More Holiday Lights

I went for a long walk last night...

down Rue des Martyrs

along Rue Cadet








past the Louvre










through the Tuileries










across the Place de Concorde









to the Champs-Elysees







The lights on Champs-Elysees were definitely worth going to see. The trees lining the street didn't have just normal lights-- they had this vertical light strips that made it look like the trees were dripping with sparkles---amazing!

The holiday season in Paris

'Twas the month before Christmas, and all through ile-de-Paris,
The streets were filled with lights, and shoppers on a spree.

Well, I'm definitely not a poet, so I won't torture you with my poor attempts. Christmas time is pretty in Paris... lots of fun lights are strung up in the streets and the department stores put out their nicest, flashiest displays:









It even SNOWED yesterday! It didn't stick, but it was nice to see. I'm still planning on seeing the lights on Champs-Elysees-- I'll post the pics as soon as I take them :-)

Over the weekend, I did some sightseeing in the 11th arrondissement. I started off by visiting Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise ("A" on the map below), the largest cemetary in the ile-de-Paris. Supposedly, it's the world most visited cemetary, packed with beautiful mausoleums, trees and Jim Morrison's grave. The Cemetary was opened by Napoleon I after another cemetary was closed, however due to how far it was from the center of the city, the administrators had to "advertise" for funerals there by bringing in the remains of La Fontaine (poet) and Moliere (writer/actor). Now the cemetary holds over 300,000 remains.

As I continued to walk, I came across the St. Ambroise Church ("B" on the map below) named for St Ambrose of Milan. St. Ambrose was famous for being accidentally elected Bishop of Milan in the late 300s (A.D). At the election for a new Bishop, Ambrose went to address the rowdy crowd and someone yelled "Ambrose, Bishop!" and so he was. After being elected, he was effective in converting Arians to Catholics and was later martyred along with his brother and sister.

I can't say that the day ended perfectly-- I had meant to walk northwest from St. Ambroise and walk along the canal, but it got colder, I took a wrong turn, got fed up and took the Metro home. There's always another day...

A Happy NY/NJ Thanksgiving!

I had a very nice Thanksgiving back in the States... it all started just one week ago~~~

Tuesday, November 25th: got to Charles de Gaulle around 8am (I have figured out that this airport is the main reason that the French stay thin... you must walk for at least 15 or 20 minutes with all of your luggage to get to where you need to check-in for your flight-- then you can walk for another 10 to get to your gate). The security person only minorly confused me when she asked me who else had given me objects to put in my luggage (the answer sounded something like "umm, nobody?")

I made it to New York around 1pm (amazing what gaining 6 hours gets you, besides really tired) and worked for the rest of the afternoon. 5pm rolled around and I started dragging people out of the office to head over for happy hour at Gingerman. Here are some pics (sorry about the laziness of not continuing to take pics throughout the night)
:








A few too many beers later + diner = passed out at Casey and Ashleigh's apartment...




Wednesday, November 26th: Worked half day and enjoyed the first of the 2 Thanksgiving feasts during lunch with the WebCollagers.

Naturally on Wednesday evening, Thanksgiving-eve, there has to be a problem with the trains. In addition to the warnings all day long of terrorist threats and extra security at every corner, NJTransit couldn't manage to keep their normal rush hour schedule, let alone the special holiday travel schedule. The crowd in Penn Station was nearly indescribable (Terrorist target? Does that describe it well enough?) And of course instead of trying to control the crowd or at least help it to disperse, NJTransit didn't make any announcements on what was going on or why everyone was stuck away from their family for the evening.

So after waiting on a line to get some information, I found out that there was a train stuck in the tunnel between NJ and NY. After a few minutes on the phone with my family (and very nice offers to come in to pick me up), I figured that all I had to do was get to Newark Penn Station in order to get on the connecting train there. At this point, I was overheard by a cute production assistant who was headed to the town next to mine in NJ. With my new travel buddy, we headed over to the Path and out to Newark. It only took me 2+ hours to get 31 miles.

Thursday & Friday, November 27th and 28th: spent with mom, Ted and Harry T... saw the whole family on that side-- Tracy, Brian (the MEAN uncle ;-) ), Nana, Kim, Dan, Gwen, Karlee, Kevin & Sasha, Kayla & Josh (and "squoosh?"). Thursday we ate lots of turkey (I think my favorite part of dinner was when we were making fun of my mom and Aunt Kim said to me "well you're related to her" and I spat back "well, so are you!!") and Friday we went to "cut down" the Christmas tree (yeah, that's in quotes because they won't let us cut them down anymore :-( ).

Friday (evening) & Saturday (daytime), November 28th and 29th - after I hauled all of my goods to my dad's house, we went to visit Gramma (who did NOT cook dinner on Friday night as we had discussed, boooo-- don't worry, we didn't go with out gramma's home cookin'-- it was rescheduled to Saturday). My dad and I rented WALL-E; I think I want one-- him or "MO". On Saturday, my dad and I did some shopping, including buying a 2 foot tall [fake] Christmas tree + mini-ornaments for me to bring back to Paris.

Saturday (night), November 29th - Mini-WH Reunion, Ian Freeman's apartment, NYC
Sarah and Ian organized a mini-reunion of WH-ers and those who attended include Henry Rich, Justin Restivo, and Mara Palumbo. Also in attendance were Sarah's bf Adam and a few of Ian's friends. Fun of the night included laughing at Damian's jokes and the anatomically-correct Devil that he and Carrie brought to put on top of Ian's Christmas tree, making ornaments for Ian's tree, lots of yummy food and heading out to the LES with the WH crew. (see facebook for pics!)

Sunday, November 30th - I'd like to say the weather got dreary because New York was sorry to see me go, but the fact that my flight was only delayed for 1 hour meant that the fates were saying that I had to go back to Paris. Countdown to Christmas vacation-- t-minus 20 days!