Rick Steves vs. Ernest Hemingway
July 1-9, 2018
We're always looking for a new excuse to go to France. When it was announced that one of Mazz's conferences was going to be held in the town of Caen, we were excited to see a part of the country we hadn't explored yet. To get to that part of France we would have to fly in and out of Paris and take a couple hour train ride to Normandy. Since we had to enter and exit through Paris, it seemed like a great opportunity to spend more time there as well, as we had only gotten a taste of it of a few years before and there was so much more to see.
Mazz arrived in Caen a few days before Kirb, and was surprised to find when she got into town that the entire city seemed drunk. As soon as she learned that the French national soccer team had just won their knockout match against Argentina, she realized that everyone actually was drunk and she wasn't just imagining things. Mazz spent her first few days alone exploring the historical landmarks of the city, like the Château de Caen built in 1060 by William the Conqueror, the Abbey of Sainte-Trinité, and the various historic ruins scattered throughout the town. Caen was full of old, crumbly things, but most of them were reconstructions from the 50’s and 60’s because 73% of the town had been destroyed during the battle of Normandy in WWII.
Looking at relics of the medieval age is fun and all, but the real reason we love France is the food. Though no farmer's market may ever compare to the one in Annecy, Caen had a very nice market of their own on Sundays, where Mazz loaded up on fresh produce, dairy, and some exceptional baked pear pastries.
Afterwards she met up for some pre-dinner drinks with Bruno and Johannes, coworkers who were also in town for the conference. Mazz had spied a section of the old town in Caen that was nothing but restaurants, and suggested that they take their chances choosing one there. It was in this zone that Mazz spotted a perfectly perched cat sitting in the window above a restaurant called La Poterne. The interior looked like a hunting lodge with stone walls completely decked out in taxidermy. She knew that this was the place for her. Mazz convinced her coworkers that it was a good idea to eat there, and they were not let down by the foie gras, tripe stew, and tartare.
Like many of our adventures, this trip was actually work for Mazz, so she spent her days being a scientist and networking. Luckily, the people who organized this conference were French, and insisted on supplying incredible food and wine for all of the attendees, with seemingly endless spreads of delicious things appearing throughout the days. They also organized events, like the renaissance fair-style hang out at the castle complete with axe throwing stations and glorified LARPers walking around for photo ops. Nothing pairs better with axe throwing than unlimited free wine!
Kirb showed up late in the evening with just enough time to catch the end of the game between England and Colombia. The bar across the street from our Airbnb had a lively crowd inside, so Kirb tossed his bag in the apartment and headed over for a beer. Colombia tied it up in the last minutes, sending the match into extra time and exhilarating the two Colombians in the bar sporting yellow uniforms. The other people in the bar kept asking us if we were English, and we would respond that we were American, and that we wanted Colombia to win. The French aren't particularly fond of the English, and one tipsy guy insisted we loudly repeat along with him, "FUCK ENGLAND," which we were happy enough to oblige. The Colombian guy was screaming and banging on all the furniture, letting volleys of Spanish curse words fly in every exasperated yelp. The game went into penalty kicks, which have historically been unkind for England, but somehow they pulled it off, much to the misery of the South American bar patrons. After the game, people asked us if we were happy that England won, and we reiterated that we were American and that we didn't care either way. They were shocked to learn this, and were sure we were Brits, as though we hadn't been telling them otherwise all along.
Mazz had been to a lot of conferences, but none of them had the sort of food that Caen offered up. Normally conference food is pretty bad, but the French weren't having any of that. She learned that the conference organizers had decided to spend ungodly amounts of money on food because apparently the previous iteration of the conference in Pasadena left everyone with both a literal and figurative bad taste in their mouths. So: Steak tartar and wine for lunch, tables full of delicious baked goods for snacks. At the fancy awards dinner, which Kirb would have had to pay handsomely to attend, there was unlimited booze and several courses that were as nice as eating in a good restaurant. Mazz was one of the winners for the poster competition, and was brought up on stage and given a cash prize. Meanwhile, Kirb ate a burger in the Airbnb and watched Netflix until he fell asleep on the couch.
Caen is located 17 km from the beaches of Normandy, so Kirb figured he should probably take a field trip to the museums in the area while Mazz was off being a professional. The Airbnb had bikes we could use, and there was a nice, easy path that led directly from downtown Caen to the beach. The trip took about an hour each way, taking you through pastoral countryside alongside a canal until hitting long, white sand beaches.
There were several interesting museums to choose from, but Kirb chose the Grand Bunker Museum, which let you explore the inside of a massive Nazi bunker that took several days for Allied forces to conquer after D-Day. The inside of the bunker had been excellently preserved, with the living quarters recreated to show how soldiers inhabited the space. Seeing the numbers of how many people died in a single day on those beaches was sobering, and to see that the majority of those deaths were American was both a source of pride and sorrow. The whole area was covered in the flags of France, the United States, Britain, and Canada in solidarity of their alliance, and for just little bit, Kirb didn't feel embarrassed to be an American in Europe. Ten days later the man-baby in charge of the United States would arrive at a summit in Europe, and when asked by a reporter who America's biggest global foe is, began by naming the European Union.
With the conference over and no more free fancy dinners for Mazz, we spent our final evening enjoying some fine French food recommended by our Airbnb host at a cozy spot in the old town called Chez François. A bangin' charcuterie plate, beef tartar, and mussels is about as close to a perfect trio of dishes that we can ask for, and Chez François prepared them with aplomb. You pay for quality meals like this in France in a way that you don't really have to in Berlin, as the food in Berlin is universally cheaper and not nearly as good. We were happy to pay every cent.
The biggest tourist attraction of the area is the Mont Saint-Michel abbey, located about a two hour drive west of Caen. Mont Saint-Michel looks like something straight out of a fairy tale and we wanted to see it in person, even if it was in the opposite direction Paris, where we were heading next. Doing so meant that we were going to spend 7 hours on busses to be able to hang out at the abbey for half a day, but that was the only option, so we reluctantly made it the plan. When our bus to Mont Saint-Michel left us waiting at the station for over an hour past the scheduled departure time, we started to wonder if we had made a stupid mistake.
Seeing the abbey in person, we knew we had made the right choice. The area is stunning. It felt like walking into a Miyazaki movie. We made our way past the throngs of people trying to take bad photos on the road the second they got off the bus and went down to the beach for a less crowded view. Amazed by what laid in front of us, we asked a girl to take our picture. She asked if we had been inside yet, we told her we hadn't, and she insisted that the inside of the abbey was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, exciting us further. We entered the grounds and made our way slowly through the tourist mass up to the church at the top. There was nowhere for us to put our bags, as the lockers in the information center had been decommissioned due to elevated threats of terrorism. This meant we had to lug our heavy, bulky backpacks up flights and flights of stairs in sweltering heat.
The girl who took our picture clearly hadn't been to Spain, because the inside of that church was not that impressive. After the grandeur of the outside of the castle, the inside was met with a resounding, "Meh." We got some sandwiches and cans of beer to-go from a tourist trap and went back outside, where you could walk around the beach that surrounded that abbey walls. The real magic of Mont Saint-Michel is not what's on the inside.
Kirb was slightly gutted to find out that he had planned an almost 5-hour bus trip to Paris at the exact time that the French national team was playing their quarterfinal game against Uruguay. Luckily, a young French guy on the bus had an iPad with the game shakily streaming on it, and Kirb was able to watch France win the game with a small group of locals in transit. It wasn't the uproarious bar atmosphere he had wanted, but he was glad he got to participate nonetheless.
By the time we checked into our hotel in Montmartre it was late, and we weren't too interested in getting wild, even if it was a Friday night in Paris. After staying at arguably the worst Airbnb we'd ever been to in Toulouse, we wanted to ensure we had someplace nice, clean, and comfortable to stay in Paris, so we had "splurged" on a hotel (€100 a night). It turned out to be a very small room with no amenities besides a bed and a bathroom, not even a fridge, but at least it was clean. We were staying just around the corner from the Moulin Rouge, which had a European fast food chain called Quick next door that Kirb had never tried but had seen all across France. It seemed like the right time and place to eat some trashy food. The burgers were not good.
Kirb had asked a friend from high school for some recommendations in the city. She had been to Paris multiple times, and gave him an extensive list of attractions and restaurants. Paris is a city full of exquisite delights, but it also has a lot of tourist traps, so we wanted some competent advice. We had sort of winged it our first trip, and this time we were hoping for a little more direction towards the finer things. The list was massive, and making decisions from it was a task all its own. We headed on foot to a recommended spot called Frenchie to Go that was supposed to have great breakfast sandwiches. By the time we made it there they were done serving breakfast, so we got a spicy chicken sandwich and a reuben instead. Though they looked legit, they were surprisingly mediocre in a way we hadn't experienced much in France. It's a problem Berlin has regularly, where a restaurant sees a type of "foreign" food that someone else does well and then makes a subpar version trying to imitate it. The elevated foodie sandwich is something that our hometowns of Seattle and Portland excel in, but Europe hasn't quite figured out how to follow suit. This type of sandwich is actually surprisingly hard to find in most European cities, but the demand for it is there. The line for Frenchie to Go went out the door.
All the stores in France have a big sale twice a year called Soldes, and somehow almost every time we've been in the country we've shown up while the sale is happening. After our lackluster sandwiches we decided to spend our Saturday afternoon checking out the shopping scene, as all the stores were going to be closed the following day but not the sightseeing attractions. "Shopping in Paris" is supposed to be a thing, right? We spent hours browsing dozens of upscale stores in les Marais and found nothing that caught our interest. It was unclear if we had bad taste, or if fashion is just bad right now. Are we out of touch? No. It's the children who are wrong. The day was starting to feel like despite our best attempt to enjoy the city and ourselves, we were somehow fucking everything up.
So, we found our way to an Irish pub for more dependable World Cup action, where England was playing against Sweden in the quarterfinals. Nothing makes you want to root against England more than watching a big match in a bar full of Brits. There was one particularly annoying girl, the English version of a valley girl as far as we could tell, who was aggressively interrogating a group of young French guys about which team they were rooting for. As previously mentioned, the French do not like the English (especially in sports), so they just kept telling the girl they were rooting for France, much to her dismay. You could hear her shrieking over the din of a full bar. England won, the bar erupted, and then the Brits got insufferable. The valley girl and two of her friends took a selfie video where they loudly wailed, "WE FUCKING WOOOOOOOOONNN!" until the one holding the phone dropped it on the floor and it slid across the bar.
We took the subway across town to try and go to the catacombs before dinner and were informed once we got in line that we weren't getting in before they closed, and that we'd have to come back the next day. We'd wasted a decent amount of time getting over there, and our dinner reservations were in another neighborhood pretty far away, so we weren't sure what else we had time to do. Uninterested in being turned down for another activity, we made our way near the restaurant and sat in an mostly empty neighborhood bar to watch the next soccer match. The owner joked with us in French about how Putin was doping up all the Russian players, which Mazz could understand but Kirb could only smile and nod. The vibe here was great and we were having such a good time that when it was time to head to the restaurant at halftime we walked over and asked if we could push our reservation back an hour. When the game was tied at the end of regulation, we begrudgingly made our over to Le Dauphin to eat. We settled in and ordered, but Kirb kept looking at what was happening in the match on his phone. When the game went to penalty kicks we informed our waiter that we were running back across the street and would return shortly, which he gave us a real squint about. As we watched the penalty kicks from the street through the bar window, a car came to a stop in the middle of the street so they could watch as well. Croatia won, and we high fived and ran back across the street to our table, where our food hadn't come out yet.
Le Dauphin is a tapas-style offshoot of the famous Parisian restaurant Le Chateaubriand, which has been ranked as high as 9th in the World's 50 Best Restaurants list. We asked the waiter what he recommended and ordered foie gras, duck hearts, razor clams, and bone marrow with green beans. Duck hearts are something we likely never would have ordered without being suggested, but they were Kirb's favorite dish. Mazz loved the razor clams, which when done right are her favorite thing from the sea. They're much smaller in Europe than in the Northwest US, and because of that often times they're not cleaned properly. The French prepared and served them beautifully with an almond cream sauce and fresh flower petals. Because we'd recently eaten so much of it in Spain, we ordered morcilla for a final dish and were surprised to find that this restaurant had cured and sliced it thinly like salami (normally its a delicious wet sausage glob bursting out of its casing). The waiter upsold us on a plate of sheep cheese to pair it with, and we left stuffed and very pleased.
The next morning we weren't interested in making our way across town for a destination breakfast again, so we chose a closer spot to eat, a much-loved Montmartre bakery called Pain Pain. When we arrived, we found it was closed for the summer, with a sign telling people to go to Le Grenier à Pain instead, a bakery we'd visited our first time in Paris and absolutely loved. Though we always want to try new things, we weren't going to complain about eating the same perfect pastries again, especially their heavenly koign amann. We picked out a bag of baked goods and got some small coffees from a nearby café (getting to-go coffees in Europe so much harder than it needs to be) and contentedly ate them on a bench next to a garbage can.
When we made our way back to the catacombs, the line stretched for blocks. This was the activity Mazz had wanted to do in Paris more than anything else, but even so she was not at all interested in waiting in this line. Kirb had also wanted to go to the Louvre, but it became clear we'd most likely have to wait in a big line there as well, so we stayed in the catacombs line. For 3 hours. Thankfully we were able to kill most the time having a nice conversation with a dad from Texas who was traveling with his daughter.
Located deep under the city, the catacombs of Paris house the bones of more than 2 million people, organized in massive stacks of femurs and skulls. It's creepy, and cool, and we particularly enjoyed snapping photo after photo of each other making peach signs in front of giant bone piles. It was not worth waiting 3 hours to see.
One of the items on Kirb's friend's list was to eat or drink on the terrace of Café de l'Homme, which has "the BEST" view of the Eiffel Tower. When we arrived the museum the guards told us that the restaurant was closed, but a couple showed up saying they had a reservation so we followed them inside anyway. When the greeter at the restaurant informed the couple that the kitchen was closed, and that she didn't know how they were given a reservation for this time but could sit for coffee or drinks, they declined and left. When we asked if we could have coffee and drinks in their stead they told us to leave.
At this point, it really felt like Paris was kicking the crap out of us. The city was so different in July than it had been in November. Everything was packed with tourists. We were somehow timing everything wrong. Kirb was over it, and all he wanted to do was go watch the Incredibles 2 in the theater. It wasn't going to open in Berlin for 3 more months, he loved the first one, and everything else in Paris was crowded and stupid. We killed time in a random restaurant by the theater drinking Aperol Spritz and sharing a croque madam. Kirb was deflated, but eating a pack of Orangina-flavored Haribos while watching a Pixar move helped raise his spirits.
At dinner, we talked about what we wanted to do with our final afternoon in Paris. In thinking about how we'd need to get up early to minimize the lines at the Louvre, and what to do with our bags if they wouldn't let us into the museum with them, Kirb realized he'd been going about this trip to Paris all wrong. When you're in a place with so many world-famous attractions, you feel obligated to visit them, even if deep down you don't really care whether you see them or not. Vacations are supposed to be about enjoying yourself. They're not supposed to be some list full of items you need to check off in order to feel validated. We had been using the wrong travel book. We didn't want Rick Steves' Paris; we wanted Ernest Hemmingway's Paris. Spending the morning leisurely drinking coffee on a cafe terrace and reading a book sounded so much nicer than waiting in line for several hours to look at the Mona Lisa. After a very good meal of down-home French fare at Le Grand 8, we asked our waiter for recommendations of where she would spend her time leisurely sipping coffee outdoors. She happily gave us a list of cafes.
With the pressure off to see or do anything more, our final day in Paris was nothing but relaxing. We ate tartines and sipped cappuccinos on a sunny street corner in a non-touristy neighborhood in Montmartre. Next door to the café there was a different Le Grenier à Pain that also sold pastel de natas, our favorite pastry from Portugal, which we devoured with more kouign amanns. When Kirb realized he had looked at the flight time wrong and we had a few more hours to kill, we loaded up on picnic foods and laid under the Eiffel tower snacking and drinking wine. We'd made a classic mistake of trying to see Paris like tourists, thinking that would be pleasurable, instead of just doing activities that we knew we'd enjoy. As a result, the simplest things we'd done had been the most fun, like eating good food and hanging out in bars watching the World Cup.
This trip made us realize we're both pretty much over visiting cities. Regardless of whether it's Paris or Prague or Puyallup, a city is a city and it's going to give you more or less the same sort of experience. We ended this trip thinking, "Ok, we saw more of Paris...but what if we had gone hiking in the Pyrenees instead?" For however much time we have left living in Europe, we both want to shift the focus of our travels to spending more time in nature. Even the best cities in the world kinda suck compared to playing outside.