2008 so far & Future Plans

In front of the Ritz Hotel

So what have I been up to in the New Year? Well, for one thing I’m done with school. Classes did not begin until January 8th. I was originally planning on staying in Paris until the twenty-something so I figured I saved the money from those 2-3 weeks and just spend it doing some tourism in Paris or maybe even nearby cities now that I had the time. But those plans have changed a bit…not much…but just a bit. For once I decided to stay most of this time in Paris. I’m still enjoying being in this city so much and living such a tranquil, stress-free and quiet life that I do not really want to give it up; at least not yet. I realized that for the longest time (just like most of us) I’ve been always busy and even stressed between school (college), going to school and working at the same time, jumping from school and a part-time job to a full time job at FPL, and almost 8 years of working different jobs at FPL (sometimes 2 jobs simultaneously) plus working through a couple of hurricanes. In other words it has been non-stop. Even when vacationing: wake up at a decent time in the morning to be able to see as much of the visiting city as possible, walk all day long, go to museums, take trains, planes and buses, wake up early to catch a train/plane and so on. So in 2008 I’ve been just enjoying this time by myself without all the hustle and running around; doing things at my own pace: total relaxation. And it has been great!!! In the morning I wake up whenever I feel like waking up; usually between 10-11AM. I always say I think I’m still recuperating all the lost sleep from the last year or couple of years in Miami where I was getting an average of 5-6 hours of sleep per day during the week. Ok, so I wake up and go for my morning jog which now lasts between 1 hour and 1hour and 20 minutes depending on the weather and my energy level. On the way back from jogging I stop at the supermarket, which is located on the first floor of my building, and I buy whatever it is I’m going to cook for lunch. I get home and have something quick to eat to recuperate the energy lost in the jog, take a shower, and finally cook lunch. I then go out for my tour of the day. I either go to a museum, a monument, an exhibition, the stores, a church, a concert, or just simply a walk to discover a new area or new neighborhood in the city. Sometimes I go to Carolina’s house to have some tea and watch a movie (I’ve been getting caught up with a bunch of movies I had pending to watch) or we just get together to chit chat. At night I come back home, have something for dinner and depending on what I feel like doing I go out to one of the free concerts offered throughout the city or I just stay home chatting with my roommate, surfing the web, reading, or writing. So as you see, I’m living a very stress-free and relaxed life. I don’t think that I could live like this all my life but for now
I’m trying to enjoy it as much as I can while it lasts. I know that once I get back to the real world and begin working again this life will seem surreal.

So what does the immediate future hold for me? This weekend I’m going to London for a week. I will be visiting Esperanza (my uncle’s wife). I’m super excited because I will be taking the Eurostar: the train that crosses the English Channel (under water) and which places you in the new St. Pancras station in London only 2 hours and 30 minutes after leaving Paris. I booked my trip the first week in January and got a very good deal. Actually I’ve learned that if you plan your trips ahead of time and purchase your tickets (air or train) ahead of time you can get some very good deals anywhere in Europe. I’m paying 77 Euros for the round trip ticket to London on the Eurostar. If you purchase a one way ticket only a couple of days in advance you will end up paying around 200 Euros. So it does pay to plan ahead; especially when you are on a budget. Once I get back from London I will be in Paris for about 10 days. A friend is coming from Munich to visit me so I will have he opportunity of now being a Paris tour guide. I will then head to Madrid with my 2 bags on February 13th. Yeap!!! Only 2 bags left to move to Madrid. My friend Marelys, who came to Paris for a business meeting at the beginning of the month, took one of my bags with her to Madrid which left me here with only 2 bags to carry once I re-locate to that city.

In the meantime, here are some more pictures of gorgeous Paris which I have been taking these days of Exploring Paris.

Louvre Museum -- Opera Garnier

St. Chapelle -- La Concergerie

(prison where Maria Antoinette spent her last days before being decapitated)

Pont Alexander

To understand or not to understand...

...that is the other question.

Thanks to my roommate I’ve discovered a little magazine called “Pariscope” which lists, on a weekly basis, all the cultural events in the city of Paris and its surroundings. The magazine costs only 40 cents and it is available every Wednesday in all the kiosks spread throughout the city which sell magazines and newspapers. It lists everything from plays, concerts, art exhibitions, festivals and all other sort of cultural activities. It gives you the location, the time, the nearest metro station and the fee. Some of these activities are free (entrée libre) and of course those are the ones that I’ve been highlighting and attending. Being Paris one of the most cultural cities in the world I’m trying to make the most out of my time here and become more cultural. On Tuesday night for example I went to the Czech Cultural Center as they, together with the Paris conservatory, were offering a concert called “Young soloists”. The purpose of the concert was to promote young soloists (piano, guitar, a soprano and a mezzo soprano) who are currently studying at the conservatory in Paris but who do have experience performing in other cities in France. The first performance was by one of the pianists and the soprano singer. She sang beautifully. I love it when people can sing; as a matter of fact I admire anyone who can sing, at least decently. Especially because I’m a music lover and would love to be able to sing; but as many good things as God has given me a singing voice was definitely not one of them. Clémentine, the mezzo-soprano, sang pieces of the opera Carmen as well as other ancient songs in French and Italian. The 2 pianists would take turns in playing the songs and she would always sing. The second performance was the guitar player and the soprano: Céline. As soon as the guitarist started to play I got goose bumps. The sound of that sole guitar and the voice of the soprano singing were so beautiful and so moving that I swear I almost cried: my eyes became watery as did the eyes of the person sitting next to me. Céline sang a couple of very old English songs (I say very old because they were songs from the 19th century) as well as traditional and very old French songs. Since the English songs were sang with an accent and very opera-like the lyrics were not very clear to me. I caught a word here and there and more or less the meaning of the song: a man singing to his lovely and beautiful girlfriend who abandoned him. The French songs were much much harder to understand: I only caught some words here and there but did not really understand the meaning of the song as a whole. However, the mixture of the guitar and her voice were so beautiful I was just enjoying the whole thing for what it was (the beautiful sound of the guitar accompanied but an amazing voice) and did not care about the rest. But then came the songs in Spanish…and those I could understand. The song was also one from the 19th century and it went something like this: “Dime muchacha, a donde van las cucarachas?, vienen conmigo las cucarachas? Muchacha mientes porque las cucarachas no tienen dientes.” (Tell me girl, where do cockroaches go? Do the cockroaches come with me? Girl you are lying because cockroaches don’t have teeth”. No, no no no no!!! I couldn’t believe it. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with the lyrics, but just thinking that just as I did with the previous songs, the women sitting next to me could be all moved, getting goose bumps and about to cry about a song that talks about cockroaches not having teeth made me laugh, and made me stop and think if maybe I was also getting all emotional about a song that talked about cockroaches or any other kind of disgusting insect…but in French.

3 King's Day

Galette des Rois figurines

The 3 King’s day or “Jour des Rois” is a very traditional and celebrated catholic holiday in France. The tradition on that day (January 6th) is to get together with family and friends to eat the Galette des Rois: a cake made with layers of pastry with a filling of an almond paste (similar to the Spanish torta Santiago). The cake, which you can either buy ready to eat in a box from your local supermarket, from a bakery or even bake your own, is usually accompanied by a glass of cider and it comes with a little surprise inside. Each galette comes with a little ceramic or plastic figurine. The person who gets the piece of cake with the figurine inside becomes the king or queen for the day, gets to wear the crown that comes with every galette and gets to host the same party the following year. That day I was invited to Carolina’s home to eat the Galette des Rois with hers and her husband’s relatives. Even though we not follow the whole process that is involved in eating the cake it was explained to me and here it is:
-The cake is cut into pieces.
-The youngest person in the room goes underneath the table with his/her back facing opposite the attendees.
-The person sitting underneath the table dictates the order in which the other people will get their piece of cake. This will ensure the randomness of the process.
-Once all the pieces have been distributed everyone gets to eat and enjoy the cake hoping not to break their teeth by chewing up on the figurine.
-Lastly, whomever gets the figurine in his/hers piece of cake gets to wear the crown for the remainder of the party.

The cake is really, really good. There were a couple of them at the party, one of which was home made by one of Loic’s cousin. They have promised to get me the recipe so I can attempt to reproduce it next year…ja ja ja!!, even though I was not the one who got any one of the figurines.

Enjoying the Galette -- The winner of the crown

Enjoying more gallette and an intersting discussion/information session on the political situation in Colombia

Bonne Anne

Wishing you a wonderful, happy and healthy 2008!!

with love...from Paris

So this is how I spent my New Year's Eve. On Monday morning (Dec 31st) I went for my usual jog by the Champs de Mars and Eiffel tower. The place was packed with tourists making the long lines to climb up to the last floor of the tower, lots of street vendors who sell you the typical key chains of the Eiffel tower and also lots of police. Usually you do see what I think is military presence around the tower: uniformed man who walk around with their M-something (I have no clue when it comes to weapons) and who guard the place from possible terrorist attacks. But certainly on the 31st there was a lot more of military and police presence not only in the tower but in the city as a whole. The people I’ve met in Paris and have become friends with were all gone for the holiday season so I was basically by myself here to spend New Year’s. But ever since I made plans to be in Paris around this time of the year I was determined to welcome in the New Year in the city of lights, next to the Eiffel tower. When else would I have the chance to spend New Year’s in Paris? Right in front of the Eiffel tower? Who knows.....So I made some research that afternoon and found out that a lot of Parisians gather around the Champs Elysee to receive in the New Year. However, I wanted to be right in front of the tower at the stroke of midnight. Sometime around 9 o’clock I headed to the Champs Elysee and in fact the place was super crowded. The atmosphere was great. Everyone was happy, smiling, very well dressed and with a bottle of champagne in their hands. Small groups of people were gathered all along the wide sidewalks drinking and singing. Many stores looked as if they were waiting for a hurricane: they had covered their windows with plywood in what I think was a preventive measure in case people got rowdy after an explosive mixture of alcohol and the excitement of the New Year and decided to break the windows .

People gathered at Champs-Élysées--Police at the Arc de Triomphe

I walked all the way from Champs Elysee to Trocadero and placed myself right in front of the Eiffel tower somewhere around 11 o’clock after stopping to have a Crepe of Nutella as my last dessert of 2007. The place was very crowded as well. The ambiance continued to be great: some people were wearing customs or wigs, some others were waving flags of their countries and some others just continued to sing, dance and have some good old fun. Just before 12 o’clock the fireworks’ show started. I have to admit my expectations for the fireworks were very high and I was left somewhat disappointed. However, they were still good and at the stroke of midnight everyone just started to scream Bonne Anne (literally Good Year).

The Eiffel Tower from Trocadero

The fireworks were finished about 5 minutes into the New Year and at that time I began to walk back home. The streets were so crowded it took me a little bit over an hour to get home, a walk which on any other day would take about 25-30 minutes. The problem is that the shortcut I take of walking underneath the tower was closed and I had to go around to find another bridge that would allow me cross the Seine River to get back home. I arrived home exhausted from all the walking and from not having sat down since 9 o’clock that night. When I arrived home I went straight to bed thanking God for a wonderful and many times blessed 2007 and looking forward to what will hopefully be a great 2008.

Bonne Anne (video)

Trying to walk back home

Madrid

Finally I was able to remove the virus from my laptop: I actually had to format the C drive (thank God I was able to back-up most of my data to another hard drive), reinstall windows and all other programs. In a kind of weird or sick way I'm happy it happened. It gave me a chance to clean the hard drive and only keep those files and programs which I really use and need. I have much more space now on the hard drive and the laptop is running faster. I feel I'm getting a clean start....which goes perfect with the New Year.

So here I am, back to my writing and trying to pick up where I left off...my Christmas trip to Madrid.

La Puerta de Alcala

I arrived in Madrid on Thursday December 20th with a delay of one hour since 5 passengers who had checked in for the flight did not show up at the last minute and their bags had to be removed from the plane. I know, I can’t still figure out why people in this day and age of tight security with everything that has to do with airports and flying would do something like that. The "funny" thing is that before taking the flight, a section of one of the terminals in the Orly airport had also been closed because someone had left an unattended bag. The police and firefighters were all over and they were even evacuating part of the terminal.
After leaving Paris I will be returning to Madrid for the final leg of the trip (as a friend of mine would say), to make that city my home base for my future "traveling" operation and also to take the flight back to Miami. So I took this opportunity to bring one suitcase with me and leave it there. My initial thought was to take 2 suitcases now and then 2 suitcases later when I go back, but since I was traveling with one of those low cost airlines (Air Europa) they only allowed one checked bag (20 kilos max). I took the biggest bag I had (20.2 kilos) and packed my backpack with the heaviest things I had (probably another 10 kilos…OK maybe I’m exaggerating, you know me. But if it did not weight 10 kilos it was very close to it). As a result I arrived in Madrid exhausted from carrying all of that thru the metro stations in Paris and from changing from one train to the other just to get to the airport. Many of the metro stations here don’t have escalators or elevators for us poor traveling souls. So you have to carry everything yourself up and down the thousands of stairs. I arrived around 7pm, Eliana picked me up and I finally got some help with my luggage. The first order of business after my arrival: grocery shopping. I was so happy at the supermarket I wanted to purchase everything. The prices in Madrid are sooo much cheaper than in Paris (or maybe I should just say that Paris is so much more expensive than Madrid and Munich) I wanted buy all the goodies I don’t get to buy here. After the supermarket it was off to go take a look at the fishes and make sure they were well and recuperating from their illness and then we finally went back to Eli’s apartment to have dinner. Ah…the fish story, I almost forgot. A friend from Eliana who was going to be out of town for the holidays left her in charge of checking up on the fish in his aquarium as 2 of them were sick with a cold. So we had to go there and see how well they were recuperating and make sure the water’s temperature was OK for the convalescent Nemos.

The week in Madrid was a good break from my Paris routine and the Paris weather as the temperature in Madrid was about 5-8 degrees Celsius higher. I had time to do a little bit of everything: jog in the mornings, see Jorge (my uncle), walk around the city, watch a couple of movies, eat excellent food at reasonable prices, and do some shopping. I met up with my uncle on Friday afternoon and we walked, and walked and walked. I don’t think I know anybody else in the world who can walk as much as Jorge. We walked half of Madrid. He also accompanied me to look for a true winter coat (the one I had wasn’t cutting it with the cold weather in Paris), he took me to eat churros with chocolate (mmmmm….it was sooooooo goooood….I can’t wait to go back and have some more), and we finished the night with a caña (a glass of beer) and some fried calamari at a Spanish bar/restaurant with tables full of people who seemed to be having their office or family Christmas dinner.

Plaza Mayor -- Puerta de Alcala

Most of the nights I spent them walking in the downtown area and looking at the different Christmas lights and decorations on the streets. One night, just by coincidence, we walked towards Cibeles (a fountain with a sculpture of the Greek goddess of the earth mother) to find that the streets were all closed and the placed was totally crowded. It so happened that there was a fireworks, lights and music show about to begin on the old Post office building right in front of the fountain. The fireworks show lasted for about 30 minutes and it was spectacular.

Old Post Office building -- Paseo de la Castellana

December 25th started out as a celebration of life: a 12km jog in the morning and a an afternoon cooking for our Christmas late lunch - early dinner. Juan C (a coworker from Eli) joined us, we had lunch around 430PM and we spent the rest of the evening talking and talking and talking. We all had a great time. Sometime around 9PM we decide to go check up on the fishes. What was supposed to be a pick-up-the-mail-check-up-on-the fish task of about 10 minutes turned into an hour and a half ordeal. Sadly, the 2 fish who were sick were dead. So our Christmas day ended by having to call Eli’s friend and having to break the bad news to him, getting the dead fish out of the tank (Eli’s task, not mine, thank you), putting them to rest, changing the water from the tank (which is quite a process), and cleaning everything afterwards. So as lively and joyful as the day started, it ended up on a deadly note. Unfortunately I had left the camera at home (remember this was supposed to be only a 10 minute thing) and could not make any pictures of the operation. I’m still disappointed at myself for that. But I learned my lesson: never, ever leave home without the camera as you never know when a Kodak moment will present itself.

Christmas lunch/dinner

The second to last day in Madrid I spent it with my uncle walking the other half of Madrid we did not get to walk on the first day. For lunch we went to a Colombian restaurant!! And yes, ladies and gentlemen after 7 months of "bandeja paisa" abstinence I had myself a delicious one with a "manjar blanco" for dessert (something similar to dulce de leche). I thought for a minute I had died... and I was in heaven!!!!

I left Madrid with minus 1 bag (3 more to go) in the afternoon of Thursday December 27th and arrived to a very crowded and full of tourists Paris. It seems that a lot of people do come to the city of lights to celebrate New Year’s. From what someone told me they had heard on the news, there were about 400,000 tourists here around those days to welcome in the New Year.

Happy New Year

First of all I want to wish everyone a wonderful, healthy, happy, and joyful 2008!!!
May this be a year of peace for you, your families and the world. That is my one wish: PEACE FOR ALL!!

On another note, my computer caught a virus which disconfigured my wireless connection and therefore I can't connect to the internet (I'm currently using someone else's computer). In addition, some of the applications are running very slow or they just freeze on me while trying to open them. And to top it all, it also did something to my Norton anti-virus because I cannot run it anymore, it started conflicting with other applications and I had to uninstall it. So right now my computer has no anitivirus software and I'm extremely scared to connect it with the LAN cable given its current state. I was on the phone with my "help-desk" in the US (a.k.a my brother) until 4 o'clock in the morning the other day and the veridict is somewhat sad: I have to re-install window. The good news is that thanks to my always pro-active brother who brought me an additional hard drive when he was in Germany I won't loose all of my data.

The current status: I'm waiting for my windows CD to arrive here in Paris sometime this week so I can re-install it and be back in business. Until then I won't be posting any stories or pictures in the blog.

For now I'll just tell you I had a great time in Madrid where I spent Christmas. I came back to Paris on December 27th and received 2008 right in front of the Eiffel Tower together with the 400,000 tourists who were in the city to also welcome the New Year and with who knows how many Parisians who also gathered around the most iconic symbol of Paris to say "au revoir" (good-bye) 2007 and "salut" (hello) 2008. The new year has been a calmed year for me where I've spend most of my time visiting museums and other sites in the city as well as getting together with friends who were out of town during the holidays. I only have a bout 3 weeks left in France so I won't be going to school anymore and will take this time to hopefully travel in France and also to finish doing some tourism in the city.

I'll keep you posted