past.

To work up a dinner appetite, we took a walk.

Off for a walk in beautiful countryside.

Four intrepid walkers: Laurie, moi, Mary and Gilles.

Valerie, Mary and Laurie on our walk.

After an aperitif, a fabulous dinner, and Valerie’s world-famous tiramisu, we slept like logs – in that quiet how could we not? The next morning we did another long walk, visited a beautiful garden and went to the nearest town for lunch in the Tabac.

Then, it was time to go. As we loaded up the car, Yves prepared for a hard afternoon of recovering from our visit.

Yves ready for us to leave. We wore him out, I think.

Did we have a nice time? Hoo-hah, did we ever. We are so grateful to Valerie and Yves for inviting us and opening their Sancerre home to us, treating us with such hospitality. This is a lieu-dit we love.

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La Ferté Alais Airshow

Posted on May 25, 2015 by John

Warning: airplane geekiness ahead. If airplanes hold no interest for you, you might just want to skip this post.

Two years ago I went to the Paris Air Show – the biggest in the world. This year, Hervé Rufin invited me to a smaller airshow at the grass strip in the town of La Ferté Alais. Yesterday we – Hervé, his daughter Sophia and me – went, and had a ball. But then, we’re airplane geeks, so you know we’re going to have a good time.

This is an amazing airshow in a way completely different from the Paris Air Show. That one is industry-oriented, with thousands of exhibitors and mostly modern airplanes. (For more, look at this blog entry: Paris Air Show, 2013)

The La Ferté Alais airshow has mostly historic airplanes, all of which are living, breathing, flying airplanes. There were planes from the 1910s and 1920s; when I saw them I thought they were static displays, that is, non-flying replicas. Nope, they were the real thing: every one of these planes flew during the show.

Caudron G3 – looks like they stole a bathtub for the fuselage.

Caudron G3

Bleriot Pegoud

Morane Saulnier Type 3. This is a replica built from the original plans. This airplane type flew first in 1912.

In the US of A we forget that after Wilbur and Orville Wright first flew a heavier-than-air machine in 1903, they had little success getting anyone in the United States interested in the potential of airplanes. In 1908 they came to France with their latest airplane and spent almost a year working with French people who did understand the value and future of airplanes. When the Wright Brothers returned to the States in 1909, the French aviation industry thrived and for quite a few years, creating the most advance airplanes in the world. Many of those pioneering airplanes were at La Ferté Alais airshow, and showed their stuff by flying.

An Old Friend: The North American T28.

Long ago I went through Navy flight training at Pensacola Florida and there flew the T28, built by North American Aviation, in Primary Flight Training. So it was with pleasure that I saw the French version of that plane at La Ferté Alais. Even better that Hervé knew a person who happened to be at the T28 display, told him that I’d flown this type and that fellow introduced me to the owner. After swapping a story or two, he asked if I’d like to climb up and look inside. Yes, indeed, I did.

T28D – the French version of a plane I flew in Navy flight school

T28 cockpit, just as I remembered it.

View out the front of the T28.

That’s the first time I’ve looked into the cockpit of a T28 in 45 years, but I recognized everything in it. Definitely a blast from the past.

Hervé, Sophia and had a great time, and I am grateful to Hervé for the invitation and the fun we had.

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An Afternoon Ramble

Posted on May 25, 2015 by John

Last Saturday Gilles was set to watch an important Rugby match of his favorite team, from his hometown area of Clermont-Ferrand. Knowing that it would be a really good idea for us to be absent during the match, Mary, Laurie and I set off for Égreville, to see some beautiful countryside and to visit a garden of sculptures by Antoine Bourdelle.

Antoine Bourdelle worked in Paris in the late 1800s and early 1900s, until his death in 1929. He seems well known here, but I don’t think I’d heard of him before; but then, I am not well-versed in the world of sculpture, so my ignorance isn’t any reflection on Bourdelle’s place in the art world.

Anyway, when he died, his daughter and son-in-law, who lived in the small town of Égreville, about an hour south of Paris, created a beautiful garden with 56 of his sculptures and bas-reliefs. It really is a beautiful and peaceful place and it was a perfect afternoon outing for us.

Herakles, Antoine Bourdelle’s best known sculpture.

An amazing rose bush in the garden.

Laurie liked this sculpture of the famous dancer Isador Duncan best. It’s small – about 3 feet high – but we still couldn’t fit it into the car.

Isadora Duncan

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Our First Amble In Paris

Posted on May 22, 2015 by John

We have a bunch of books of Paris walks, because Paris is definitely a city that rewards walkers. Heck, there’s even a French word for a person who just strolls in the city: flaneur. That’s us, a pair of flaneurs in our favorite city.

Paris also rewards looking up. This city has thousands of beautiful buildings, from every era. We have become aficionados of architecture here, so the book “Architecture of Paris” by the architect and architectural historian Noval White is going to become a favorite. It contains 58 walks, in all parts of Paris, and points out every interesting building on the walk – the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly (and yes, there are some really ugly buildings here). We took our first Norval White walk yesterday and, even though we got through only a third of it – in two hours! – the walk took us to many things we otherwise never would have seen.

Now, the starting point of our walk is not likely to receive visits from tourists and, in fact, not much more likely to see Parisians. Here, the city of Paris raises all the plants and flowers that are used throughout the city. It also has a huge glass greenhouse containing many different types of palm trees and other tropical plants. In this huge garden – probably fifty acres of so – we saw one jogger, two mothers with strollers, and one other person.

Ville de Paris Establissement Horticultural

The main dome – about 50 feet high – with a palm tree – about 49 feet high.

All the working buildings look like this: beautiful.

Modern Architecture in Paris

The walk then took us through the neighborhood of Boulogne. Now, most Paris visitors know of and have visited the Bois de Boulogne – the huge park at the west side of the city. The neighborhood of Bolougne is quite an interesting area: definitely up-scale, and the site of many of the best modernist buildings in Paris. In the 1920s and 1930s a number of modernist architects built here and so it’s possible to see the works of many architects in a relatively small area. Among these architects were the foremost of the modernist movement: Le Corbusier, Mallet-Stevens, Raymond Fischer, George-Henri Pingussson.

I thought that modern architecture in this city of old and beautiful buildings would be ugly, but I was wrong. In this area, which has many traditional and modern buildings, the modern buildings fit in well. I guess that beautiful buildings are beautiful, no matter where they are.

Some highlights:

Conversely, an ugly building is an ugly building no matter where it is. This one is a miss – and a mess:
Later in the day, after a rest and a bit of vino, we walked to a church nearby. This church is modeled after Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, and is way different than any other church we’ve seen in Paris or anywhere. It’s a huge space inside, with a huge dome, as in Hagia Sofia. My photographic skills aren’t up to conveying the sense of Eglise de Saint-Espiritu, but here’s a picture looking up into the dome.

And last, the front window of a store that repair sewing machines. Like the bookbinder, there can’t be much call for the services offered here, but it survives, and we loved the window:

We were whupped after this day. Dinner, another glass of wine, and sleep.

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First Day Back In Paris

Posted on May 22, 2015 by John

We’re in Paris for a couple days. Tuesday night we went for a stroll in our favorite part of Paris – the two islands. It’s a very nice way to start out, I must say…

Place Dauphin, one of our favorite quiet places in Paris, a 10-minute walk from the craziness of Notre-Dame.

Flowers in Place Dauphine

The most practical Paris sight-seeing outfit ever. Check out those shoes!

A Bookbinder. Not much call for bookbinding these days, I suspect.

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Bois-le-Roi

Posted on May 20, 2015 by John

We’re in Bois-le-Roi (Forest of the King). This town of 5,500 people is about 35 minutes by train south of Paris, and is where our friends Mary and Gilles live; we’re staying at their house for a few days, until they kick us out.

Bois-le-Roi is an old village: Wikipedia says the town was first mentioned in documents in 1260. The king of the name was Saint Louis, who reigned from 1226 to 1270.

A most interesting aspect of Bois-le-Roi is that during the Belle Epoque (the Beautiful Age, generally the late 1800s until the start of World War I), a number of beautiful summer houses were built along the banks of the Seine in Bois-le-Roi. These houses are called affolantes, which translates in this sense as something along the lines of “craziness,” reflecting that these houses of the Belle Epoque ultra-rich were just crazy…and they are. Here are the best of les affolantes in Bois-le-Roi.

Affolante in Bois-le-Rois.

Front door of an Affolante

<i>Affolante</i> in Chartrettes, across the Seine from Bois-le-Roi.

Affolante in Chartrettes, across the Seine from Bois-le-Roi.

Laurie and Mary check out an affolante now converted into apartments.

The building below has an interesting history: built in the late 1800s in a town north of Paris, it burned around the turn of the century. The facade and some of the rest of the house did not burn, and the untouched parts were taken apart, transported to the site on which they now sit, and reconstructed while the rest of the house was built around them.

Le Vieux Logis

Nice houses, but I suspect they are nightmares to maintain. Many have large, beautiful gardens and all have views over the river.

Late today, we’re off to Paris for a couple days. The weather is supposed to be good (since we arrived last Friday, the forecast has predicted rain every day and yesterday it finally rained a bit after five days of sunshine – though it’s been cold). We are looking forward to seeing our favorite city.

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We Made It!

Posted on May 16, 2015 by John

We are in France! Not only that, we are well-rested, having had a full night’s sleep last night (assisted slightly by a little chemical magic) and ensconced in chez Germain, Mary and Gilles beautiful house.

The Plane, the Plane!

First, understand that I like the planes of Seattle’s home-town airplane builder and I’ve always chosen to fly Boeing planes when I had a choice. After flying the Airbus A380, though, I have to say that on a long-haul flight it’s my airplane of choice.

Here is our plane arriving at JFK:

Air France Airbus A380 arriving at JFK

Yes, it does look like a whale from the front.

Inside, really, it’s not much different than any other airplane: lots of seats crowded together. This plane is three and a half years old, so everything was still pretty fresh and clean. The only indicator that you’re on a BIG airplane is looking outside and seeing the ground crew waaaaay down below.

We sat in the back on the upper-deck, in a row that has only two seats. We paid extra for that privilege, because we’d read that these rows have some extra leg-room (not true) and because it’s nice not having to crawl over a third person to get in and out, or to share the armrest and space (true).

We’d heard that on the upper deck, the noise level is the same as any other airplane; on the lower deck, it is said to be much quieter, since there’s no wind noise above. That’s likely true, but I can tell you that Laurie and I were immediately impressed at how quiet it was at our seats way in the back (which is usually noisier than anywhere else on the plane) and on the upper deck. We carried on a conversation at lower-than-normal voice levels as the plane was taking off and climbing out! Throughout the flight, the noise level seemed to us to be way lower than on any other plane we’ve been on lately. I took some sound level measurements and will compare them to our remaining flights on this trip.

A funny note: at home we’ve become fans of a French wine named “La Vieille Ferme” (the Old Farm); we think it’s one of the best bargains in wine: about $7/bottle at Total Wines, and a very nice wine, worth much more than that, in our always-humble opinions. So we got a great laugh when we saw what wine we would be served with our dinner:

Only the best wines on Air France…

Overall, we are totally impressed by this airplane, and will go out of our way to fly it on long flights.

A historical side-note: in the mid-1980s, Boeing and Airbus conducted a joint study to determine if they should build an A380-size airplane together. Boeing declined to participate and Airbus decided to build it anyway. Whether that was a good decision on either manufacturer’s part remains to be seen, but with flagging A380 sales and the success of Boeing’s 777 and 787, it looks as if Boeing was right. Airlines seem to really like those two airplanes, which have the range of a 747 or A380, but make money with fewer passengers. (Big planes just aren’t so attractive right now: Airbus sold zero A380s last year, and Boeing has sold only 122 747-8s so far, 71 of which are freighters and six of which are VIP Business Jets!)

Count us as fans of the Airbus A380!

Arrival

Mary had arranged a driver for us at the airport and we were very glad to see him as we exited baggage claim. It’s about a 90-minute drive to Boi-le-Rois, site of chez Germain; Gilles has, in the past, picked us up, but they’re in the States now, so taxi it was. (The taxi was a BMW station wagon – very nice.) When we arrived, Mary’s friend and neighbor Valerie was waiting at the house to give us keys, and show us the tricks of the new house. She had brought us fresh croissants, a baguette, bread and jam. Now if there’s a better way to start a France visit than with croissants, we don’t know it. We devoured the croissants, unpacked, napped, opened a bottle of wine (thank you, Gilles!), had a simple dinner, took a walk along the Seine and fell into bed. Glad – very glad – to be back in France.

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