Dobrestii

Howdy!

It seems that the more we are approaching the end of our excellent honey-moon the lazy we become Yesterday we had a relaxing day in this nice city. We first went to see Place de la Bastille. I expected to have some old walls there and so on, but actually there is a big new-building called the Opera (one of the many operas in Paris ) as the walls and everything were destroyed quite some time ago.We then walked towards Place des Vosges where Victor Hugo lived for some years and we actually went inside the museum. It was really interesting to see a lot of pictures from his funerary when all the France was very sad. A lot of people gathered on Champs Elysees and so on. We also enjoyed half an hour on the grass from the nice Place des Vosges, where a lot of teenagers and people were siting and relaxing. I think it’s better to have a session of “group-relaxing” instead of being alone

After coming back to life we took the bus and went down at Odeon Theater, quite big and also famous. Just behind it we found the “posh” Louxembourg Jardins where we had something to eat and also laid down on some chairs for maybe more than one hour. There was this small lake with a lot of ducks and a kid had a “speed-boat” toy that he used to scare the ducks It was really funny and enjoyable

As it was around 16:30 already we decided to go up to the Montmaitre district and we went in a very small park where “I love you” is written in all languages. Thank you very much Thomas for the guidance in Paris! It was really useful After that we went up with the Funicular de Montmaitre up to the Sacre Coeur. Unfortunately it was quite late and we couldn’t go on top of it, but anyway the views from there are really nice. Very close by there is an area with a lot of people from Morocco, Senegal and other african countries so we went there just to feel a bit like in those countries. I must admit that it was really interesting as we were almost all the time the only white people around, but it was quite safe and we didn’t have problems at all. Then we realized that we are also very close to home and Moulin Rouge, so we went to see the famous street, took some pictures and then walked back to our “hotel” (it was something like 15 minutes walk, so we could say that we stayed in Paris next to Moulin Rouge ).

In the end of the day we met our “virtual” guide – Thomas and his sister – and we went in a nice part of Paris to go out by night – Mabillon. As it was Friday night everything was full, but in the end we found a place to stay – Le Bonaparte – a nice brasserie, but very expensive in my opinion (a large beer was 11 Euros and Thomas didn’t let us pay for it … grrr. So next time you come to Romania we will prepare something special for you, so beware ).

As you can see it’s Saturday around 12:40 and we are still in the room, so again lazy Anyway the sun just appeared from the clouds so we’ll hurry up to see some more of Paris as today it’s the last day

Au revoir!
Le Dobrescu’

Hello everybody,

Because I was a little bit lazy, I did not have the time to tell you the things we did on September 13th. But I will try to remember now what we did

So, we got up at 8:00 am sharp (like everyday – you know … the drilling stuff), we had our little breakfast and we stayed in our room until 1:00 pm, letting Pedro work. I hope it will be the last working activity of his in this honey moon, so we could enjoy it at maximum
But, now let’s continue…

We decided to leave our room and we went to see the City Hall (Hotel de Ville) we took some pictures and walked towards The Pompidou Centre and we saw a strange fountain with some Neo Art sculptures After that we found some shops from which I bought many nice things like trousers, shirts, sweaters and at very good prices as well. So, another hour spent on shopping in Paris.
We continued with another square called Place de Saint Eustache where we saw a big head with a big hand in front of it, as tall as maybe 2.5 meters there we saw many interesting things ans people.

Next stop it was Le Cathedrale de Notre Dame where we were impressed again, I would say of the immensity of Catholic churches and cathedrals. After some time spent there we wanted to see Le Tour Eiffel, so we went there by metro. But when we arrived at the entrance we saw a really BIGGGGG queue, so no chance to see the sunset from the tower. That’s why we decided to go some other time. But the time it was only 7:00 pm and we had so many things to see in Paris.

So, we went to visit “Le Latin District” where we knew form our friend Thomas we could find nice restaurants with good food at affordable prices. But before going to eat, we visited The famous university, Le Sorbone, and also the Pantheon which were really nice as well. But the hunger convinced us to go and find some restaurant and some food
We finally arrived on Le Rue de la Huchette where there were many, many restaurants with different “cuisines”. And although my dear and beloved husband wanted to enter in a greek restaurant I tried to tell him that we are in France, so it will be nicer to try some French cuisine. And we did found a nice and cozy restaurant, where we had great food, nice French wine and very good Creme Brullee which, by the way, is really good and please try it if you go to France.

And of course after such a good meal, we just wanted to get at our smelly hostal and have a niceee sleep, because at 8:00 am next day we would get up again

That was almost all we did yesterday in Paris.

See you and take care,
The wife

Bon Jour from the city of lights

Or is it the city of people in love? Or the city with the oldest metro and a lot of old buildings?Hmmhzz … maybe the city with a lot of bridges and interesting sights. Yeah … it’s that hard to describe Paris when you come here as a tourist. After a great day at the Versailles we took the challenge to go to Louvre the next day (Wednesday the 12th). And in order to make it even more difficult and tiering we started on top of Chapms-Elysees with L’Arc de Triomphe and then walked down on the most known avenue in Paris all the way to the Louvre museum. This walk took us quite long as there are a lot of famous shops and you know …

At some point we passed La Place de Concorde and then the Tuileries Gardens finalizing with the biggest museum of France (I suppose, because I was really impressed about what’s inside). We went inside the glass Pyramid and found a huge hall with 4 entries and we took some info flyer. When we asked how much time we need for all the museum they told us 4-5 days and to be honest I didn’t believe that person from the info-desk. But then we walked inside and well … it’s absolutely huge, you can easily get lost inside and there are a lot, a lot of things to see, from Egyptian mummies to the famous painting of Leonardo Da Vinci, La Gioconda, or the beautiful Venus.

What can I say … we managed to “run” for some hours and maybe we saw a quarter of everything, but we really just saw the things there without having time to listen the audio descriptions or to read everything written on info panels. I think that this museum it’s a must-see only to have an idea on how big a museum can be and especially for people loving art, culture diversity and history.

At the end of the day we were totally wasted and we bought a roasted chicken, some potatoes and we ate until we felt down and slept until next morning at 8:00 when the hammer drills started all over again

Au revoir et a domain!

Yes, now I am writing you from Paris , our next stop in this splendid honey moon trip.

So, we arrived at the nice hostal we found on the internet (I saw that my husband updated you already about how French people understand things in English ) and after some dinner and shower we went directly to bed because we were tired…again , but before, we decided to get up next morning around 9 am and start our trip to visit Le Chateau de Versailles. Our plans were changed a little bit, because at 8 am sharp, some drilling issues (please read hammer drills) started right on the street where the hotel is. So, we got up at 8 am and around 9-9:30 we were already on the way to Le Chateau

Being for the first time I visit Paris, I was really impressed by the biggest palace I had in front of me. It was incredible the whole day although we walked for at least 6-7 hours.

So, we bought the tickets which were not cheap at all and we started our tour with the King’s & Queen’s State Apartments, Hall of Mirrors and King’s chambers. It is amazing to see the luxury which surrounded The King and The Queen and some kids of them. I hope that Pedro will be able soon to put the pictures we made in our gallery, so you will see what I am talking about in this post.

We also saw The Chapel in which the king prayed and assisted to the Messes. The Royal Opera can not be visited, being under restaurateur’s work for the next 20 months. Nothing so special about this Chapel, but we saw it

After that we took some history lessons in The France Gallery where we could see many portraits of important figures of France and we could hear some stories about them from our nice audio-guides borrowed at the entrance in the Palace

The last thing we visited inside the Palace was Dauphin’s Apartments, the heir to the throne, where we could see again nice furniture, the same luxury I was telling about at the beginning and very nice portraits made by famous French painters of the time.

After the inside of the Palace, we went out in order to see all the famous gardens of the palace, which I had to admit that are absolutely splendid. And we walked, and we walked for more than 2 hours until we reached another part which can be visited, Marie-Antoinette’s Estate, composed form 3 things, Le Grand Trianon, Le Petit Trianon and The Domains of Marie-Antoinette.

Le Grand Trianon offered to Louis XIV some space for itself, being situated at the end of the park of Versailles. Having only white and blue porcelain it was called the Porcelain Trianon. Besides Louis XIV also Napoleon I stayed there several times.

Le Petit Trianon was “the pavillon d’agrement” for the private use of Louis XV and Madame de Pampadour In 1774, Le Petit Trianon was offered as a gift to Queen Marie-Antoinette and it became her favorite residence. Besides the buildings we visited we saw many nice places and things like the French and English Gardens, the Chapel, Queen’s Theatre, the Orangery, the Marlborought Tower, the Mill, the Farm (where we took pictures of many nice & interesting animals ), the Guard’s House, and the Rock and the Cake or Grotto, as Frenches called it.

It was one of the nicest days spent in this honey moon and for a day I imagined my self a little Princess which lived around 1700-1800 with big dresses and nice jeweleries

I am sure that next time I will visit Paris, I will go again to Le Chateau de Versailles:)

The end of the day was very nice as well, as we met with one of our friends and with which we had a great dinner at La Fayette Concorde Restaurant. We also received a nice present, a traditional Chinese wedding present, like 2 cobalt vases with the Phoenix Bird and The Dragon on them (24 karats gold plated) . We thank you a lot for the very nice evening we spent together

So, this was the first and WONDERFUL day spent in Paris…

Kisses from Dobreasca…this time

Greetings from the lazy husband

Yes it took me 2 days to pack all the things we have and this is why I write so late Actually when moving from one city to another it’s quite hard to find the time to write some things.

Now coming back to Sunday the 9th in Barcelona – we started the day quite late as we were still tired (my wife from the concert and I from packing ) and she started to cook a very good romanian soup (ciorba de perisoare). I have to admit that it’s a real challenge to cook some traditional dish in a different country than its origin Therefore it was just very good instead of delicious as my wife is cooking it at home So we enjoyed the soup together with Irene and then we went into the city to see Picasso Museum.

I have to admit that I thought all Picasso’s work is done in the way he is famous about, but this not true at all. We saw a lot, a lot of paintings from his early years as a painter and they are very nice and normal paintings (as far as a non-art-nor-paintings-specialist like me can tell As he got old indeed he moved to his interesting style of dividing a picture in different shapes and then painting them … let’s say “mixed in a special and typical way”

After the art infusion we hurried up to Parc Montjuic in order to catch the fountains show. I was a bit disappointed as I expected something else. To be more precise I saw some short movie going around by e-mail regarding the fountain show in Barcelona and it seemed bigger, different and I remember it being by the sea and not in the park. Maybe it was some kind of special show and I have to say that we enjoyed the one in Parc Montjuic twice as it was very good The combination of music, colors and water was very carefully planned and it came out to be a great show.

In the end we went together with Irene and Josefin at a very nice basc restaurant, right next to the Cathedral in the old part of Barcelona. The payment method here is really interesting and it goes like this: on the bar you can find all kind of food and each “dish” has a stick inside it. Dish is too much to say as usually it a small slice of bread with something on top of it (like a small sausage, or some salad, tuna and so on). There are 2 sizes of sticks and you pay in the end the number of sticks you have left on your plate. Of course they are paying a lot of attention to the tables all the time in order to spot the ones trying to get rid of some “extra” sticks In the end the food was excellent and we went back home.

The next day, on Monday we had our flight to Paris and all the day was more or less about getting to the airport in Barcelona, buying 2 sleeping pillows from the airport (very nice actually), getting to Paris and then finding the hotel in Paris. BTW – in Paris Double Room Ensuite (Private Bathroom) might mean 2 beds (almost) standing next to each-other and a shower + sink in the room (practically in the room, with nothing but a curtain around the shower bath). We were really surprised to see that the toilet is shared (damn … ) and it’s on the corridor. So be very careful when you book something in Paris, especially if it’s somehow near the center and at an affordable price

I think that’s about all for now, my wife will come back with more details about Versailles and hammer drills in the morning by the hotel windows

Kiss,
The husband