Flu Shot - Parisian Style!

I had a bit more adventure than expected when I went to get my flu shot.  In French, it's called an "injection grippal."  The pharmacies were advertising flu shots, so I thought I should take the opportunity.  I was pleased to discover that, even though I have no French health insurance, the cost was only 6 euros.

When I asked the pharmacist if they had flu shots, he turned wordlessly and walked to a cabinet, grabbed a blue and white box covered in pharmaceutical market speak, just big enough to hold a syringe, and came back to the cash register.  He set it on the counter and started ringing me up.  I hesitated a bit, and looked at him and the other pharmacist and asked (in French), "Umm - who's responsible for doing the injection?"  The answer came back from both at once: "Vous!"  I grimaced and said "Oh boy."  They laughed a little.

So, I went home, set the box on my office desk, and left it there for a while.  I considered all sorts of alternatives.  Jennifer certainly didn't want to be involved!  She was lucky, she got her shot at the office.  Eventually, I got up the nerve and did it myself.  It was all over in a few seconds.  

I put the empty syringe back in its box, put the box back in the little plastic bag from the pharmacy, and all that went into the regular trash bag.  I hoped no one would ever be stuck by it.  Which led me to thinking about all those kids walking around in trash heaps in Brazil and Bangaldesh.  But, that's a whole other story.  

Foundation Louis Vuitton AKA "That New Frank Gehry Museum Near Paris"

Our friend Chi's visit coincided with the opening weekend of the new Louis Vuitton Foundation museum designed by Frank Gehry.  The museum resembles a tall ship with billowing white sails, and it's located in the huge Bois de Boulogne park on the western edge of Paris proper.  From Paris, all it takes to get there is an easy metro ride and a 10-minute walk.

The first photo is of the "prow" of the ship.  These billowing white superstructures resemble taut sails in a strong wind.  Gehry even designed the white stripes to evoke the seams on sails.

This is from near the rear of the "ship" looking forward up the side.

Lots of people came to see the new architectural landmark.  The visitors are reflected in the glass.  I like how the shape of the glass elongates their forms.

The photo below is taken from the front.  From this angle, you can see the waterfall flowing down to the "hull."  Also, this angle allows you to see how the building is sunken thirty or so feet below street level.  The water flows into a pool around the base.  This pool continues the length of the building, as if the whole building is floating.

The photo below shows where the water meets the front of the building.  An appropriate place for the chic and glamorous to hang out.  My guess is this will be featured in a sci-fi movie soon.  I'm visualizing using this as a dramatic backdrop to a meeting of the rebels with a double agent from galactic command.

The light was getting better.

This pool in front feeds the waterfall, but was clearly designed to provide nice reflections as well.

I was prepared to be unimpressed, but instead I was really glad we made the effort to get out there.  Go see it if you get the chance!

Chateau de Chantilly - Only a 24-Minute Train from Paris

Here in Paris, the winter is dark, cold, rainy, and windy.  That's why we have to make the most of every sunny weekend day in the fall.  Last weekend was really beautiful weather here, so we had to get out.  We read that the Chateau de Chantilly has huge grounds, with several styles of garden. So, we took the metro to Gare du Nord and then took a real train ride of only 24 minutes to get there.  It's a pleasant 15-20 minute walk to the chateau from the train station.  The chateau also has an impressive book collection, an impressive art collection, a "living horse museum", which is exactly what it says it is - live horses of various types on view in stalls for our benefit.  Here are a few of the sights around the sprawling gardens.  Below is the chateau itself.  

Indulging my creative side a bit in the next two.  But bear with me.  If you look carefully, you'll see they aren't just a mush of colors.  It's trees reflected in the canal, and fish under the water.  Just a photo of what's right there in front of me.  No tricks!  Inspired by Van Gogh and Monet and some modern photographers too. 

The dark gray koi watched us from under the water, hoping we would throw them a snack. Funny to think these fish can watch things outside the water and be smart enough to anticipate that food may be coming their way. 

La Nuit Blanche (White Night) in Paris 2014

We went out to an all-night art festival last Saturday night. It's called La Nuit Blanche (White Night) because it stays open all night. We were out around midnight and the lines stretched around the block, even though it was raining and cold. It was kind of cool to see so many people excited about it.

Our first stop was Gare d'Austerlitz. It was cool and windy outside, and threatening to rain at any minute. After a half-hour wait in a long line that moved quickly, we made it inside the Austerlitz train station. Spanish artist Pablo Valbuena had taken over platform 7 as a canvas for one of his famous lighting events. So, there was a train platform, indoors, over a quarter of a mile long, with no tracks yet.

 
The videos below are only 30 seconds or so - not a big investment of time...and definitely worth it! The best way to watch these is to click the Youtube link in the lower right of the video here. Once you're in youtube, click the change quality to max HD, and click the maximize icon also in the lower right corner. This will give you a nice full-screen high-def view. 

 
First quick video...

The big one... the loud clicking noises you're hearing are from the light switches as they go on and off.

The exit was on the other end of the tracks, so once we walked down that way, we turned around and saw it from the opposite perspective.  Maybe even better this way!  

Below is a link to some of the other art we tried to see, but got impatient with the huge lines... the one with the guy drawing labyrinths with salt was my next choice.  But, the line at the Hotel De Ville was unbelievable, and it was already midnight.  Some of the other attractions are more long-term, so I hope we get to see some of them.

http://www.timeout.com/paris/en/art/nuit-blanche-artworks

For a different type of Parisian light show, check out the July 14th fireworks at the Eiffel Tower.

And now, a year later, I have photos from La Nuit Blanche Paris 2015.

Dawn at the Bay of Pollenca, Mallorca

This post is mostly photos of the Bay of Pollenca taken at dawn.  But, before we go to the dawn photos, here's a panorama taken from the highest point in the area.  the view was always changing with the sun and the clouds.  It only took about twenty minutes to drive to from our hotel, so we went to the top several times.

[Previous posts on Mallorca:  fire-fighting seaplane, cliffs with sea views,  and Cala San Vicenzo.]

Our room faced the lovely Bay of Pollenca, which is surrounded by dry, scrubby hills.  The first morning in our hotel room, I was awakened by an orange glow coming through a gap in the curtains.  That inspired me to get up early and go down to the beach before 6AM the next two mornings in a row.  It's so, hard to get up that early, if it's to do something you don't want to do, but it wasn't so bad in this case.  This photo is long before the sunrise.  The lighthouse  at the tip of the peninsula was still lit.

The sun is getting brighter here.  I stayed almost two hours.  In all that time, I only saw about ten people, and that was only after I'd been there over an hour.

Later, a man came out to do Tai-Chi at the end of a pier.  It was like the whole bay and sky were his workout room.  The lighting is a little confusing here.  The sun is up, but it's muted by clouds in the foreground, while reflecting off the higher clouds further away.

  

This is the pier where a teenage boy had come out to fish.  He had the place to himself.  The sun is just going behind the clouds in this one.

I like the reflections on the silvery water and the glowing clouds in this one.  

Au revoir, Mallorca!

Cala San Vincenzo and The Venomous Pelagia Noctiluca of Mallorca

We really enjoyed Cala San Vincenzo.  It's a small sandy beach at the head of a cove, with beautiful blue and turquoise water, and great views of rocky cliffs.  These cliffs are the backs of the slab of land that juts out in some of the photos of our previous Mallorca/Majorca post.  As you can see from the photos, it was an odd day for weather.  We had clouds alternating with sunny, clear skies, every ten minutes or so.  It was soothing to watch the shadows of the clouds slowly roll along the towering cliffs.

In photo above, some people are out in the water, which was pretty warm.  A lot of people were snorkeling, so we tried it too.  It was fun to watch small schools of 8" silver and white fish.  An isolated black and blue fish with red and purple highlights popped up here and there, and we hovered over the top of a few schools of hundreds of two-inch silver fish.  The water was fairly calm, and most of the time it was even shallow enough to stand up. All these favorable conditions were helping Jennifer become more comfortable than ever with snorkeling.

Unfortunately, we encountered another type of sea creature that left a mark on Jennifer's arm for two weeks.  We were swimming along peacefully when Jennifer suddenly popped up and yelled "something bit me!!!" My first thought was that there aren't any fish that would bite someone here, are there?  When I looked under the water - yikes!  - there was a reddish spotted jellyfish right next to Jennifer, bobbing under the surface.  It wasn't a clear jellyfish, or a purple Portuguese man-of-war, like I've seen many times before.  This was rust-colored, about 4 inches across, with white dots on its "petals."  Once I saw that, my skin started to crawl.  How many more of these are there?!  Needless to say, we swam back to shore as quickly as we could.

Once we got back, we saw yellowish welts raising up in a couple of spots near Jennifer's elbow.  We heard someone else saying they got stung too.  Then we found out they even have a special beach flag for jellyfish, sort of like red beach flags for dangerous tides.

Here's a reference I found about the Pelagia Noctiluca jellyfish.  Looks like we were lucky it wasn't worse!  
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Pink jellyfish (Pelagia Noctiluca)

  

Sting level: painful and dangerous.

It is a 10 cm fluorescent jellyfish, transparent with pink or purple tones. It has 16 long tentacles that can cause pain, burning, nausea and muscle cramps. They are not very common, but if seen do not touch!
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Another arcticle about this jellyfish: Pelagia Noctiluca invade Ireland!

The article above says they do NOT recommend URINE as a treatment for these stings! That's funny because Jennifer remembered an episode of Friends where Monica got stung by a jellyfish, and that's how they cured her.  I can't believe I'd never heard about that.

Mallorca (Majorca) - Spanish Balearic Island in the Mediterranean Sea

For a last getaway of the summer, we took a short trip to Mallorca, or Majorca, depending on who you ask.  We decided to stay on the northeast corner of the island to be near this.

[This article is picks up from our previous Mallorca post - Firefighting seaplane!]

I'd been wanting to see this since a planned trip to Mallorca was canceled back in 2001.  We stayed in Port de Pollença.  Pollença is a pleasant town on a wide bay surrounded by scrubby hills; small enough to be easy to find your way around, yet with plenty of restaurants and grocery shops.  During summer, a visit to Pollença might as well be a visit to England.  You'll here nothing but English accents everywhere you go, because the English seem to have adopted the town as their favorite on the island.  It has a nice walk along the beach past the end of the road, so you can get away from the car noise.  I've really started to notice how much more pleasant life is when there are no noisy, smelly, dangerous cars and scooters disturbing the peace.

From Pollença, it's only a short drive to the tip of the island, a dramatic peninsula with 1000'-plus rocky cliffs, pine forests, and views of the sea and nearby mountains that stretch for miles.  We drove up there at sunset one night.  For a sense of scale, notice the sailboats.

It was so relaxing to sit and look out over the ocean, with sound of the wind.  Until a jerk with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) known as a quad-copter (i.e., a 2'x2' contraption with four horizontal propellers powered by small gas engines) arrived.  He started up the really loud motors and hovered the thing here and there, totally obliterating the peaceful atmosphere on top of the mountain.  Boy, I can't wait until we have hundreds of those buzzing over our heads in every major city.

Leaning precariously over the edge of one of those cliffs, looking straight down, we could see how clean and clear the water was.

The next day, we went back and drove down to the end of the peninsula, on a winding road through pine forests and along cliffs.  This is how it looked from the lighthouse at the very end of the peninsula.  The cliffs on the right are the same cliffs in the first photo above, seen from about 10 miles further away.

We drove past this amazing cove.  It requires a hike or a private boat to reach.

Next article - Jellyfish attack at Cala San Vicenzo!

Fire-Fighting Seaplane in Port Pollença, Mallorca, Balearic Island of Spain

This is sort of random, but the unexpected is what makes travel fun, as long as it's not bad unexpected.  When we arrived at Port Pollença, we saw a big yellow plane crash into the bay, at least that's what it looked like at first.  It turns out they constantly practice with a pretty cool fire-fighting plane in this bay.  It's what the town is known for on Mallorca.  We saw it making practice runs two more times while we were there.  First, it flies down low over the water...

Then it actually flies while skimming the water for about a whole minute - not just a touch and go for sure - and scoops bay water directly into its water tanks.  

Once it's full, it flies off to the "fire" (all we saw were practice runs) and dumps the water.  Then it repeats.  Looks like dangerous flying for those pilots. 

Next post on clffs of Mallorca

Noto - 17th Century Sicilian Hill Town

Here are a few photos from our visit to Noto, a hill town in Sicily, Italy.  In the 17th century, a terrible earthquake killed many of the residents and destroyed the majority of the city.  The government recruited several brilliant architects to aid in the reconstruction.  The results are beautiful.  Noto was recently designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. All the building facades have been sandblasted recently, so they look new - almost too new!

[Other recent Sicily articles: Mount Etna, Stromboli Volcano and the Aeolian Islands, UNESCO Roman Mosaics.]

Below is the ornate main door of San Francesco, one of the four huge churches along the main street through the center of town.  The street is only about a kilometer long.

Aging and corrosion have given this World War I monument a haunting look.

In this photo, the facade of the Duomo is visible behind the WWI monument.

Roman Mosaics at Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily, Italy

Sicily's Villa Romana del Casale is a remnant of a time when Rome dominated Sicily, and the economy was booming with exports of wheat and olives.  The villa is about the size of Bill Gate's house, around 30,000 square feet, with about 40 rooms.  A wealthy merchant built it to serve as his residence, but also as the thermal baths for the whole town. It's an amazing place to visit because almost every room has an elaborate, well-preserved Roman mosaic floor.

[See my two previous trip reports on Sicily here and here.]

In this small portion of a single giant mosaic (over two hundred feet long and fifteen feet across) we see the capture of wildebeest-like creature.  The subject of the whole mosaic is various big game captures for exhibition fights in a Roman arena.  In terms of scale, all of the mosaics contain approximately life-sized figures.  The segment below is about seven feet from top to bottom.

Note the interesting detail that they placed a wooden plank over the horns of the animal to prevent injuries to the handlers.

Things didn't always go smoothly...

The mosaics are amazingly well-preserved because the entire villa was engulfed by a mudslide around the year 1200 AD.  The The villa had been built in the early 4th century AD, and was rediscovered in the early 1900's.  The villa is near the town of Piazza Armerina.

In this segment of the same mosaic, an antelope and an ostrich are loaded onto a Roman ship.  I think it's cool how the color of the anchor changes to indicate that part of it is submerged.  Also, the clothes the people wear, and even the hull of the ship, were elaborately decorated.

From this section of the same mosaic, we can see that these Roman ships had both sails and oars.

Seeing this extreme luxury in an obscure, hilly region of Sicily, far from the coast, makes me wonder how many more piazzas like this were, or are, scattered among the hills of Sicily.

Again, in the same monumental game hunt mosaic, we see something that looks like a combination of a hippo and a rhinoceros being captured, while a dog splashes in the water. As in earlier parts of the mosaic, the submerged parts of the dog and rhino are colored grey.

Continuing along the same long mosaic, we come to this scene of a tiger mother (we can tell she is a mother by her nipples) looking at a reflective glass sphere in which shes sees a miniature reflection of herself.  The mother believes that she is seeing a tiger cub in the sphere.  The Romans used this tactic to distract a mother tiger while they captured her cubs.

This one seems to show the mother Tiger captured.

The mosaic below shows a successful fishing expedition.  I believe tuna are the large fish in the boat, but there are several other species depicted in detail, as well as a squid.  I can't decide what the spotted thing is supposed to be - maybe a type of ray?  It looks like the shore is bordered by some luxurious buildings.

I'll bring this post to an end with the bikinis of Villa Romana del Casale.  The entire floor of this room is covered in these larger-than-life-sized women participating in a tournament.

The winner receives a laurel branch on the left.

Stromboli's Volcano, and other Aeolian Islands

As much as we travel, we still have a snafu every once in a while.  In the Aeolians, we got off the ferry on the wrong island.  The Aeolians are a chain of volcanic islands just north of Sicily.  The best way to get to the islands, assuming you have no private yacht available, is to hop on a hovercraft ferry from the town of Milazzo, which is situated on a peninsula reaching north toward the islands.

[This article is the second in a series on our trip to Sicily.  The previous article is here.]

Yes, we'd bought ferry tickets to Lipari, but we had no idea the ferry would stop on the island of Volcan first.  So, when the ferry arrived at an island, we got off.  We called up our hotel to ask them to pick us up from the port.  When we told them what restaurant we were waiting at, they said "I know that restaurant, but it's not on Lipari, it's on Volcan."  Whaaaaat?!?

No worries, we were already having an excellent lunch on a comfortable terrace with a view of the sea.  I got new tickets from the ferry ticket office right next to the restaurant, and the next ferry arrived a few minutes after we were done with lunch.

The next day we set out on an all-day, multi-island boat excursion.  The big attraction of the trip was to see the volcano on the island of Stromboli erupting at night.  We had some misgivings when we got on the boat, because they said, "We have to warn you it's rough seas today."  Luckily, the seas really weren't that bad.
For most of the trip, we sat on benches on the upper deck.  At times, the boat rolled uncomfortably far to one side and then the other.  A few big, cold sprays slapped us in the face as the boat plowed into crazy waves. When they knew it was about to get really soaking wet up there, the crew suggested we come downstairs.  In this photo, the captain is looking out the windshield on the left and the horizon is seen at a funny angle through the boat cabin door.  The boy was getting his thrills with the waves.

World Cup fever was everywhere.  Boys were playing "football" all over.

We passed this James Bond-ish island on the way from Panarea to Stromboli.  One of the best parts of this whole experience was the color of the water out there.  It was such a pure, luminous blue, not too dark - just a hint of white in it.  Simply seeing that rich, pure color, a corner of nature mankind hasn't yet degraded momentarily lifted the weight of this terribly screwed-up world off my chest.  

The big attraction of the excursion was the hope of seeing Stromboli's volcano erupting at night.  This was the view of Stromboli as we approached.

We disembarked on Stromboli mid-afternoon.  The two of us spent some time on a black sand beach. We lucked into real Italian wood-fired oven pizza for dinner.  After that, it was getting dark enough for lava watching.

Only a minute after the boat pulled up to a good spot for volcano watching, we saw the first spray of glowing orange lava light up the low-hanging clouds.  [Photographic caveat - these photos are embarrassingly bad.  This is a worst-case scenario for taking photos - it's dark, you're rocking back and forth on a boat, AND the lava is in motion!!  Next time, I'll have to hike in with a tripod.  Of course, that would entail a bit more risk.]

Enough excuses.  Finally!  We actually got to see glowing orange lava in real life!  Our first time ever.  Pretty amazing.

The volcano threw lava into the air about every 30 seconds.  We kept watching for about half an hour.

Then the captain pushed the engine to full throttle, and we were on our way home at high speed on choppy water.  We could still see an orange glow of lava lighting up the clouds as Stromboli receded from view.  The boat bucking under us was enough to make a few unfortunate passengers seasick.  We rode on the back deck, outside under the stars.  But what was gross, and also a questionable practice, was that the crew kept squeezing past us to throw bulging white plastic sick bags into the ocean.  Thank goodness our stomachs remained true.  Neither of us got nauseous from the waves, or the sight of those bags!

Finally, we arrived back at the small harbor of Lipari.

Next Sicily trip report - numerous huge Roman mosaics at Villa Romana del Casale.

Previous Sicily trip report - Mount Etna.