Monaco Thoughts

As for the Monaco casinos, they are more like the US than I thought, just no free drinks. Slots are exactly the same and make the same noises, table games look the same with a few minor variations (Just a “0” on roulette tables, no “00.”). Save for the Grand Casino, most others will allow casual clothing. I don’t gamble much, but I will give it a shot tomorrow…besides, my nemesis is not here: Cocktail waitresses. Truth be told, for a heterosexual male, it just doesn’t get any better than a beautiful young woman in a short skirt bringing free drinks. How do you concentrate on the table with that distraction at your side?



One of the things I wondered about most when I decided to travel to Monaco was whether the prices would be exorbitant, and surprisingly no, they are essentially in line with what you would expect to pay in Europe. Certainly, there are pathetically expensive options, such as $20,000 per night hotel suites in the well known Hotel de Paris, but there are more “normal” prices here than I imagined. Supermarket prices (yes, I found one almost immediately) are essentially in line with what I saw in Paris, and casual restaurants offer pizzas in the 10 euro range.




The difference between Monaco and the rest of the world is that (literally) a few feet down from the “normal” pizza place is a small storefront, plain-looking in its own right, which sells customized corporate jets, and displays in its front window a plastic mock-up of an Airbus outfitted with couches, reclining chairs and beds. What a convenience, you go out for a quick bite at the local pizza joint, and you can stop in and check on the status of your corporate Airbus right afterwards.


Monaco is, of course, synonymous with the Mediterranean seacoast, and the harbor is one of the city’s most renowned vistas. To be certain, walking past, literally, dozens of yachts is an experience beyond words. A large percentage of these come from Georgetown (Cayman Islands), though you will also find vessels from many other cities such as London.


It is coming on towards mid-afternoon, and the hotel has just dropped off their New Year treat, so I think I will take a short nap so that I can awaken later and become…..Bond, Mark Bond.

Paris Thoughts

I’m a bit out of order here as I am actually in Monaco yet publishing some more thoughts on Paris. I also acknowledge these thoughts are not fully polished, but I wanted to get the ideas down while fresh, then clean them up in the future.

Overall, I was very pleased with Paris and had a far better time than I thought I would. I knew, of course, that Europe at this time of year would be chilly, and the weather did indeed provide a bone-chilling cold. It warmed up a bit on day four in Paris (though it was raining) Unlike Berlin there was never any snow or ice on the ground, yet the weather was cold enough that it limited the time you could spend outside. Even with my thermal long-johns, and skull cap, and gloves, after eight or nine hours outside I would come back to the hotel room with a bone-chilling, painful ache that made me very tired. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really find any way to beat it: Walking around was painful, but sitting on the tour bus (even downstairs in the enclosed part) literally hurt. In short, the cold severely limited the time you could spend outside site-seeing to about eight hours at most; after that, you want to spend time in the hotel room and take a nap or stay close by in a local restaurant/brasserie. It really was too bad in that I truly enjoyed seeing the city, and I would specifically have liked to spend more time on the Left Bank. One advantage to the weather: I could buy meats or other refrigerated products and keep them outside on the window sill without any concern they would spoil!


The hotel was very warm, which given its budget price of just over $100 per night was a pleasant surprise, though in many other ways it lived up to its budget promise:

• No cable TV, aerial only, and they are still showing Michael Jackson tributes!!

• Pathetically dinky elevator, the type that I have only seen before in France. I could literally rest my back against the wall and easily reach across the longest span with my arm.

• Metal window shutters: What are they for? I don’t think it is for hurricanes, but am guessing it it perhaps to lock heat in?

• Rude hotel attendant: When asking for my key (they do make you post), I offered to show him my passport, and he snapped “Why are you doing that?” I guess I'm getting better handling snobs, in that I retorted that the better hotels required ID in such cases. This seemed to have worked in that he is a bit nicer to me from that point on. Unfortunately, it was one of those cases in which it was better to meet the rudeness with rudeness.


Though very much a tourist area, many of the shops in the Anvers area sell dirt cheap clothes, stacked in bundles, with people literally diving through them to find what they want. I’m not sure if this is a local, regional market or not, but it is odd to see so many Parisians – literally – doing headstands to dig through the clothing.

As for the language, I have never studied French and cannot understand any of the spoken word (even when looking at what is written, such as station announcements on the Metro), but I have remarkably good luck figuring out written French: Its roots must be close enough to English that I can quite often translate what is written, and I have verified this in more than one case with side-by-side translations.

Paris restaurants were better than what I experienced many years ago, perhaps because I have a better idea what to look for. Unfortunately, as is well known bread is a staple in French food, and I am definitely not a dough-head. Nonetheless, I did try real fondue (which was not as great as I expected---it’s definitely something that has a better appeal than is justified in reality), and I was surprised and pleased to see that most Paris restaurants will give you a chilled bottle of tapwater rather than making you pay for bottled.

I did find what I believe to be the perfect Paris restaurant; and it was literally right next-door to my hotel: L Table d'Anvers, http://www.latabledanvers.com/ . It was very clean and had an earth-tone modern feel to it. The food was excellent, and it was very moderately priced, especially for the region. I also splurged my last day and tried $65 glass of Cognac: You could tell the superior difference and quality, though admittedly it will only be a once or twice in a lifetime event for me.

Much to my surprise, there were only a handful of Starbucks in Paris, certainly not the one on every corner situation you expect to see in the rest of the world. While I hate to admit it, I can only drink cappuccinos for so long, and was pleased to stumble across Caffee Americano.


As in Germany, the meal “doner” (shaved lamb) is also very big in Paris. I personally don’t care for it so did not try it, but it appears to be the exact same as the German version.

Wireless Internet access was very spotty in both Paris and in Berlin, something that I found extremely surprising in this day and age. In both hotels, the throughput was very slow (as confirmed by the “very low” wireless signal level), and even after cold boots and ipconfig tweaks, login attempts usually required half a dozen or more efforts. I even tried restoring my system to a week earlier just in case something changed, but to no avail.

Monaco!

It's the 30th of December, I just flew in from Orly to Nice, and I have checked in to the Novotel in Monte Carlo. This is incredible, almost a fairy tale type of place! I'll make this entry short as I want to do some exploring, but let's just say it is absolutely the highlight of the trip. Berlin was a bit disappointing, Paris was much more fun and enjoyable than on my visit a few years ago, and Monaco is over the top. Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and the tux arrived safely with me (in fact, not even wrinkled, much to my surprise!)

The Novotel is fantastic, modern and trendy. I'd go so far as to say that the website, for once, does not do the property justice!

The Ultimate Mulligan Fulfilled

I did finally resolve one of the more silly mistakes in my adult life, in that this last Sunday (27 Dec 2009) I visited the Louvre. As I mentioned previously, I missed it some years back during my first trip to Paris (it was closed on Tuesday, my last day in the city), and in fact this "do-over" was the main reason I retunred to Paris. I spent the better part of the day in the Louvre, and while I am by no means a student of art history, nor do I profess to understand the time periods, this was incredibly fascinating and overpowering beyond words. The Mona Lisa, Venus, and all the treasures under one roof are enough to boggle the mind. The Italian painting gallery alone is something you could spend a day wandering through, mesmerized, even if you are not an oil painting fan.

I plan to spend Monday (and perhaps Tuesday) on the hop-on/hop-off busline. More later.

The Rest of the Paris Story

So there is no doubt about it, not everything with the Paris trip has gone 100% smoothly. As that well-known journalist would say,here is the rest of the story:

The Journey from Orly to Paris: While the flight from Berlin to Paris was more or less uneventful (save for forgetting to remove my shoes at the security checkpoint, which terribly upset one Teutonic security guard), there was “a challenge” at the RER ticket machine. I flew into Orly, which compared to CDG was, indeed, a blessing, and I took the automated tram to the RER line for what should have been a 20 minute ride to Gare du Nord. When I left the tram, I noticed that the automated gateways required an RER ticket, so I stepped up to the machine to purchase one. Very quickly, I was able to determine that the cost was 9.85 in Euros, and I was pleased to see that the machine would accept credit card, or paper Euros, or Euro coins. I first attempted to pay with three different credit cards, but after trying all four orientations for each one (12 total), I realized that my cards, blessed only with the magnetic strip, would not work in a machine which expected a smart card, in essence the same contact set as is in a SIM card (the little gold contacts on the front of the card). No problem, I had thought ahead and had over 200 Euros on me. First, I tried to insert coins, but I found that I was about one Euro short of the necessary fare (somewhat akin to an old Father Guido Sarducci SNL skit, for those old enough to remember). No problem, I tried to insert the paper bills, but no slot on the machine was physically capable of accommodating paper money. I noticed, however, that there was what appeared to be a change machine, some beast which would accept my paper money and give me coins in return--except that this device was completely inoperative, even when I repeatedly tried to insert my paper into what was the obvious slot. Finally, when I was about ready to board the train back to Orly in defeat, I noticed that another machine did, indeed, have a paper bill acceptor. Had it not been for that I might have been stuck on “the MTA” (for those of you, older than myself, who recognize the song title).


Hygiene: In the interest of full disclosure, I point out upfront that I am a single heterosexual male who lives alone, so cutting corners on household hygiene is not unheard of. Yes, my body is always clean as are my clothes, but an un-vacuumed rug or plates in the sink are to be expected. With that in mind, it is somewhat disconcerting when I ordered a vodka tonic (my signature drink), only to find a "floatie" of undetermined nature in the glass. I had noticed in Germany, as well as in France, that rather than relying on Hobarts and the like, glass washing in bars consists of a quick dunk in the sink full of (warm) sudsy water, followed by an equally quick dunk in a sink full of "clean" water (water which in theory was clean, but had been compromised after repeated dunks from the first, sudsy sink). I was debating with myself how big an issue to make of this: I did not want to sound like a wimpy American complaining about something that any European would consider silly, and given that French is far from my strong point, I did not even know how to broach the subject with the bartender. With that in mind, and also knowing that the alcohol in the drink would sanitize any floatie, regardless of its origin (which I elect not to guess), I was consoling myself to accept the notion that I should discreetly "fish" the floatie out with my finger and continue with the drink. No problem, except that as I was attempting to quietly move the object from the glass, a beautiful 100 pound Rottweiler who had been quietly lying behind the bar decided to jump up on the kitchen counter and say hello. I am, of course, the consummate dog lover, believing that they not only have souls but that they are more perfect than are we humans, yet somehow the notion that a dog was hopping upon, and slobbering upon, a food bearing surface was a bit much for me. (I started at that point having visions of the origin of the floatie….) Fortunately, though, I was able to remove the floatie, while one of my dining companions casually tossed the dog a french fry, which he caught in mid-air and gobbled down, as he then removed his front paws from the counter. Floatie fished out, dog on the kitchen floor, “alles gut” as they say.

Found the light switch: OK, so the hotel does, indeed, have lights in public places, but alas they are only on for a few minutes after pushing the on-demand button, before they hibernate. Still, I might be able to retire the penlight.

Hacked my blog: This one irritates me: Not only did the hackers manage to infiltrate my email account and spam my friends, colleagues and jilted ex-lovers (you know I don’t really mean that!), but they also managed to hack this very blog, putting an entry in with a URL to what Google flagged as an "attack site."

QWERTY Not: I wish that the world would settle on one $&(#*) keyboard layout. Sure, when you have different languages (e.g., Cyrillic) I can see why the layout would need to be altered, but French keyboards have many of the keys in the “wrong” place, not to mention that you have to select caps to get numbers and the “period.”…..arghhhh. Normally this would not be an issue as I would use my own netbook, but given the hack above, I am trying to rely on wired lines, which means Internet cafes. (BTW, the availability of Internet cafes is in and of itself a great pleasure to be found in France, unlike Germany where they no longer exist.)

Escargot: OK, put some pesta on it, and give me a shot of vodka, and I can wash almost anything down…actually, it was not all that bad, if you just imagine it grew on a tree rather slithering through the ground.

Fergie is Married: The latest edition of Cosmo, sitting in the hotel lobby, highlights on its front cover a picture of BEP Fergie with a title: “Her Naughty Honeymoon Surprise.” I can’t quite bring myself to read it, lest I spend the rest of my life regretting not being on the receiving end, but I can say that for all those other articles (“HIS #1 SEX WISH” and the like), Cosmo could not be more wrong. Also, why would you want to get rid of “Muffin Top?” Playboy visualizes the average woman sitting on a piano, sipping wine in a corset while fingering herself, and Cosmo does likewise to the male image. Geeze folks, get a life and find out what a real person is like.

Deutsch ou Russki? I often am able to pass myself off in a foreign land as either a German or a Russian (though there are places such as Berlin where I have to default to Aussie as they will see right through either of the former), and I am finding that ability convenient in France Granted, the anti-American sentiment is not so great as it was during the start of the Gulf War, but somehow Europeans seem more tolerant of fellow Europeans who do not speak the local native language than they are of Americans who do not speak the language. Don’t get me wrong, I kick myself for not having continued to work on foreign language skills, yet there is some truth to the idea that English, though a de facto universal language, is still despised by many. Much better to be a German-speaker in France than an American-speaker in France: “Danke” is cool, “thanks” is not. BTW, I seem to be able to do a decent job _reading_ French, as I can usually trace it back to roots and figure out the meaning, but the spoken word skips by me every time, even if it is just listening to a subway platform announcement.

Note to self: When paying by credit card in a restaurant, tell the waiter/waitress the tip upfront, before they run the card through, rather than afterwards….Bill is “neun,” so say “zwolf” and they will write it that way. It cannot be changed after the fact.

From Berlin to Paris

I am way behind on my trip posts, so let me try to catch up quickly then possibly fill in some more details later on.

It's Saturday 26 Dec, and I have flown from Berlin to Paris. Much to my surprise, Berlin turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment, while Paris (at least initially) seems to be far more exciting and enjoyable for me. The five days I spent in Berlin were, to put it succinctly, uneventful and sterile, something that was just the opposite of what I had anticipated. I chose to spend the first days of my vacation, Christmas in particular, in what I had heard was a high energy city. While I really cannot find any specific fault with Berlin, it was very flat, sterile, sparse, almost a bedroom community, similar in many respects to Munich: Nothing to dislike, but not a place that seemed to bring about any excitement. To be fair, I arrived late on Sunday night, and the first two days were cold and snowy, so the weather certainly put much of the damper on things in and of itself. I spent the first day doing the hop-on/hop-off tour bus and was able to see the major sites: Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, Checkpoint Charley, etc. After that, since it was literally too cold and snowy to walk about, I spent Monday and Tuesday in the sauna (Therma am Europa) across the street from the Crowne Plaza City Center. The spa, again, was a disappointment: Small and dingy, nothing at all like the grandiose Therme Erding I visited 16 months ago. I did get to see the Christmas markets, but again, nothing really jumped out at me as being a highlight.

Also, for one of the few times in my travelling career, jet lag caught up with me, and I spent virtually all of Wednesday in bed. This is odd in that normally jet lag is a non-event for me; I think it goes hand-in hand with the ho-hum feeling I had towards the city.

Paris, so far, has been a far more pleasant surprise than I remembered or expected. I was last here several years ago at the start of the Gulf War, and while the city itself had an appeal, the attitude of the Parisians soured me quickly. Perhaps I have grown more accustomed to foreign travel in those ensuing years, but while the simple rudeness is still apparent, I am able to brush it off and enjoy all the other things the city has to offer: It is lively, even though still cold outside and even though it is Boxing Day. The streets are very crowded, the shops old and helter-skelter, far from the sterile, spacious atmosphere of Berlin. Also, Paris definitely has the cosmopolitan, world mixing bowl feel of say London, Rome, Hamburg or Koln; panhandlers abound, street merchants try to sell cigarettes and perfume to you as you walk past, and chestnuts were roasting from many "merchants" pushing them about in shopping carts. One very vivid difference is that in the five full days I spent in Berlin, I only saw two Blacks, with everybody else begin Caucasian; yes, lots of Russians, but still a very fair-skinned city. Paris, of course, has every race and ethnic group imaginable.

In short, and in hindsight, I probably should have reversed Berlin and Paris, spending Christmas in France rather than in Germany.

As for the people, as I noted before, the Parisians do seem to live up to the stereotype of being rude; Berliners (and Germans in general) are far from kind, but more brisk and professional than openly rude. Granted, this may partly be due to my own behavior, in that my German is actually fairly good (at least after a few days of refreshing), while my French consists of half a dozen words. (And that assumes you count "si vous plais" as three words; if you consider it a single entity, then my French vocabulary is down to four words.)

One thing that has been problematic during this trip is Internet access, in both Germany and France. Many wireless vendors offer services, at ridiculous prices such as $15 for two hours, and as bad as the price may sound, what is even worse is that the service is terrible: Slow if it works at all, often requiring you attempt to access a page three of four times before it finally renders. I do, of course, live by the web, so having to struggle to access something that I normally take for granted is unnerving.

Also, to add to the Internet woe story, I was hacked in Berlin: Presumably somebody intercepted my cell signal while I was checking email, and thus every contact in my address book received an email from "me" sending them to a pharmaceutical drug site. On the bright side, it did result in a few replies from many people I had not heard from in years, so it was a very welcome chance to say "Happy Holidays" when I responded with the apology for spamming them!

The one itinerary item high on my list for Paris is the Louvre, as I missed it the last time I was here. (I had planned to visit it on my last day, only to find out it is closed on Tuesdays!) More than likely I will do that tomorrow, with Monday and Tuesday being free and up in the air.

The hotel in Paris ("Hotel Du Square D'Anvers) is not so nice and modern as the Crowne Plaza in Berlin, but the location is fantastic, within easy walking distance of the Gare du Nord. It's older but clean, though many of the enhancements have been made by a person whose carpentry skills are below mine: I measure once and cut twice, though this person seems not to own a tape measure and eyeballs the cut, with noticeable gaps in the woodwork an acceptable end result. Also, the hotel doesn't seem to believe in turning on lights---I'm glad I tucked away a small penlight, as I literally would not be able to walk up the stairs without it! As simple and odd as it may sound, the Parisian hotel has a reasonable public sitting area, something that was lacking in Berlin, so I can sit in public as I type my thoughts rather than being squirreled away in my room.

The Supermarket and the Christmas Market

One of the first things I do any time I am visiting a foreign country is to find and check out a local supermarket, with the reasons being twofold:

1. I like to "see how the locals live." Most local people don't live at the tourist traps, so I very much like to go to their equivalent of a Safeway or Albertsons to see how the normal people live, what is in their market, and to try some of their food.
2. On a pragmatic level, though I don't intend to save money when I travel, I do enjoy finding a way to avoid being taken by the hotel and normal tourist traps. In the picture to the left, all the food and alcohol cost me just a tad of $30 US, which may not sound all that great until you realize the the bottle of vodka ("wodka") cost me no more than the cost of one vodka tonic at the hotel bar. Granted, saving money on a trip is not my first goal, but to avoid getting taken is a nice benefit.

On a different note, Germany has always been famous for its Christmas markets, and while Berlin is no Bavaria, the Christmas market fever is in full swing here. With the snow on the ground and the chill in the air, this is an almost magical place just four days before Christmas--save for that "Gluhwein" that they are trying to push. I'm not exactly sure what it is; Wikipedia only defines it as a "muled wine" and explains that

• "Historically, wine often went bad. By adding spices and honey, it could be made drinkable again"

When I find out what that really means, I will post it, but for now say let's just say that something that sounds wonderful and happy is abyssmal--and I am not sure I agree with the "drinkable again" comment.

Beyond that, I spent the day doing the "Hop-on/Hop-off" bus thing, partly to get a quick overview of Berlin, and partly to avoid the unbelievable, record-setting cold we are seeing. More on that tomorrow.

The Christmas 2009 Odyssey Begins

It's a week before Christmas, and my vacation has just officially begun. It's back to Europe, this time for two weeks, with---

• Six nights in Berlin
• Four nights in Paris
• Three nights in Monaco (including New Year's Eve!)
• One night in London on the way back

I decided to start the vacation in the Seattle Airport Doubletree the night before my flight out...I was worried about snow (which turned out to be a non-issue), and I also did not want to hassle with the early morning wake up and drive in from home. Upon arriving at the hotel, I was very pleased to find that I had been upgraded to a penthouse suite, something I have never tried before but definitely could get used to: A corner suite with a sitting room, a bedroom, a huge bathroom with soaking tub, a balcony (which wraps around the building), and (of course) a separate wet bar.

Tomorrow morning I start out flying from Seattle to SFO, from SFO to Heathrow, and from LHR to Berlin. I'll be arriving about 6:30 PM on Sunday evening. More updates to follow....

A Philosophy to Live By...

I was curious about steak tartare, so I looked around for a recipe the other day, and I was surprised--and pleased--to find the below. For those who don't know, steak tartare is beef that is mixed with other ingredients (egg, capers, onions, anchovies, or other items of that nature) and served raw. It was very popular many years ago (my childhood or earlier), but has since fallen out of style for health reasons.

The site I found allowed comments, and people were arguing back and forth on whether or not one should eat this dish due to the health concern. The reply below, IMHO, was spot on, and beyond applying it to steak tartare, it can be equally well applied to so many other things in life when one person attempts to interfere in another's life. Read the below, enjoy it, and remember it can be easily applied to so many other arguments in this world.

"Wow. The world has really come to the point of insanity when people have nothing better to do than argue about a freaken recipe.

"Uhm...if you don't like or trust the idea...here's an idea: DONT EAT IT, FOOL! For the flip side people: Who CARES what the anti person thinks? Either eat it or don't. Nothing else matters but what YOU do when it comes to your life.

"Seriously. This is not rocket science, people. Either eat it, or don't. Problem. Solved.

"Just weird, man. In a feeble attempt to thwart anyone from wasting their valuable, precious time on responding to this...don't bother. I won't see it. I got the recipe, saw this lunacy and decided that it boggled my mind so much I had to "comment."

"Anything further is a waste of my time.

"Suggestion...? Find a new hobby rather than fighting with complete strangers on the Internet. Trust me, they are not worth your time. You'll miss your time when it's gone. Spend what little you have on people that matter.

"Later."

Google's "Tribute" To D-Day

6 June 2009 was the 65th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy landing. The search engine Bing.com marked the sacrifice of the 10,000 fallen heroes with a photograph of one of the beaches. Google celebrated the day by marking the 25th anniversary of Tetris.

Choose your search engine.