jwg

We went to Espace Dalí Paris in Montmontre which was full of incredible examples of Dali's work. Lots of fun to walk around and see huge amounts and variety of his work. Of course if you want to find out what time it is the clocks aren't very helpful. In 2012 when we were in Barcelona we went to the Dalí museum in Cadaqués which is located in a house that he lived in.

I always wonder what a session between Salvator Dalí and his psychiatrist would be like...

Click here for pictures:

On our first day in Paris in May we went to visit the Père Lachaise Cemetary, a huge cemetary in Paris with over a million people buried there. There is a Crematorium and Columbarium with even more people's remains. It is still an active cemetary; you have to live in Paris or die in Paris in order to be buried there. Graves are often opened and additional family member's remains are placed in the same tomb.

It's a beautiful place with gardens, trees, and a wide variety of tombs and monuments; it is very interesting to walk around in.

Click here for pictures:

In the winter of 1986 Robert rsc and I went to Spain. Landed in Malaga and went to Córdova, Grenada, Seville, and Ronda. Ronda is this gorgeous town situatied on the edge of a cliff.

We went to the British Virgin Islands in 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994. This was to Guana Island a lovely resort that we first found in 1983 and went to in 1985. Then we continued to go 2 our of every three years - our last visit there was this year. It is a small place with at most ~30 guests (lots of repeats), a bit of a wildlife sacntuary, good food, nice snorkelling, etc.

In 1987 I went to Japan. This was a business trip. My job title at the time: Mission Manager - Software Renovation as a member of the Corporate Staff (Honeywell) and I was meeting with some of the Software Process people in NEC - there were close tie-ins between companies. It was a 2 day meeting, my boss and his boss, the VP of engineering flewover the day before, and left right after the meeting. I, of course, stayed another 10 days and spent more time in Tokyo, and went to Takayama, and Kyoto.

I see stamps entering Paris in 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992. These were all business trips to meet with people in Bull, the Honeywell affiliate and eventual owner of the Honeywell computer business. I always took a few days extra to be a tourist.

There are several Canada stamps in 1987, 1988, 1991 and 1995. While on the Multics project we had an affiliate with a spinoff from the University of Calgary, and I took a few trips to Calgary. One of those trips followed one of the Paris trips and I flew directly from Frankfurt to Calgary for that meeting. I think there were more trips to Canada than those.
I think the 1995 one was to a Software Engineering Conference in Toronto (I remember going to the SkyDome, not to see the Blue Jays play but because there were tech booths placed in it.)

1990 has another trip to Japan, this time a vacation trip with Robert. We spent time in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Kurashki.

In 1992 we took our winter vacation to Greece - a bit of Athens but mostly on Crete.

In 1993 while I was a member of the US Applied Research Lab of Honeywell/Bull I had a business trip to Milan and Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany). I presented a paper at the European Software Engineering conference on Scrutiny, a Collaborative Software Inspection system. The Milan part was to go to the European Computer Support for Cooperative Work conference and then Garmish-Partenkirchen was ESEC. Then I went to Munich, met Robert and we enjoyed a bit of Octoberfest and then went off to tour Bavaria and visit King Ludwig's castles.

In 1995 it was off to Stockholm for the next European Computer Support for Cooperative Work conference. And then flew to Oslo, met Robert, and we went to Bergen to take the Hurtigruten up the coast to Kirkenes (very close to the Russian border. There was a ceremony when we crossed the Arctic Circle.

In addition to being another very fine building, St Denis has another very important role. In several sections of the church there were tombs of the 9 centuries of buried kings. Lots of supine statues. I like the little lions used as foot rests. And no, I don't have a foot fetish but I like to collect feet pictures to make dance camp name buttons where I usually use a feet theme since dancing is about feet.

Click here for pictures

Near Notre Dame is Sainte-Chapelle, another gorgeous medieval Gothic chapel. It is close to Notre Dame, although located behind the portals of the Palais de Justice - which means extra security. It's a must-see in my book. The first time I went to it I toured the main room which was quite beautiful but was surprised that it had so little stained glass. Then I found the staircase to the upper story with a room with magnificent windows. A few years ago I was talking to someone who had been there and didn't know about the upper story. Unfortunately there was some scaffolding on one side of the upper chamber. (Can't they build these things to last?)

Click here for pictures:

On Sunday morning we went off to the flea market in St Ouen, a northern suburb of Paris. It is huge - actually a set of about 14 of them; there's been something there for about 200 years. To me it wassort of going to a museum without signs or captions. We didn't buy anything - since we already have too much stuff.

I did look carefully through a set of old automobile manuals looking for one for a Simca Cinq. I had a 1947 Simca Cinq (actually a French assembled version of the Fiat 500 affectionally called the topolino - little mouse - or Mickey Mouse car). But they had none although there were others of similar vintage.


Click here for pictures:

As a contrast to our visit to Versailles we went to tour the sewers at Le Musée des Égouts de Paris. In 1964 when I went to Paris I went to the sewers tour which was very different - most of it was in a boat in the main sewer pulled by a couple of workers shouting the names of the restaurants and sights above. Now there is a museum with some interesting well-done exhibitions about the evolution of the water and sewer systems in Paris from when waste dripped into the Seine which was the source of drinking water. The tour was informative but less dramatic and macabre.

We saw flowing water, some of the machinery, a sign showing the old tour situation, an explanation how Victor Hugo knew a sewer inspector which helped him in describing the adventures of Jean Valjean, a small diorama with rats, streets signs showing what street was above.

I definitely recommend this as a place to go.

Click here for pictures

rsc and I are back from our trip to Paris, inspired by Ina Caro's book: Paris to the Past: Traveling through French History by Train. She describes lots of places that she visited with many details about their history. Ina Caro is Robert Caro's wife - he's the LBJ biographer. We rented an apartment in Paris (11 nights) and took various train trips to nearby places described by her and saw various popular and weird Parisian sights.

Our apartment was in the 6th Arrondissemont near the Seine. We prepared breakfast in our place and ate out in 22 different restaurants, cafés, brasseries. And they were all great. Dinners were all in our neighborhood - I'd estimate there were about 100 places to eat within a 5 minute walk and about 8 of them a less than 50 meters away. The streets were always busy, many of the eating establishments spill out onto sidewalks and the food was all fantastic. I just love walking around the streets in this neighborhood in the day or the night and peering into shop and gallery windows, observing people, and enjoying the charm of this wonderful city.

I took bazillions of pictures which will be part of some subsequent posts. We went to some magnificent chateaux with gardens: Versailles, Vaux le Vicomte, Fontainebleau, Chantilly. We visited the great cathedrals: Rouen (that's the one that Monet painted ~30 pictures of), Chartres, NotreDame de Paris, St Denis. We went two great museums: the Louvre and Musée d'Orsay. We went to St Chappelle. And two off-beat places - the Musée d'Egouts (the sewers) and the Catacombes.

We did lots of walking (I wish I had had a pedometer) and used the Metro, RER, and SNCF to get about. The French public transportation system, especially in Paris is incredible. 14 Metro lines (with several branches) 5 RER (extended distance - less stops and go to nearby suburbs), and the SNCF suburban and Grandes Lignes trains from the big stations sprinkled around town. There are huge numbers of interconnections and they work quite well although there is lots of walking. It makes the Boston area MBTA seem like a joke.

( Google map of neighborhood )