Athens: Greek Hospitality Part 1

After a lovely weekend with Jean-Claude and Corinne and a fun day trip to Reims, it was time for our next foreign travel adventure: Greece. First, let me preface this entry by saying that, despite what you might see on CNN, Greece is a wonderful country. We didn't see any protests or riots (other than some kind of strike in front of a bakery in Thessaloniki!) and life seemed to be going on as normal. The main difference was that where we were in Athens, we saw almost no beggars. Everyone who wanted money was offering some sort of object or service, and many of them were Greek locals, not immigrants. The immigrants who were there selling things were accepted by the locals, and they'd even stop and chat or joke with them, something we have never seen in Italy or France. It was a bit different in Thessaloniki, but we never felt unsafe anywhere we went. Ninety percent of the Greek people we interacted with were extremely friendly, welcoming, and generous. They're very proud of their country and very desirous of showing what they have to be proud of.

Anthony's family's residence. In the
foreground are olive trees, which Lisa
decided to sample. It turns out that
ripe, uncured olives are very bitter!

Our first experience with Greek (or, really, Greek-American) hospitality came with where we stayed in Athens, the first stop on our trip. We stayed with the parents of my graduate advisor, Anthony. They built a large three-story building for their family; the parents on the first floor, the third floor for Anthony's sister and her family and a floor for Anthony and his family when they come to Greece in the summer. It was very kind of them to let us stay there for a few days. Plus, Anthony's mom provided us with all our breakfast needs and drove us to the metro station every morning so we could get into central Athens and she drove us to the airport our final morning. She also recommended a few restaurants in their neighborhood to try on our first night there (we arrived early evening from France). We chose one on the main square of the town and watched the children play and the adults talk as we ate our food.

Roman-era marketplace.

We only had two solid days in Athens and we really packed everything in. Unfortunately, due to Greece's austerity measures, almost all the state-owned museums and archaeological sites close at 3 pm. We didn't know this applied to archaeological sites, meaning we didn't have time our first day to see everything we wanted to see and we had to hit all the sites on the second day! But we made it to all seven sites in the city that are included on a combo ticket. We saw the Roman-era marketplace, which was rather small and unimpressive, but we stumbled across it our first morning walking around.

Temple of Olympian Zeus, with Aaron for scale.

Book rooms at the Library of Hadrian.

We also visited two sites that I found fascinating (mainly because I wrote about them in my dissertation), the Library of Hadrian and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Hadrian was a second-century AD Roman emperor who paid for a number of large buildings in Athens, including the library and the temple (although the temple was actually begun 600 years earlier and had been left unfinished till Hadrian completed it!). We walked around inside the Kerameikos, ancient Athens' main burial area on the roads leading out of the west side of the city. We saw some very pretty grave monuments and even saw a German archaeological dig in progress on the site. The area includes the remains of the ancient city gates, which was very cool to see.

Ancient agora with modern city in the background.

The main highlights of Athens are, of course, the ancient Agora and the Akropolis and we naturally saw both of those, too, along with the temples and massive theater of Dionysus on the south side of the Akropolis. The Agora was the original market area of the city and starting in the sixth century BC, it started to be turned into the administrative center. Most of the remains there now are various government buildings and long stoas built to house the market stalls, all dating from different periods. On a map, it all looks like a confusing jumble of ruins, but walking around the site made it all make a lot more sense to me. Plus, I realized just how big the whole area is!

Parthenon.

The Akropolis, the large flat stone outcrop in the center of the ancient city, is certainly stunning in terms of the quality and size of the ruins, although the effect was marred a bit by large amounts of scaffolding around the Parthenon! As we walked through the entrance, a well-dressed woman asked us if we'd like to hire her for a guided tour on which she would provide extra information not included on the interpretive plaques around the site. I got to say, "I'm actually a classics professor, so I think I have it covered, but thanks!" I felt a little pretentious, but also pretty awesome. The Akropolis was pretty much just as I imagined it being from the pictures and plans I'd seen over the years (although it was certainly cool to be so close to the ruins!). It was a warm sunny day, allowing us to have some nice views over the city of Athens towards the ocean and up towards the mountains. We got a bit too much sun, though, so I was burned on my arms a bit the next day!

Areopagus, where Paul supposedly preached.

We also visited two free ancient sites, the Pnyx and the Areopagus. The Pnyx was the hill where all adult male Athenian citizens met to vote on civic matters. Because it was just an assembly place, there aren't a lot of ruins and there's not much to see - which probably explains why we were the only people there! The Areopagus is a big hill just west/southwest of the Akropolis and it's where, starting in the sixth century BC, trials for murder and sacrilege were held. Again, there's not much there - it's just a hill, but you get some pretty amazing views of the Akropolis and the city. Also, according to the book of Acts chapter 17, the Areopagus is where the apostle Paul preached to the Athenians in the first century AD. (It's a very weird episode in Acts but rather than write a long explanation of it, I recommend you read it for yourself!)

A very impressive 3rd century BCE bronze from the
archaeology museum.

In addition to all the ruins, we also made it to several museums. We started our first day at the National Archaeological Museum, which is a pretty overwhelming place - lots of ancient sculptures and vases, especially. There were some pretty amazing artifacts in there, though, including wall-paintings from the island of Thera that are 3600 years old and a special exhibit on the Antikythera Mechanism, a metal gear-driven mechanism found by archaeologists in an ancient shipwreck. It's in fragments and parts are missing, but it seems to have been a device use to calibrate different calendrical systems and predict eclipses.

View of the Akropolis, filled with people.

At the end of our first day, we went to the new Akropolis Museum just south of the Akropolis proper. It was built about ten years ago in the hopes that the British would return the pieces of the Parthenon sculptures they stole/bought in the early 1800s. It was the Greeks' way of saying, "See, we've got a modern museum better than the British Museum in which to house these things," but the British still refuse to give them back. The museum was very well done with lots of explanations about the buildings and artifacts from the Akropolis, plaster casts of all the surviving sculptural elements from the Parthenon, and an interesting use of space (sadly, no pictures were allowed inside, so we can't show it to you!).

Yogurt and orange juice.

Syntagma Square. Look, Ma! No riots!

The third museum we went to was the Benaki Museum, mainly because it was open till midnight our second day in Athens, giving us something to do in the afternoon once everything else closed. It's a private museum so it's smaller than the two other museums, but they have a pretty continuous collection, from prehistoric Greece to independence from the Turks in the 1830s. However, once we got past the ancient stuff, it turned into a lot of ethnic costumes and decorations from inside houses. I think the whole place is probably of more interest to Greeks or people of Greek descent than to us! But we did have some good Greek yogurt and freshly squeezed orange juice in the museum cafe.

1896 Olympic Stadium.

Because I was more interested in the ancient stuff, we didn't have time to visit any Byzantine-era churches or see much of modern Athens. But we did walk down a street lined with vendors selling almost everything under the sun; we happened to walk past the president's house and the stadium from the first modern Olympic games in 1896; and, on our last night, we hopped off the metro to briefly see Syntagma Square, home of the Greek Parliament, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and protests against the Greek government (although there none while we were there!). Athens was a great city and I'm glad we went. I just wish we had had a couple more days to spend there, looking at things in a more leisurely way than we did!

Bonus picture: a cat Lisa liked.

Bonus picture: Theatre of Dionysus.

Bonus picture: Temple of Olympian Zeus, just because you can
imagine it better.

Reims

Exterior of cathedral with double
windows.

The Monday after our weekend in Versailles, we took the train from Paris to Reims (pronounced "rance"), the biggest city (but not capital) of the Champagne-Ardennes region ("the upstate New York of France" - this marks my ninth region of France and Lisa's thirteenth). It's actually pretty close to Paris and only about a 45-minute high-speed train ride. The most exciting part was that, while transferring between train stations in Paris on the Metro, the metro line just stopped at a station for about ten or fifteen minutes. This added the suspense of "will we make our train or won't we?" In the end, we made it with about ten minutes to spare!

Bibliothèque Carnegie!

The city of Reims was almost entirely destroyed by German shelling in World War I, as it was a key French defensive position on the road to Paris. This means that most of the city is fairly new and there's a lot of 1920s Art Deco buildings constructed after the war. There's even a Carnegie Library in Reims built after the war, complete with a bust of Andrew Carnegie out front and an American eagle and flag on the facade! Unfortunately, it was closed for lunch when we tried to go in, but the historical marker outside made it sound like a beautiful interior with mosaics and stained glass windows.

Interior details with sculptures, looking
out the windows.

Three rows of windows.

The main draw in Reims (as in most northern French cities) is the Gothic cathedral. But this one is a bit different from the other ones we've seen, both historically, architecturally, and decoratively. The cathedral in Reims is where the coronation of the French kings traditionally took place because Reims is the city where Clovis, first king of the Franks, converted to Christianity and was baptized in 496 AD. Architecturally, there are a lot of peculiarities. Among the most obvious and interesting ones are that it has more exterior sculptures than any cathedral other than Chartres. They're everywhere! Above the front doors, there are no relief carvings (as is usually the case); instead, there are three windows directly above the door. On the inside, around the front doors, there are rows and rows of carvings of Biblical figures - the only time we've seen interior carving like that.

Chagall windows.

Because parts of the church were damaged in World War I, most of the stained glass windows are modern. There are a couple by a German artist that were just installed ten years ago and are meant to symbolize German-French reconciliation. The windows in the main chapel behind the altar were done by Marc Chagall in 1974 and remind me of his famous windows at the Art Institute in Chicago. There's also a window commissioned in 1954 by the wine-growers of the Champagne region, in imitation of medieval guilds that would commission windows. One of the side chapels is dedicated to St. Joseph and it has scenes of his life inlaid in lead on the floor, something we haven't seen elsewhere. It was definitely a very distinctive and unique church.

Effect from the windows.

Also unique about the church - we were given an amazingly friendly welcome as we entered. There were two volunteers near the door who handed out brochures to tourists. The woman asked us if we had any questions and gave us a capsule history of the church. It was something we haven't experienced at any other church!

We saw another church in Reims, too, the Basilica of St. Remi. It was originally built as an abbey church to house the relics of St. Remigius, the bishop who baptized Clovis, but was enlarged in the twelfth century. It's a pretty big space without a lot of interior decoration (although the stained glass rose windows are nice). The tomb of St. Remigius is a big stone sepulcher behind the altar. There's also a huge crown-shaped chandelier in the middle of the church with 96 candles in it, one for every year of St. Remigius' life.

Windows in Saint-Remi.

Basilica of St. Remi.

Biscuit rose.

Most things were closed for lunch, so when we had some time to kill, we bought the local Reims specialty - "biscuit rose" which are very similar to lady fingers, but pink.

Inside the Mumm caves.

Mumm tasting room.

The other major attraction in Reims is the champagne caves (underground storage and production facilities). In the mid-afternoon, we took a tour of one them, the G.H. Mumm company. The tour was all in French (they have English ones, but the only availability was later in the day, after our train back to Paris left) so I didn't understand all of it, but Lisa did which is good because she LOVES champagne. Actually, the start of the tour was funny because the guide said, in French, "Some of you might be English and I want to remind you the English tour starts in one hour." Then he said the same thing in English. Maybe it's just me, but I would think he should have started with the English announcement in case they didn't speak French! Anyway, it was interesting to see the underground storage areas which have over 15 miles of passageways on two different levels. It was also interesting to see some of the old machinery that was used in champagne production in the 19th century. The tour finished with a tasting. We bought two different kinds. They were good, but we had to gulp them down because by the time the tour ended, we only had 40 minutes to get to our train! We bought a bottle of champagne to share with Jean-Claude and Corinne when we got home that night then ran to the bus stop to get back to the train station. Much like the start of the day, we ended with the suspense of "will we make the train or won't we?" but we made it with about 15 minutes to spare.

Once back in Versailles, Jean-Claude picked us up at the train station to bring us home. Corinne made another wonderful meal, capped with Jean-Claude's excellent fruit crumble and the bottle of champagne we bought. We then watched "Singing in the Rain" because Jean-Claude was appalled I had never seen it and Lisa hadn't seen it since she was a child. He, however, has seen it hundreds of times because he shows it to his classes every year so he went back to the bedroom to read! Still, it was a nice way to end our three days in Versailles. We had such an excellent time with Jean-Claude and Corinne, and they were so generous and kind to us.  We hope to see them again before we return to the States and then to welcome them to our home someday!

Bonus picture: rockstar bish from Saint-Remi.

A Weekend in Versailles with Jean-Claude and Corinne: French Hospitality

One of the traditional buildings, a carré, in Versailles.

After seeing Saint-Denis, we took the Metro back into central Paris, then took a train from there to Versailles (about a 20-minute ride) where Jean-Claude and Corinne were waiting for us. After dropping off our bags at their lovely two-story apartment, Jean-Claude took us on a short driving tour of the town of Versailles (most of which we didn't see when we were there in April with Chris - we just walked from the train station to the chateau) and then to the chateau itself.

Daffodils and irises growing out of a
thatch roof at the hameau.

Part of the hameau de la reine, like
a movie set.

We visited the parts we hadn't seen with Chris, specifically Marie Antoinette's gardens, the strange little fake village she had built for herself so she could pretend to be a peasant (and which still contains a working animal farm), and her "country house" at Versailles, the Petit Trianon.

Decoration inside the
Grand Trianon.

A stream at the hameau
de la reine: the
fascination with carp
is international.

We also walked down to the Grand Trianon, a substantial house built for Louis XIV, but really used by Napoleon and his family after he became emperor. It was pretty lavishly decorated, much like the main chateau, but much less crowded than the main chateau was when we visited it with Chris. On our way out of the building, we saw ominous looking rain clouds approaching and we made it back to the car just before the rain started pouring! We stopped at the bakery on the way home to get bread for dinner (standard for France!) and then had a wonderful home-cooked meal prepared by Corinne.

A bread line in France.

Cathedral at Versailles.

Sunday was the second round of the French presidential election so after Jean-Claude voted in the morning, he drove Lisa and me into the town of Versailles and took us on a nice walking tour of the central city. Jean-Claude is a middle school teacher with a great love of history and art history, so he was the perfect tour guide. He showed us the school where he teaches then the cathedral. There was a mass going on, though, so we came back about a half-hour later. (Incidentally, I think it's the most well-attended mass we've seen in any of the churches we've visited in France.) It's a 17th-century church that reminds me a lot of the Baroque churches I saw in Rome.

Swiss Basin.

He also showed us the national horticultural school and the "potager," Louis XIV's massive kitchen garden that supplied his palace with food and which still functions today. He took us past the "Swiss Basin," a man-made lake just outside the grounds of the palace created for Louis XIV's Swiss Guards - and around which some sort of race was being run! And he walked us by the old carré, a symmetrical set of four square two-story buildings separated by streets which house shops. We stopped off for more bread, then went home for lunch.

Jean-Claude and Corinne.

Following that, we all took Corinne to vote and then went to the gardens of the palace of Versailles to see the "musical waters." On Sunday afternoons only, they turn on most of the huge fountains in the garden and pump in Baroque music on an extensive sound system. It was a pretty impressive display, especially the one they call "the ballroom," a cascade of water down a series of steps above and around us. We also saw the closing show, the fountain of Neptune.

Our favorite fountain.

The amazing Neptune fountain!

Where Louis XIV was born!

View into Paris.

Once the show was over, we drove to Saint-German-en-Laye, another suburb of Paris north of Versaillles to see what little is left of Henri IV's palace. It's mostly gone, but the room where Louis XIV was born is still preserved - it's now part of a hotel/restaurant and houses several coat racks! The two-kilometer-long terrace of the palace is still there and is now a park, where Jean-Claude used to run as a kid. It's got a great view east to Paris. We also walked around Francis I's palace, now an archaeological museum. We then drove back to Versailles where Jean-Claude and Corinne took us out to dinner at a good restaurant (and while they checked election results on their smart-phones). When we got home, they showed us "The Artist," which Lisa and I hadn't seen. Good thing it's a silent movie and I didn't have to worry about trying to understand a movie in French!

Coming up next: Monday, while Jean-Claude and Corinne went to work, Lisa and I took a day-trip to Reims.

Random: near where Louis XIV was born. Lost or a tribute to baby Louis?

Bonus pictures:

Bonus picture for Lisa's dad:
Marie Antoinette's full-size billiard table.

Bonus picture for Lisa's dad:
remnants of the storm at Versailles.

Bonus picture for Lisa's dad:
how they turn the water on for the
fountains at Versailles.

Bonus picture for Lisa's mom: egg cup
belonging to Marie Antoinette.

Paris: Basilica of Saint Denis

Anne de Bretagne's tomb (with husband Louis XII).

Saturday, May 5, Aaron and I took a train to Paris. The ultimate goal: spend a weekend in Versailles with Jean-Claude (the cousin of both my host-mother in Normandy and my college French teacher) and his fiancée Corinne (congratulations on getting engaged!). First, though, we spent a little time in Paris as Jean-Claude and Corinne had a fitness class in the early afternoon. So Aaron and I took the Metro from Montparnasse (the Paris train station that serves trains coming from western France, i.e., Rennes) to the northern suburb of Saint-Denis. The main attraction in Saint-Denis is the cathedral/basilica where 43 kings of France are buried (plus many queens, royal children, princes, and generals). All but three French kings are buried here, although many of them were exhumed and placed at Saint-Denis long after their death and burial. We were warned by several people that the town itself is pretty rough and dangerous, but it seemed fine from what little we saw. Admittedly, we were there in the middle of the day and the Metro stop is very close to the basilica, so we didn't spend any time wandering the streets.

Anne de Bretagne's transi.

Just part of the gift shop inside the basilica. You can't
really tell, but the whole shop seemed like something
out of New Orleans in a movie.

Anyway, the basilica of Saint-Denis originally dates from the 5th century AD and is dedicated to Saint Denis, the patron saint of France. It became part of a monastery in the 7th century and the church that's there now was built in the 12th century in a grand Gothic style, but unlike other churches we've seen, there's no choir screen and there are no walls between the chapels that surround the front of the church, meaning that light flows into the church unobstructed, making it one of the brightest medieval churches we've been in. We're not sure why Saint-Denis was chosen as the burial site for French kings - if anyone out there knows, help us out and tell us in the comments section! A lot of the tombs are pretty elaborate, especially Louis XII and Anne of Brittany's and Henri II and Catherine de Medici's. In fact, the main reason we went was because I saw a post card way back when during our visit to Nantes that showed the transi of Anne de Bretagne and said I HAD to see that in person. What's a transi? Well, kind of weird. It's part of a tomb (really a big sculptural monument under which someone may or may not be buried). This part of the tomb shows the person's body naked as it is decomposing. The monument also usually includes a sculpture representing the living person in a more prominent and visible spot. Unfortunately, you can't usually get very close to the transis to see them all that well, but I definitely thought the trip was worthwhile.

Some tombs and an example of the light inside the
basilica. Bishop Suger wanted the place to be very
bright, and he succeeded!

Back to the basilica itself. Most of the kings buried there, though, are just scattered bones re-collected after the despoliation of the royal tombs during the French Revolution and buried in the crypt in a big vault. Also in the crypt, you can see the remains of the original 4th-century AD Christian burial ground which I found interesting - Aaron loves REALLY old stuff like that, so it was a good trip for him, too!

Stay tuned for our trip to Versailles with Jean-Claude and Corinne!

A Family and Gourmet Weekend in Vitré

Nota bene: This is a long entry with almost no pictures because we neglected to take any during this trip.  Be prepared for lots of food description.

After Laura left us, we spent the afternoon doing laundry and preparing to visit friends in a neighboring town.  I met Adriana in one of my classes at the university, and she asked me to tutor her children in English all year.  Andreea and Ramona are two adorable little girls who amazingly talented at languages.  They speak Romanian, French, AND English.  My current challenge with Andreea is reading, and she has made lots of progress already.

Adriana and her husband Dan invited us for dinner, and we've been trying to find a date all year that would work for all of us.  They then invited us to spend the night because we take the train out there, and it is very limited in the evening.

Our weekend began by introducing Aaron to Dan and the girls, and the girls were VERY excited to have company for whom to perform.  They had lots of energy and entertained us for a while before being sent upstairs to amuse each other.  We then spent a bit of adult time chatting and having Aaron get to know the family with whom I've spent most Wednesday and Friday evenings.  Dan is a doctor and educated us a bit on the removal of stomachs and how the body can cope afterwards.  I for one was very fascinated.

After chatting and tasting a special Romanian drink, we sat down to a traditional dinner, with everything homemade and delicious.  We started off with bread and three vegetable dishes (forgive me if I'm forgetting anything!): green beans in homemade egg mayonnaise, celery root in homemade egg mayonnaise, and garlicky potatoes with olives.  Mmmm.  Adriana explained that homemade mayonnaise is made with one hard-boiled egg yolk and one raw egg-yolk, plus oil and some seasoning.  It puts Helman's to shame!

For our second course, the meat-eaters had chicken (which was something like schnitzel), and we all had fried potatoes that were partially boiled and then cooked in spices and oil.  They reminded me of a vegetarian version of my grandmother's bacon-fat potatoes, which, though I am a vegetarian, might still have the power to convert me for just one tempting moment!  I was glad to know a vegetarian version (including some special Romanian spice mix) could compare!  To top it all off, Dan made a garlic sauce to put on top of everything.  He normally likes to make it with yoghurt, but he used cream this time, and either way, I think it must always be delicious.  It was spicy with the heat of the garlic and reminded us of sauces we've had at Turkish restaurants.  It was at that point that we realized there was a lot of Turkish influence on Romanian food.

Dessert time came, but we all thought we might explode if we continued to eat, so we took a break to watch a movie--The Day After Tomorrow.  It was very dramatic and supplied ample entertainment before we had Adriana's apple cake with homemade whipped cream frosting.  It was very good--flavorful but not overwhelmingly sweet.  Now, because I took my camera but neglected to take any pictures, you have no pictures of our actual time there in this entry, but we are providing you with a few pictures of Romanian food that we learned about.  When I was tutoring one afternoon, delightful smells of dough and cinnamon were pouring from the kitchen, and Andreea and I looked at each other in the middle of our lesson to say at the same time, "Oh, that smells so good!"  Andreea's great-aunt was there and had made what she called a "tarte" of apples but was really much more perfect than that.

Romanian Apple Pie.

I couldn't leave without knowing the recipe, so we realized that we could communicate with what we both knew in Italian (I don't know Romanian, and she didn't know English or French).  The dough is made with yeast, equal parts milk and water, and flour.  You make a firm but moist dough and knead it until it's smooth.  You let that rise.  For the inside, you grate apples and put a bit of sugar and cinnamon on them and let them drain.  This produces a sort of juice.  It did take a while before I was able to understand what to do with this juice--in the end, she brought me the cup and said, "Por Dan!  Yum!" Ah!  Now I understood.  Then, you put the apple mixture on a round of dough and twist the dough up to seal it in, making a dumpling-like object that you put in the oven to bake and become perfection.  Oh so delightful.

My attempt at garlicky tomatoes.

After the movie and more discussion of various cuisines, we went to sleep, listening to the incessant rain that graced us with its presence that weekend.  When we woke up the next morning, we learned about the glory of Romanian breakfast.  Aaron enjoyed a steak covered in butter, and Dan shared his special salad with me.  This consisted of grinding garlic with olive oil and tossing it with salt and cucumbers and tomatoes.  You then eat it with bread and let the juices soak into all the dough.  When you do this, you have the sweetness of the bread, still crunchy on the outside, then mixed with the tartness of tomatoes, spice of garlic, mellow coldness of cucumber, and the touch of sea salt.  Divine.  I think Dan was a little worried he found a worthy opponent to enjoying such a salad.  He let me have the last of the garlicky olivey tomatoey cucumbery liquid for my last piece of bread.  That was a true act of generosity.  I have been making an attempt to imitate this for my lunch every day this week.  I can't wait to have a mortar and pestle again so I can crush instead of chop the garlic!

We spent the afternoon digesting and watching some more movies: Mission to Mars and Runaway Jury.  This basically doubled the number of movies we watched this year.  It was good to have some American cinema education on foreign soil.  We played with the girls and chatted a bit more until it was time to catch our train.  Overall, it was very relaxing, and it was nice to spend time with a family and get to know them better.  We look forward to many years of friendship!