Spain here I come.
Be back around October 17th.
If anyone needs to reach me, contact ‘les. She’ll be able to give either get a hold of me or get you my contact info. celesteh at gmail dot com.
Monthly Archive for September, 2005
I’m leaving for Spain tomorrow evening. I booked my overnight train to Madrid this afternoon. There are little train ticket offices sprinkled all over Paris, apparently. This makes me happy. It’s much easier to go into an office and find someone who speaks English to make reservations with than taking my chances at a train station.
I’m leaving from the Austerlitz station here in Paris on Friday at 7:45pm. I’ll arrive at the Chamartin station in Madrid on Saturday, 1 October at 9:13am.
I’m meeting up with my traveling companions at our hostal.
I’m mostly packed. I’ve looked up directions for getting to the hostal. I’ve done a crude line drawing of the map so I know which way to once I get out of the metro station. I have my guide book and a list of things I want to see. I have a very fancy itinerary that THM sent to yesterday. I’m pretty much ready to go.
Now I just need something to occupy my time on the train trip there. I should try finding that yarn store in the first again. I need a new project.
Not having the internet makes for having a lot of free time on your hands. For me that means knitting. I haven’t found a yarn shop here yet (I tried yesterday and failed horribly. Stupid tiny streets.), so I’m making due with using up the extra yarn from my sweater. I had just enough of the grey yarn left to make a simple hat.
I’m finally getting the hang of this whole gauge concept. The hat pattern I got out of Knitting Pretty was several inches too small for my head. My head, she is huge. I couldn’t tell how big the hat was going to be form the directions because the author didn’t give a final size or gauge information. I liked this aspect of this book when I was learning to knit. Gauge is a bit overwhelming to deal with when you’re just trying to learn to knit so having a book that didn’t bother with it was relaxing. Now, though, I’m annoyed by the lack of information. Anyhow, I decided to try out the pattern and see how big it looked after a few rows. I check my gauge – it was 4 stitches per inch. I divided the number of stitches I had by 4 and figured out that the hat was going to be 19 inches around. My head is 22 inches around. Like I said, my head – she is huge. So I unraveled my work, figured out how many stitches I’d need to get 22 inches and started again. And…it worked!
The concept of gauge never really clicked in my head before I knit that sweater. But after having to make sure to be extremely careful with how tightly I was knitting in order for the sweater to be the right size, it all makes sense now. It’s simple math, I know. I think I tend to learn things in tiny pieces. Figuring out *how* to knit something was more important than getting the right size. I’ve mostly worked on things where the end size wasn’t important. So I just left that piece of information to be figured out later, when it was actually important.
Anyhow, I made a hat. I modified Knitting Pretty’s “rolled up hat”. Instead of decreasing the last few rows and drawing the remaining stitches in to finish the top, I just knit a big tube, cast off, and sewed up the top. It ended up with little pokey corners, which I sewed in such a way as to sorta look like ears. See:
Yesterday I went shopping at Forum des Halles, which is a ginormous mall thing in middle of the city. (Hush – I needed traveling pants and I knew I’d find them there.) I was biking around the place, trying to find a tiny 2 block street that seemed to be hiding from me.
I was on a corner, waiting for the light to change when it happened. This dude was chatting with a bunch of other guys and turned around and said something to me in French. I had no idea what he was saying to me so I said in horrible French, that I don’t speak the language. And then he said “Ah, do you speak English?” “Yes.” “You wanna take me for a ride on your bike?”
Fucking not kidding. I got a lame ass pick up line that I’ve heard many, many times before (pretty much every guy who would normally try to stop me on the street says something about me giving them a ride if I’m on a bike). But in two languages. On the street. In Paris.
So awesome.
Yeah. Like I said, cities are pretty much the same everywhere.
We did a little touristing on Friday. ‘les didn’t have to go back to talk to French Bureaucrats at all so we decided that the best use of our time would be riding through the city on our bikes.
We went to The Arc de Triomphe first. I took a few photos from the other side of the round-about and then a few underneath the arch itself. I was reminded of the mission Abra requested of me before just after arriving. I’m not sure ay of the photos I took will come out well. We’ll see when I get them developed.
We didn’t pay the 8 euros to get to the top of the Arc. I’m tempted to do it some time at dusk later on. You get a full view of Paris from there and I’d love to see it.
The Arc de Triomphe is the border point between the 8th and the 16th. Getting there allowed us the opportunity to actually bike on the Champs Elysees, which was both beautiful and insane. For one thing, I’m not yet familiar with which streets take you where or whether or not they’re one way. And then there was a crazy amount of traffic, which made me nervous. There are a metric ton of bicyclists in Paris, so cars and scooters are all on the lookout for me, but it’s still a little nerve-wracking.
But on the plus side, it’s starting to be fall here. So far this has meant beautiful weather, and leaves starting to turn brown and drop from the trees. The air’s been clear for the most part too, which adds to the view.
Afterwards, we headed towards the Eiffel Tower. It’s on the other side of the Seine from the the Arc. On the way we passed a scale model of the Statue of Liberty’s torch. It’s located at the Place de l’Alma in the 16th, which happens to also on top of the tunnel that Princess Di crashed in. There were a few flowers and notes left for her by the torch.
We biked along the river to get to the Eiffel Tower. For those keeping track, the tower is in the 7th. The river’s is still a confusing landmark for me. It twists in such a way that I have a hard time figuring out where I am when I’m next to it.
Ok. So moving on, the Eiffel Tower. I don’t know, I thought it was lovely. People called to have it torn down for the first hundred years or so of it’s life and I can see why. It’s a bit distracting from a distance – always in the view from certain areas of Paris. (Sorta like the Mormon Temple in Oakland, heh.) And it’s almost entirely useless. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it until I actually got close to it. I liked the metal work. And I like the whole idea behind it. It’s romantic in a way. Not the smoochy kind of romantic, of course. The idealist kind. The idea that there’s art and beauty to industry and that it should be something that society embraces. It’s so damned hopeful. I think that same kind of romanticism exists today with people’s hope for the internets. It’s totally misguided, really, but that’s the romance.
After the Eiffel Tower we tried going to the Palais de Tokyo & the Paris Museum of Modern Art, but it was closed for renovations. I think it’s opening back up in October, so hopefully I’ll get a chance to report on their collection.
I’m really rather impressed with ‘les. She opened a bank account yesterday, added me to it today, and then came home and navigated the French installation documentation for our DSL modem. Sweet.
Oh. And I have the interweb at home now. Sweet, sweet interweb.
I didn’t do a whole lot on Thursday. I’d been running around the city since Monday, tagging along with ‘les as she tried and failed to get her residency card. She was going to go to try to apply yet again today and I just couldn’t get up the enthusiasm to go again.
I had planned on heading to a yarn store that was recommended by an old Best of Paris edition. It is in the 1st, so I figured that it would be a good chance to do some biking around on my own. I needed a new yarn needle as I thought I had left mine at home. But then I found the thing stashed in one of the pockets of my suitcase so I had no excuse to go check out new yarns.
So instead I curled up in my new favorite chair and finished my sweater.
I was bummed that I didn’t have a chance to finish it before I left for Paris. All the pieces were finished, I just needed to press it, knit the neck, and then sew it up. I thought I had about 2 hours of work to do. It turns out that I had more like four or 5 hours of work to do left. I think mostly because I’d never assembled a piece of knitting before, nor had I ever done a collar of any kind. I had to stop in the middle of things in order to consult my copy of Vogue Knitting to get details about what I should be doing.
I still fucked up the shoulder a little, but I don’t think it’s too obvious. I think most people will be distracted by the giant turtle neck. ‘les says I look like I’m wearing an Elizabethan collar. I think “*giggle* You look like Shakespeare.” Was the exact quote.
When I thought about making a sweater, I figured my first effort was going to come out so messed up that I wouldn’t want to wear it out of the house. But I think this turned out pretty well in spite of the fact that I made the arms just a little too long. I do have to make sure to be wearing at least a tank top under it, though. The stitching is loose enough that you can see right through it. I’m wearing a baby blue 3/4 sleeved top under the sweater in these photos.
‘les and I bought bikes yesterday.
I dragged poor ‘les to several bike shops before going back to the first one we looked at to buy a bike. I just couldn’t believe how much more expensive bikes are here compared to the US. I wanted to make that we were actually going to get a decent deal for the money. Plus I didn’t want to be riding around on a bike I hate for a year if there was something I liked more for the same price somewhere else. I already hate my bike back home. No reason to own two bikes I’d rather not be riding.
As it turns out, Au Reparateur de Bicyclettes (44 blvd Sebastopl – 3rd Arrondissement) is one of the best places to get used bikes in Paris. It was recommened in a couple of “cheap Paris” books that my landlord left around the apartment for us.
The shop has apparnelty been around for a long time. It’s owned by an older, rather roundish gentalman. He wondered around the store, chatting up customers while smoking a cigar and order his employees around (which included what appeared to be a HS aged kid. don’t they have labor laws around here?). He’s like the godfather of bike shops. It was awesome. If you’re ever looking for anything bike related in Paris, I highly recommend stopping by there. If nothing else but for the ambiance.
‘les and I are sitting outside at a cafe. It offers free wi-fi so we brought our powerbooks with us, ordered some beer and started checking our mail.
Apparently this was highly amusing because a gentalman just walked up and asked for our photo. Nice.
I used the washing machine in our apartment for the first time last night. I’m always so happy when I manage to get new household appliances to work properly. I don’t know why other people’s appliances confuse me, but not having all the same settings and buttons as the ones I’m used to drives me nuts. I don’t have any problems at Laundromats, however. I think consumer appliances are just overly complicated. God help me if I ever start driving. I’ll only be able to use one car.
The washing machine here is a top loading deal that I’ve never seen before. It looks more like a front loading one on it’s side. I like it. I was lucky that our landlord was kind enough to leave instructions hanging above the stove. All the instructions on the machine are in French and a few of them having been wiped out from use. I don’t think I would have figured out how to open the top of the damn thing without some guide.
I love that people just have little washing machines in their apartments here. It makes sense. Trying to haul your clothes up and down all those stairs would be hellish. And having a machine in your apartment means you can get away with having a much smaller wardrobe. Out of socks? Just throw them into the wash and you’re good to go. No stalling by buying a new pair. Heh. Plus you can hang your clothes to dry instead of having to use a big dryer, so it’s more energy efficient.