Museums and monuments!

Good news / bad news /good news. I have photo uploading working on the Nook (though still only from the micro-SD card, not from web albums). Unfortunately, the blogger app is pretty under-powered, so I haven't found a sure way to insert pictures into the text in a way that allows for ongoing narrative; it's also a little unstable so when I first drafted this post, only two of the 25 or so pictures I had planned on putting up actually made it into the saved version. Happily, we have Nico's computer to work with, so il n'y a meme pas de probleme.

Emily was sick our first day in Paris, so I went out with her Aunt Jill to the Louvre. Emily did not spend ALL her time lying in bed, as it turns out - she also set up a lovely surprise for me later in the week - but that's a topic for a separate post.

The walk to the Louvre brought us through a very fancy pants arcade. We didn't have the money to shop, nor even really the interest to window shop, but it kept us out of the rain nicely.

Before entering the main room where you buy your tickets, you can get a pretty good view of some of the enclosed sculpture gardens.

Then you go into the main hall - the one with the glass pyramid Parisians love to hate.

Some random good stuff:

One funny thing about the Louvre is that, having once been a palace, some rooms have themed collections that seem somewhat out of place with the frescoes and ornate gilding on the walls and ceilings. This was the ceiling of a room filled with Mesopotamiam antiquities:

This is the grand hall. I don't know how long it is, but if I had to estimate, I'd say it's somewhere between "hella" and "way too effing." Oh, and look, there's Jill right in the foreground! Hi, Jill!

I'm not going to include the pictures I took of the Mona Lisa. That's just downright trite, even if I did take some to remember I was there. Honestly, this picture, which hangs just opposite her, I found to be much more impressive, but maybe that's just the American in me - it's one of the two biggest paintings hanging in the Louvre. This is "The Wedding Feast at Cana," by Veronese, and it just blows my mind to think about how difficult it must be to keep your lines clean and your lighting realistic when painting such a huge work. The colors are great too, though sadly I couldn't get that very well - no flash photography at the Louvre!

Scene of a Flood, by Girodet de Roussy-Trioson is not about the biblical flood, rather a natural cataclysm. The man is trying in vain to save both the past (in the form of his aged father) and the future (his wife and children). [Rough translation from the plaque next to the painting]

This is the coronation of Josephine as Empress, and is the other of the two biggest paintings in the museum. It is by Louis David, who I think was my favorite artist in this section; he had a lot of great stuff.

For instance:

Next up, Egyptian antiquities! These sculptures are notable to me and my Peace Corps friends for being made out of karite. That's the tree shea butter comes from for the rest of you.

There are all sorts of sculptures and bas-reliefs of scribes in this collection. But as best I could tell, this is the only one of all of them to sport a pedo-stache (Mom, just don't ask what that is. Trust me.). The guy on the right was the only one with fat rolls. I like him.

Giant slate sarcophagus. Wow, I wonder how much it weighs. To the right, the sort of thing that would go inside.

And at the display of what would go inside THAT, a couple children are introduced to the mummy that is about to eat them.

Included for weirdness:

Out in the sculpture garden. This guy is one of four prisoners, each representing a different emotion and country. He's defiance I assume (the plaques don't say).

Pictures are not allowed in the Musee d'Orsay, but that didn't stop Em from taking, or me from posing. WHAT TIME IS IT THIS STUPID WATCH ARGH.

We also saw a few gems just walking around. Which is typical for Paris. Anyway, this statue commemorates what is apparently a famous story here about a man who could walk through walls - up until one day when halfway through, he found he couldn't anymore. We did our best to help him out, but eventually were forced to admit defeat and leave him to his fate.

Last but not least, we saw this on a random house on our walk and knew we had to have a picture of it. Shout out to Katie and Kelsey, whom we can't wait to see in Seattle!

...Oh, but the view...

We'd like to give you all an idea of the place we've been staying during our Paris leg of the trip.

Nico's apartment is up in hilly Montmartre, about a block from the cafe where much of Amelie was filmed: "Cafe des 2 Moulins"

(We just had to have coffee there one morning...so touristy)

DW swears Amelie was a stalker. I'd like to believe she was less sinister than that. But this lit up movie poster is hard to argue with... Amelie, why you lookin so creepy??

We could've gotten the Amelie special - a drink and a creme brulee...but had some spicy cappucinos instead.

And we're also just around the corner from the infamous Moulin Rouge 

(you wouldn't believe the line outside of it on a Friday night - it made us wonder if there was actually something THAT worth seeing inside or if it was just the famous-factor that made it so popular...)

So, the location of the apartment is just grand - a super interesting part of town. But then, there are the stairs...

Seven flights of stairs. Over 200 steps. And on our tired out-of-shape legs and feet that are already trucking it all around Paris by day and night. Phew.

It's also definitely a small apartment (is there any other kind under the million dollar range in Paris??) up under the eaves...which can make bathing a bit of a challenge for the taller of the two of us

But, it's still a very charming place that has made DW say (about a million times a day) "I just want to live here!" "I love this apartment!!" etc.

And one other thing to love about the apartment are the views....oh, the views...

The Eiffel Tower out of one side of the apartment:

And Sacre Coeur on the other:

Oh, and then there's the 360 degree view that can be had from the rooftop (forgive us, Jill - it was beautiful!!):

FLASHBACK YESTERDAY: Eight months' savings? That's one meal taken care of, then.

We've actually already arrived in Paris, though I began this post yesterday with the plan to post it while we were still in Ouaga. The power and water then both went out all over the city all afternoon, and it didn't come back until we were almost out the door going to our last dinner before we left. Emily says it made it a bit easier to leave, emotionally at any rate (it certainly didn't make our last-minute packing any easier), but it also meant this post did not get put up in order. Sorry for that. Also, if anyone happens to know how to adjust the time stamping on these posts to accurately reflect where we are posting from, please feel free to let us know - we did not land at three in the morning, and Emily didn't write about our trip at eight (the times were actually closer to noon and five in the evening).

Emily has been preparing for this trip for quite some time. She got herself a pottery bank a while back (it's not actually a piggy, but it is Tcheriba-style pottery, which is pretty famous in the region) and has been saving in it ever since.

Trip day is here! To avoid having shards of clay all over my courtyard, we threw down - literally - into a laundry basket. The damage:

Wait, there's some missing at the bottom of that picture! I had to include it though, because Emily is displaying the exact smile that once prompted me to ask her, "What fresh new deviltry have you cooked up now?" Anyway, here's a picture showing all that broken pottery and beautiful, filthy lucre, if a slightly less mischievous Em:

We gathered all that money up, and...

Dollah dollah bills, y'all. Well, FCFA actually. Something north of 70,000 of them. Which works out to about $140 or 100 euro, which is what we changed it for at the airport. Our plan is to go out some time this week to a prix fixe place, like Chateaubriand.

Speaking of going out, we're off now to walk around Montmartre and enjoy the cool air while shopping for bread to go with all the cheese Emily's aunt just brought back. Gosh, Paris life is tough.

P- P- P- Paris!!

We made it to our first stop safe and sound and with pretty much the most minimal hassle ever. It must be the little voodoo statue from Benin that I brought with me. I loved the Orly airport - fastest time through customs ever.

The flight(s) were very tiring between leaving Ouagadougou at 00h30, stopping an hour later in Niamey, stopping for a short layover (that we ran through) in Casablanca at 6h30, then arriving in Paris at 12h15 and at my cousin Nico's apartment after some trains and metros at around 14h20.

A total of ~13 hours of travel (w/time zone change) to traverse around 7,000km is pretty good!

We are tired, though:

I'm so happy to be staying here in my cousin's place and getting to hang out with him [well...he's not home from work yet, actually...but soon] and with my aunt Jill who came from Strasbourg to see us!! Plus, Nico's apartment is right around the corner from Moulin Rouge (ooh la la!) and is on the 7th floor such that on one side you can see la Tour Eiffel while on the other you can see the hill up to the peak of Montmartre...it's pretty spectacular (more photos to come). 

Last thing, we ate our first Parisian meal; and let me tell you - it was fancy:

Just kidding. Some street food on the way 'cause we were starving. But street food in Paris means a chicken/cheese panini, prosciutto sandwich, and cherry cokes. So, we're happy.

Looking forward to some good home cooking with Jill and Nico tonight and maybe a foray into the neighborhood and/or on to the rooftop of this lovely apartment building...

And so it begins...we've landed!

[Update: 16 Oct 17h35 Paris time] I posted this from the Orly airport, which offers a free 15 minute connection. Unfortunately, I discovered that my Nook does not quite work with the web interface of Blogger, and while I was able to put info in the title, I couldn't type anything in the body of the post. I will research that issue more tonight, but as of a few minutes ago you can see Emily's most recent post for thoughts on our trip in.

Packed and Ready to Rock

It's our last day in Burkina before we fly off on our 50 day escapade around the world...

We're packed (mostly) and I've gotten through a lot of goodbyes. For me, it's my last day in Burkina after being here nearly three and a half years. It's a good thing that DW* is coming back here after the trip because I don't think we could handle having the both of us scrambling through last-minute goodbyes and packing up for good. It's also a good thing that I have this grand trip to look forward to; it's making all the sad parts of leaving so much easier...

Back to packing! Here's what all of our combined(!) luggage looks like:

I think we did pretty well on the packing light principle. (Surprising, considering the amount of cheap sweaters I had to buy second-hand at the market before heading into frigid 55 degree weather! brrrr)


Now, for a little run-down of the trip to get everyone caught up:

We leave right after midnight tonight, so technically Oct 16th and we get to the Washington DC area - where I'll settle into my new life in Americaland - on Nov 28th. From there, DW will continue back to Burkina Faso after a short stay, arriving where he started on Dec 2nd. Which makes his trip 48 days. (Sorry, we rounded for the blog's URL.)

Along the way we'll be visiting...
5 countries: France, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines
and 5 US cities: Honolulu, Hawaii; Seattle, Washington; New Orleans, Louisiana; Baltimore, Maryland; and...well...Northern Virginia (can we please just say Washington DC??)

Now, here's a quiz for any of you who haven't seen our detailed itinerary and/or been in the parts of the world in which we're travelling. Here's an alphabetical list of all the cities we'll be visiting or travelling through on the non-US part of our trip. Guess which country each city is in (some are much easier than others); answer in the comment section; the first person to get them all right gets a photo of us spelling out their initials with our bodies in the city of their choice...

1. Bangkok
2. Battambang
3. Cebu
4. Colombo
5. Galle
6. Kandy
7. Manila
8. Paris
9. Siem Reap

And, to help you visualize, here's a rough Google map of our stops along the way - although not all our stops are pictured so don't count on it too much to help you through the quiz:

Good luck and enjoy our blog - we'll do our best to post as much as we can with as many pictures as possible!!

*note for future reference: this is what I call Mr. David Duckworth