France

Delays delays delays. I'm trying to churn out these honeymoon entries so I can get back to posting more about the mundane reality of my life, but things keep coming up. For starters, we had to say yet another goodbye this weekend, as our good friend Sheryl packed it up and headed to Spain, via NYC for a bit. She will be missed, but she's moving on to pastures that never would have been green here in Japan. Another case of hating to see someone go, but being happy for them at the same time because they're doing something they want/need to do.

On top of Sheryl's numerous good bye events, Chieko had a friend in town from Tokyo. They ran around together yesterday while I recovered from a debaucherous night (thanks Sheryl), but today we all took a trip to the local zoo. I hadn't been to the zoo here, and it's actually pretty impressive (aside from being completely depressing in that zoo sort of way). But I digress. Everyone is gone now, and I've only got a few destinations left to cover.

If there was one thing I wish we'd done differently with our trip, it would be to have allotted more time for France. In retrospect, it's easy to see that the country is worthy of it's own trip to Europe, but it would have been nice to have spent a little more time there while we had the chance. Not only are there loads of things to see and do there, but for my own curiosity I would have liked more time to spend amongst the French people. Americans, myself included to an extent, have a completely warped sense of who the French are, and I would venture to guess that a lot of it has to do with the fact that we aren't all that different in terms of values and national pride. So the French were/are a bit of an enigma for me, other than not being anything like the snooty, refusing-to-speak-English, contemptuous stereotype that is often cited back in the States.

For all the stereotypical notions that they did not live up to, I still had a hard time getting a feel for what kind of people the French are, very generally speaking of course. There seems to be an aloofness to many of the people we dealt with; a very quiet sort of confidence in interacting with them by which they were very amicable and helpful, but at the same time gave nothing away as to what was going on in their head. It was interesting, and peaked my curiosity. Above all, though, what little we saw of France was great. They've got a good thing going there, and they know it. Maybe that's what pisses off Americans so much--that whole notion of despising the people who are most like you.

As I mentioned, our first target in France was Avignon, but when we got held up in Geneva we changed course and headed for Dijon, another city that we had been reading about with a great reputation. When we arrived in the evening, it was dark and raining. After wandering around in the drizzle for a while we finally found our hotel, which took the cake as the biggest dump we stayed in the entire trip. But it was also the cheapest, and we didn't make a habit of doing much other than sleeping in our hotel rooms, so it wasn't a big deal.

That night we had a delicious dinner with wine throughout and followed by the presentation of a giant cheese wagon from which we could have our fill. Twas well received.

We had ideas of roaming the streets of Dijon in the morning and possibly staying one more night, but when the weather was still crap in the morning with no prospect of clearing up, we short-changed Dijon and headed directly to Paris.

After getting ourselves situated, lining up a hotel, and then dumping our bags there, we headed were off to see the catacombs. When we were in Vienna we took a tour through a very small catacomb(s?), which geared us up for the massive, nearly 1 long mile display in Paris. Sadly, and it wasn't the first time we encountered similar disappointment, they were closed for renovations when we finally tracked them down. It was a major bummer as the prospect of lurking through a mile long tunnel full of skeletons was creepy and yet wonderful. Alas, we went and ate McDonald's.

The next day were planning to walk until our legs fell off seeing many of the famous Parisian sites. But again, that wasn't meant to be either. It was a windy and cold day, and after a series of unfortunate events turned me into a grump, we retreated back to the hotel to chill out, get warm, do some laundry, and hit the internet cafe in search of our lodging at our next destination.

And like that, Paris was gone. We had a great time doing hardly anything. We've got some friends who will most likely be finding themselves living in France in the future, but even without any connections there I plan on getting back some day.