Paris January (01/01-01/31)

January in Paris wasn’t nearly as cold as December had been…and it was an exciting month for us!! We finally received our Cartes de Sejour (residency permits) and now could move along to the next step of the French bureaucracy process… We moved into our second semester of teaching—and with a schedule change for Dan, it meant that we both worked on only Tuesdays and Fridays! And, we had our first non-family visitors!

For photos, click here.

Paris January

Kimberly

To compensate for last month’s lengthy analysis of French customer service, I plan to keep this posting short and sweet. The highlight of this month was definitely food! We had two different sets of friends visit us. Both had been to Paris before, so all they wanted to do was take some scenic walks around the city...and eat!

Our friends from the Stanford GSB, Salil and Nicole visited over Martin Luther King Day Weekend from New York. As mentioned above, the majority of their trip was spent eating: We managed to hit Atelier, Le Souk, L’Artisan, and Allard...and one or two others all in one long weekend! We did manage to squeeze in some time for some sightseeing and shopping. We visited Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and Chopin at the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery. We strolled through the artists painting the tourists in Montmartre near the church of Sacre-Coeur. And we hit up the Soldes (big half-yearly sales)...Salil managed to find a pair of Bally boots for less than half price he had seen them in New York!

Another GSB friend, Matt, visited us two weekends later from London. Again, the focus of the weekend was on eating: We tried a new place called Equitable, and took Matt to a few of our favorites: Le Reminet, Gerard-Mulot, and Lauduree. We also managed a little sightseeing, with the highlight being one of our favorite museums, the little known Musee Marmottan in the 16th arrondissement. This private museum is in a restored mansion next to the Bois du Bologne and has one of the largest collection of Monet paintings anywhere. There are many studies of his famous “Waterlilies,” the final works now displayed in the restored L’Orangerie. But the real highlight is the painting “Impression: Sunrise” — for which the Impressionist movement was named.

L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon
5-7 rue de Montalembert - 75007, Paris – 01 42 22 56 56
(One of Europe's most well-received chefs, Robuchon astonished critics when he turned his back on the Michelin Star system in favor of a non-traditional restaurant focused on innovative food. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily translate into cheap, as a meal here will still put you back at least 100 Euros a person…but that’s still probably half the price of his old 3-Michelin-Star establishment. Atelier is especially known for its “small plates”…which, confusingly, you are not meant to share…ordering family style was very confusing to the staff. The food was excellent though, the decor hip and stylish, and the seating really cool: at a bar before an open kitchen, where you can watch culinary preparations and be served immediately at an upscale counter. FYI, reservations accepted only for first sitting…so come early to get your name on the list.)

Equitable
1, rue des Fossés Saint-Marcel - 75005, Paris – 01 43 31 69 20
(One of our best finds in Paris. This wonderful upscale bistro tucked away in the 5th arrondissement serves some of the most innovative and beautifully prepared food in all of Paris. And the prices are an absolute steal: 32 Euros for a three-course meal! The best part is undoubtedly the service though…friendly, smiling waiters and an owner who seems genuinely happy to have you – even an American – in his restaurant. Order a bottle of the Chateau Margaux wine and you’re all set for a splendid meal.)

Allard
41 rue St-André-des-Arts – 75006, Paris – 01 43 26 48 23
(If you are looking for a standard Paris Bistro experience, look no further…This is one of the mainstays of the Parisian dining scene—opened in 1931, and still booked every night for wonderful roasted chicken, veal stew, and turbot in a beurre blanc sauce. It’s quite pricy, especially if you order one of their specialties…we had a chicken with mushrooms that was wonderful. But the location, service, and overall dining experience make it a quintessential Parisian night out.)

Le Gourmand
22, rue de Vaugirard – 75006, Paris - 01-43-26-26-05
(A very good find, this upscale bistro, just across the street from the Luxembourg Gardens serves innovative fresh food in a very modern setting (for Paris). Lunch is a better deal than dinner, with many of the same exact dishes offered at lower prices.)

Le Souk
www.lesoukfr.com
1, rue Keller - 75011, Paris - 01-49-29-05-08
(Our friends, Salil and Nicole, had just read about this fabulous Moroccan restaurant in a New York Times article. It definitely lived up to the hype. Tasty tagines, couscous, and wonderful pastilla! (a sweet/savory mixture of pastry, cinnamon, powdered sugar, chicken, and nuts.) And, by Parisian standards, quite a reasonable meal.)

L’Artisan de Saveurs
http://www.lartisandesaveurs.com/
72 rue du Cherche Midi - 75006, Paris – 01 42 22 46 64
(Widely regarded as one of the premium “Salons du Thé” in Paris, read: a place for tea and French cakes and pastries, this is also one of the best places for Sunday brunch. A relatively new phenomenon in Paris, unfortunately, it is still generally restricted to 30 Euros fixed-price multi-course meals…as is the case at L’Artisan. Here, at least, the brunch is fabulous…and quite filling…you probably won’t be hungry for dinner after your basket of fresh baked brioches and croissants, salmon blinis (or omelette, or veal picatta or crab cake), and housemade dessert…served with fresh orange juice and coffee/tea/hot chocolate!)

Cairo (12/28-29, 1/3-4)

We visited Cairo both at the beginning and end of our Egypt trip. While the Pyramids and King Tut's tomb at the museum were both fascinating, the poverty and chaos of the city were really shocking.

Daniel

For photos, click here.

Cairo

Cairo is the largest city in Africa with around 16 million inhabitants. Driving in from the airport was a great way to see how huge and populous this metropolis is. Sadly, this is also one of the most polluted cities/areas in Africa. We basically did Cairo in two trips, which acted as the bookends to our overall Egypt trip.

During our first stay we visited Memphis the site of Djoser's Step Pyramid in (an hour drive south of Cairo). Djoser, a powerful Pharaoh around 2600 BC, initiated the Ancient Egyptian obsession with the Pyramid. Memphis also had a few interesting relics. Not surprisingly, one of the ancient temple sites has a Ramses II statue on display. The statue (one of three) is made of alabaster and stands almost 15 ft tall. Like I said earlier this guy left his mark on Egypt.

Later we drove to Giza for the Great Pyramids. They absolutely dwarf Djoser's Pyramid but owe all their grandeur & genius to his initial works. To be honest, they are hard to really appreciate in person. The scale is so enormous that they just seem like geometric mountains poking out of the dessert. Standing at the base of one of the Pyramid corner stones - I couldn't imagine how these stones were so tightly stacked in an effort to reach to the sun. It's interesting that even today there are numerous theories on how the Egyptians most likely constructed the Pyramids.

While at Giza we climbed into the heart of the Great Pyramid and scrambled up the narrow and stuffy chambers only to arrive to a small and stuffy inner chamber that is believed to be a false treasure room. We also took a short camel ride on the Pyramid grounds - it was pretty corny but made for some great photos! Click here for a video of Kim attempting to dismount her camel...but it didn't want her to get off!

The highlight of our day in Giza was the Solar Boat. We didn't even know about this amazing archaeological find before we arrived at the more well-known Pyramids and Sphinx. The Solarboat Museum at the base of the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt contains the actual, reconstructed boat that was used in the funerary ceremonies of the Pharaoh Cheops. It was amazing to imagine the construction of this ceremonial boat in ~2500 BC! And to think that it has lasted 4000 years and is still perfectly preserved! (The boat wasn't discovered until after WWII.)

Finally, there was the Sphinx. What I remember most about the Sphinx, sadly, is staring at KFC and Pizza Hut that were built only 100ft from the site. The sole path leading up to a closer view of the Sphinx is packed with locals trying to sell kitchy souvenirs etc. It feels like Giza and Cairo are slowly creeping into and over the ancient sites.


On our return trip to Cairo we visited the newly built Cairo Museum, which holds a ton of cool artifacts. The highlights are definitely Tutankhamun's treasure and many, many mummies. The riches of Tutankhamun's burial chamber are amazing. Most famous is the funerary mask that absolutely glows - pure gold and mostly inlaid with lapis lazuli. Also, there was another entire wing dedicated to the various artifacts found inside the burial chamber ranging from model ships, chariots, to small figurines representing all the labourers/servants involved in the construction of his tomb.

We spent time wandering the lesser known Coptic area in Cairo. This neighborhood is dominated by Coptic Churches. The Coptic Church split with Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches, which were still joined. It was interesting to see how much a region/culture can influences the traditions of the church. In a number of the churches the current Coptic Pope was prominently pictured. If I wasn't sure about being in a church I would have mistaken him for a Imam or Islamic religious leader.

Finally, we spent quite a bit of time at the Cairo Bazaar - highly recommended as one of the "must see" things in Cairo. There was something about the stench and large amounts of garbage that made us wonder what the "bad" parts of Cairo were like. While in the Bazaar we often had to tip toe through passageways covered with layers of garbage and mud. Although the smell and pollution were in our face - we did find some great Egyptian food at one of the restaurants buried in the maze of alleys within the Bazaar. Click here for a video of the evening call to prayer in the heart of Islamic Cairo.

Cairo was great to visit for a day or two, but you don't need to spend more time here. Time in Egypt is much more well spent along the Nile and near Luxor. The ancient sites are more impressive and less overrun with urban sprawl.

Abu Simbel (1/2)

If you want to know more about Ramses II this is a great place to start…the two temples make a statement like no other about how Ramses II displayed his might. The site is also famous as it had to be literally cut apart and reassembled to escape the rising level of the Nile after the construction of the Aswan Dam.

Daniel

For photos, click here.

Abu Simbel

So there are two main reasons why this Ramses II shrine is so impressive. The first has to do with its clear theme – don’t mess with Ramses II. The cave-like temple was carved into a rock (rather than constructed) and is fronted with enormous replicas of the man himself (actually more like a god since pharaohs were considered to be). You would probably get to about ankle height standing next to one of them. Inside offers another view into how important hieroglyphics were. Every surface, walls, columns ceilings are carved with stories about Ramses II and his mostly successful war mongering.

So the second thing is more of a modern twist. Since Egypt built the newer High Aswan Dam, the location where Abu Simbel was originally built fell below the waterline. So in the 1960s the government and UNESCO turned the temple into one of the biggest stone jigsaw puzzles. Remember that this was a carved temple, unlike the others in Egypt that were constructed with blocks or pillars. So that meant that the Egyptians had to actually cut apart the entire temple into 1423 blocks, move it 200m to higher ground, and reassemble the entire monument.

In order to see the site we had to take a puddle jumper airplane from Luxor to Abu Simbel. I forgot to mention there is nothing near Abu Simbel except the monument, the airport built to bring tourists in, and the masses of tour buses shuttling people back and forth. Even so, the short flight over is very dramatic. You can see the already wide Nile explode over the desert into a giant reservoir (known as Lake Nassar) surrounded by nothing but sandy rock. Depending on how you view it, the proximity of the airport is either a good or bad thing. Our plane flew directly over the temple for a great aerial shot, but those planes fly in and out every 30 minutes so when you are actually at the site it gets old pretty quick.

Nile Cruise (12/30-1/1)

Three days and nights on a luxurious boat cruising along the Nile River...what a way to spend my birthday and New Year’s! Along the way, we stopped at several temples, viewing even more incredibly preserved and impressive architecture and art from ancient Egypt. The best part though was probably just sitting on the deck of the boat, watching Egyptian scenery: the farmers tending to their fields, the animals grazing on the banks, the minarets of mosques appearing every so often, the vibrant green of the fertile Nile contrasting with the brown of the arid desert.

Daniel

For pictures, click here.

Nile Cruise

One of the best parts of our trip was staying on a small but very well equipped A&K cruise boat. It had a full service restaurant, lounge, outdoor terrace, and sun deck. The rooms were great with one of the nicest showers I have ever taken while on a ship/boat. We even had Molton & Brown soaps/shampoos – I’d never heard of it before but Kim told me it was amazing stuff, and yes it was so we of course lugged whatever was left back to Paris. Having such comfy amenities made it easy to soak in the ancient sites as we meandered down the Nile.

My other favorite thing about our cruise was the food. Most of the meals were buffet style, which was great since we could try all the tasty delights. The chef was proud of his work and was good at it too. Luckily, we were able to attend a cooking class on one of the afternoons back on the boat. He walked us through three great recipes, that we got to keep and took us through the kitchen to see all the behind the scenes action.

One of our stops was in Edfu where we made a short visit to the Temple of Horus. It’s yet another mighty temple, not as grand as Karnak, but it has been preserved very well. The inner sanctuary was stunning, with its polished granite shrine that once contained the gold cult statue of Horus.

In the evening just after sunset we made a visit to the Temple of Kom Ombo otherwise known as the “crocodile temple.” The temple is actually a joint temple of both Sobek, the local god represented by a crocodile, and Horus, the main Egyptian god that is represented by a falcon. Clearly the crocodile was revered in this town on the Nile, the mummified crocs found on site as well as a clear theme of crocodiles in the relief carvings were proof of that. There was also a deep well that was used by the ancients to measure the height of the Nile. The Egyptians lived or died by the Nile, so it makes sense that they went to great lengths to understand their sometimes unpredictable water source.

Further south we finally disembarked from our luxurious Nile cruise in the town of Aswan – home to the Low & High Aswan Dams. Our minibus stopped on top of the High Dam for a look. There were heavily armed guards every 30ft protecting this precarious spot. If the dam were seriously damaged or destroyed it would wipe out the city of Aswan within minutes along with everything in its path on the way to the Mediterranean Sea—giving residents of Cairo only hours to evacuate. Even though it is one of the largest dams in the world that provides critical irrigation and hydroelectric power to Egypt, there isn’t much to see on top of the dam. Just nearby the dam is an old Obelisk Quarry home to the largest existing Obelisk. The Obelisk still lies within the quarry on its side where it was hewn from the rock. At some point it cracked and the project was abandoned. Had it been finished it would have been 42 meters tall and weighed 1168 tons.

The Temple of Philae was our last stop before we flew off to see the Abu Simbel temple south of Lake Nassar. Located on an island in reservoir created by the building of the Dam, this was another victim of the rising waters of Lake Nasser, due to the dam. The Egyptians actually had to disassemble the temple and move it from its original location to a new island. In addition, the temple has another piece of interesting history: it was “conserved” by the French who arrived in the 1900s and made their own addition, carving a decree about Napolean’s rule etc. There is even some ancient and French graffiti on some of the walls.

Since my birthday falls on December 30, I enjoyed one of the most enthusiastic Happy Birthday songs performed by the wait staff (and the head chef we later learned) during dinner. Pounding drums, one gyrating waiter, and many slightly off-tune singers belting out the song at the top of their lungs made it a memorable treat. Click here for a video.

The other entertaining event on the boat was a Egyptian Galabeya party, where the guests were invited to wear traditional Galabeyas (for sale only of course). The whole Haimsohn family and I got into the spirit. Kim insisted I put on some black eyeliner to make my costume as authentic as possible. We also celebrated New Year’s on the boat cruise. The party was fun, but the true highlight was watching one of the staff (the same gyrating waiter) burn a hole in the dance floor with his moves during a pop dance beat. He even worked some pole moves into his solo dance before the song sadly came to an end.