Old friends in unexpected places

The last few weeks in Paris have been a lot of fun. We've been out to a few restaurants and have explored a lot the city that I didn't get to see when I was here last. Jacob and I have enjoyed meeting up with Eric and our old roommate, JP.

JP lived with us for a year working for that National Gallery of Art before returning to France. We always told him that we would come to visit him in Paris at our first opportunity. He was one of the reasons that Jacob and I came up with the idea for a grand tour around the world. We got to meet up with him and his girlfriend, Christine, and her son, Enzo, within the first week of coming to Paris. They took us to this great restaurant near the Canal St. Martin called La Verre Vole which specializes in traditional French food and features only locally produced wines from small family-run vineyards.



We got to meet JP and Christine's daughter, Camille a couple of weeks later when we trekked out to their apartment in Sevran, a suburb northeast of Paris. She was very shy at the beginning, not wanting to even look at us. But quickly warmed up after we all went for a walk and helped her push her tricycle.



We also got a really nice surprise when we found out that one of Jacob's good friends from high school was in Paris. Trust the power of the Internet. Neal updated his status on Facebook before he left Paris about his upcoming trip. When we saw it, Jacob sent an email to him and his wife, Trina. We got the name of his hotel, which turned out to be located really close to our apartment. After a couple of days of leaving messages and trying to get in touch by phone, we were finally able to meet up with Neal for a few hours after his students' curfew. Neal was accompanying a group of 13 high school students on a whirlwind trip through France and Spain. The last time Jacob and I had seen him, was around the time of our weddings. Neal and Trina got married about two weeks after we did. Neal was one of the groomsmen at our wedding and Jacob was Neal's groomsman two weeks later in Bozeman. It was nice to see another familiar face in a new city.



This past week, we hung out with Eric's two sisters who decided at the last minute to visit him in Paris. Staci stayed for 10 days and Katie was here for 5. It was nice to have them here because they definitely had a site-seeing agenda that forced us to get out of the house and see some of the more classic tourist sites of Paris. Antione, who shared Eric's last apartment in Paris, got us into the Louvre for an afternoon. It was the typical first-time-in-the-Louvre-must-see-all-
the-"big"-pieces-of-art afternoons. We didn't run exactly, but it was a very quick tour through the two levels of French sculptures in the Marly Court to Napolean's apartments, cutting through the Mesopotamian art to go by the Winged Victory of Samathrace to cut through the French and Italian paintings with a stop by the Mona Lisa and out through the rooms containing pieces from one of the palaces of Darius in ancient Iran. Talk about "museum feet" at the end.



Non-stop site-seeing proved to be too much for us. So after a few days, we would just meet up with Eric and his sisters for lunch and spend some time with them in the afternoons and over dinner. The picture below was taken on top of an abandoned railway track that had been converted into park space near the Bastille metro.

A Link to Jacob's New Podcast

Subscribe, listen, and enjoy! Just uploaded the traditional Irish music we recorded in Belfast. More to come! http://feeds.feedburner.com/scallopshell
A big thank you to Chris and Libsyn.com for making this podcast possible!

Reminiscences on the occasion of our first aniversary

It's hard to believe that a year ago Jacob and I were madly running around trying to get things ready for our wedding. All in all, however, I think that the wedding turned out really well. There were no major glitches and everyone had a great time.

The only thing that I regret is that we didn't make some kind of sound recording of the ceremony. I'm not a big fan of home movies but Jacob's brother, David, worked really hard to arrange the music. Our friend Kristen sang the Ave Maria. It was all beautiful and I would have loved to be able to sit down and listen to it at a more leisurely pace.

Food in Paris

Our apartment in Paris has one of the largest kitchens that I've seen in this city. With this and the kitchen in Eric's apartments, the three of us have been cooking pretty frequently. One of my favorite activities is to troll the outdoor food markets that crop up on certain days in certain neighborhoods.



One of the first ones that we went to was the market near the Belleville Metro in the northeast part of the city. It's an area known for its Vietnamese restaurants and Chinese markets. The outdoor market, however, did not have much in the way of specifically Asian ingredients. What we found mostly were very fresh fruits and vegetables, artisinal cheeses, meats and breads. Jacob was also very happy to find a pair of jeans from one of the vendors just outside of the main market for 8 Euros. He now has two pairs of pants, which makes it much easier for him to wash his clothes.



With the ingredients from the market that day, we decided to make Vietnamese spring rolls. We got cucumbers, lettuce, mint, and cilantro at the outdoor market. Then we headed up rue de Belleville to hit the Asian groceries to buy hoisin sauce, rice papers, bean sprouts, rice noodles, and a green mango.



We also found some nice Moroccan olives and preserved lemons at the Belleville market. So a few days later, Eric and I made a Moroccan chicken tagine with green olives and preserved lemons and served it up with couscous. It was the first time I had cooked with a French chicken and I must say that it was delicious. Though the chicken was a little expensive, 14 Euros for a 4.4 lb chicken, it made an excellent stew.

Recently, I decided to try to recreate a dish that my French host mom made for me the last time I was in Paris. It was chicken breast with a creme fraiche sauce. However, I was craving pork - and Eric and I thought that pork would be cheaper than chicken after our Moroccan experience. I took four bone-in, 1/4 inch pork chops, salted and peppered them and cooked them in a thick-bottomed pan for about 5 minutes. After browning, I took them out of the pan. I returned pan to the heat and added 2 tbs of butter and then sauted some chopped garlic and chopped onion. Next, I added a little bit of white wine to deglaze the pan. And then I added chopped mushrooms to cook in the wine solution until they had soaked up all of the liquid. Lastly, I added the creme fraiche, which is a little like American sour cream, to make the sauce. I served the pork chops on a plate and spooned the sauce on top. Eric made pasta with tomato sauce and I sauted some zucchini for a bit of greenery.

A note on packing

Jacob and I decided to travel light for this trip. We did not want to lug pounds and pounds of luggage over who knows what kind of terrain for three months. Moreover, Jacob wanted to bring some electronic equipment for possible dj gigs. So what did we bring with us?

As for clothes, I brought two pairs of long pants (and one pair of pajama pants), one pair of shorts, three tank tops, two t-shirts, one short-sleeved button down one long skirt, one short, four pairs socks, 5 pairs underwear, two bras, one rain jacket, one thermal shirt for colder weather, one swimsuit for the beach, and one long scarf. For equipment, I have my tiny digital camera, two 1G memory cards, my Ipod, a cell phone, and (coolest of all) my Kindle electronic reader with a 4G memory card and about 1,000 books I bought on Amazon or downloaded from other sources on the Internet. I always bring books and love to read in my down time. I was having a hard time deciding on what to bring on this trip when Jacob gave me the Kindle for my birthday. It was the perfect solution. I also have travel toiletries and a little bit of make-up.

Jacob went even further and outfitted himself in special travel gear from REI and other camping stores. He packed only one pair of special quick drying, long wearing pants, 3 boxers, two quick-drying, long-wearing button-down shirts (one short-sleeved, the other long), one pair of shorts/swim trunks, one quick-drying t-shirt, 3 pairs of socks, one rain jacket, a couple of handkerchiefs, and one bandana. This light packing was so that he could also bring along his PDA cell phone, his leatherman, the laptop computer, an audio interface, a MIDI controller, a digital audio recorder that our friend Chris, a pair of headphones, a whole bunch of cables and adapters and connectors, and one book. He also has some toiletries.

We also brought along a pretty stocked first-aid kit with a small knife, bandages, water purification tablets, antibiotics, etc. in case we run into emergencies. We each brought along a hand towel-sized travel towel.

We're carrying all of this in one carry-on sized roller bag, one padded back pack, my purse and a smaller day pack.

Overall, it hasn't been so bad. We had to adjust a few things for weather in Belfast, which while warm was a lot cooler than the weather we left in DC. However, we were able to borrow extra layers from Paul, which made things so much easier. In Belfast, Jacob also bought a gaelic football t-shirt as a souvenir. He broke down in Paris and bought a pair of jeans at the outdoor market in Belleville for 8 Euros because he was finding it difficult with only one pair of pants when he had to do laundry.

As for souvenirs along the way, we figure that we'll just mail things as we accumulate them. Eric has volunteered to carry stuff back to the US for us when he returns at the end of June. To be honest, though, our budget's pretty tight. While we've been doing a good job staying under budget in Paris, we don't have a lot of leeway for souvenirs. I think we'll probably end up buying more in cheaper locations such as Egypt and Southeast Asia.

Paris!

Our Ryanair flight arrived a few minutes early in Beauvais, which is an airport that is 55 miles north of Paris, around 10:30 PM. From there, we caught a bus into the outer edge of the city near the Porte Maillot Metro Station at midnight. It was a little disconcerting once we were out of the bus. Even though I had lived in Paris for a while, I had not ventured to this area. So Jacob and I had to collect our bags and follow the great load of people to the Metro. With our roommate Eric's help, we had rented an apartment in the northeast part of the city. The apartment's located right next to one of the city's largest train stations, the Gare du Nord.

The next morning, we met Eric at one of the cafes for breakfast and walked. A lot. From the Gare du Nord, we walked down to the Chatelet-Les Halles area. Jacob was on the look out for some plug converters. We stopped at this household goods store called E. Dehillerin, which I thought might have something.



E. Dehillerin turned out to be this amazing kitchen store. It was this large store house of anything and everything you've ever wanted in the way of kitchen supplies. I was enthralled and spent some time wandering the aisles. I think I might go back for a nice knife.



Jacob did manage to find what he was looking for at FNAC, an electronics store in the underground mall in Les Halles. They were even cheaper in the outdoor markets in Belleville, the next day.

Because of the length of our trip, we're on a pretty tight budget for expenditures, particularly in Europe. We're trying to cut down on eating out too much. It was pretty easy to fall back into the habit of cooking food with Eric. We had a brief tour of the Marche St. Quentin near the house and spent 45 minutes beneath the Gare du Nord trying to find the supermarket, Monoprix. The train station is huge with trains, metros lines and commuter rail lines running through it. In the end, I think we jumped the turnstiles twice, once to get in and once to get out of the Monoprix.

So our first meal in Paris was steaks with pasta and tomato sauce accompanied by a nice bottle of red wine and a baguette from one of the local bakeries. The kitchen in our apartment is easily the largest I've seen in Paris. The woman we're renting the room from cooks a lot herself, so it's also packed with plenty of nice pots, pans, silverware and plates. After stocking up on the basics (olive oil, butter, garlic, onions, jam, yogurt, juice, eggs, pasta, canned tomatoes, mustard, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper) and the ingredients specific to the meal, we were all set to go.

Leaving Belfast

Our week in Belfast was great! Thanks to Paul and his family for their hospitality! Jacob and I were reluctant to leave.

The weather stayed nice pretty much the entire time - Only our last day in the city was rainy. On Tuesday we went to Titanic Quarter of Belfast. Near the ship yards where the Titanic was built, this neighborhood has seen some recent development and will be home to pricey condos and hip restaurants in the near future.

Among the construction sites, however, we were able to find some the original dock where the Titanic was built, pictured below.



In the pumphouse next door, we saw the panel that allowed the builders to control the flow of water into the dock.



I found this old fashioned "post-it" note on one of the panels. I couldn't get the lettering to come out very well but it says "Do not turn off".



And later that afternoon, we all headed to the Queen's University area for lunch. It was such a nice day that we opted for a picnic blanket on the grass.



Afterwards, I sat down with my Kindle and caught up on some reading while Jacob and Paul spent the afternoon working on Paul's car, Jacob's mission before we left Belfast.

On Wednesday, we spent the day packing and hanging out at Paul's place before taking the bus down to Dublin and a flight on Ryanair to Paris Beauvais airport. For some reason, we mixed up the flight times and thought that our plane left at 10 PM. We decided that catching the 5PM bus to Dublin would give us plenty of time to get to the airport, get some food and get settled onto the plane. The bus arrived in Dublin without any problems. We arrived at the airport at 7:15.

Once we got our bags checked and our boarding passes printed, Jacob asked the ticketing agent about the food options available behind security. She said that there were some but that she didn't think we would have time. That's when we looked at boarding passes and realized that we were on the 8 PM flight. We ran to security and made it through in ten minutes, even with all of Jacob's electronics. And then we sprinted for the gate, which seemed to be at the farthest point in the airport away from us.

Luckily, we managed to get to the gate just as they had started boarding and were even able to seats together on the plane. The backs of the seats on Ryanair featured their emergency exit protocol. I particularly like the photo on the right of the woman sliding down with her hands crossed over her knees to keep her skirt from flying up....Since modesty is the most important thing in this circumstance. (Click on the photo for a larger resolution pic.)

Belfast

Paul took us out a few times to tour different parts of Belfast. The city has many murals commemorating the conflict between the Nationalists fighting for a united Ireland and the Unionists who favored remaining under British rule.



The picture above shows a mural from the Catholic standpoint. The picture below was taken in one of the predominantly Protestant parts of town.



Belfast has become more peaceful in the last few years but you can still see signs of its troubled history in the razor wire that encircled many buildings and the fortifications that enclosed most of the police stations.



The above picture shows a wall of murals painted to show solidarity with other areas in conflict. This one criticizes the U.S.'s role in Iraq. The one below speaks to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.



Paul also took us to listen to some traditional Irish music at his local bars. The older musicians performed songs commemorating Nationalist heroes who had died. Jacob recorded a few of their songs and will put them up once he gets them into a format that can be posted on the Internet.

Food that I've never taken the time to write down

I first started cooking food with my mom when I was twelve. She wanted me to help out around the house more since she was about to give birth to my sister. From that time, I have a collection of Vietnamese recipes that I learned to make by taste and feel rather than by recipes written down in a book. When I make these recipes, the ingredients and proportions change depending on my mood and on what's available.

Driving around Belfast today, we encountered a couple of Asian markets and our friend Paul asked me to make him some Vietnamese food. I made Hot and Sour Chicken Soup and Lemon Grass Grilled Pork. We got to talking about recipes and he asked me to send him these and a couple of others. Since I took the time to put them down, I figured I would go ahead and put them on the blog for others to use (Brady, I'm thinking about you in Charlottesville). Alas, no pictures.

Here are the recipes:

Hot and Sour Chicken Soup (though you can use fish or shrimp)

3 cloves garlic, sliced
2 stalks lemon grass, cut into 1-inch pieces and smashed with a knife
1/2 onion, cut into 1/2-inch wedges
1 small tomato, cut into quarters
.6 kilo okra, cut into 1-inch pieces and boiled for a few minutes
2 stalks celery (sliced thinly) or taro root
1 red pepper, sliced 1/4-inch pieces
6 cups water
3 chicken bouillon cubes
1 lb chicken, cut up into pieces
1 can pineapple chunks, drained of liquid
fish sauce
salt
tamarind paste
chili garlic sauce
brown sugar
2 tbs chopped cilantro

Saute garlic, lemon grass and onions in vegetable oil until fragrant. Add chili garlic sauce (2 tbs). Add chicken and saute for 1 minute. Then add celery and pepper, saute for 1 minute. Add water, bouillon cubes, tamarind paste. Bring the water to a boil. Add the pineapple chunks, 3 tbs fish sauce, 1 1/2 tbs brown sugar, 1 tbs salt. Simmer for 10 minutes, check for flavor and add more fish sauce, salt, tamarind past, chili sauce or sugar as needed. Stir in cilantro just before serving.

Grilled Lemon Grass Pork

500 grams pork tenderloin, sliced thinly
2 stalks lemon grass, sliced thinly
3 tbs fish sauce
1.5 tbs brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Mix together all ingredients. Marinate for at least 20 minutes, longer is better. Put the pork on skewers. Grill until done.

Vietnamese dipping sauce (My mom's down and dirty dipping sauce; no frills, no fuss)

Equal portions of (use the same container to measure out each):
fish sauce
sugar
vinegar
water

Mix ingredients together well, make sure that sugar is completely dissolved. For additional kick/flavor, you can add thinly sliced garlic or chopped thai chilis or chili garlic paste.

Chicken and rice soup

1/2 chicken
1/2 cup rice
6 cups water
5 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 tbs vegetable oil
5 tbs ginger, chopped
fish sauce
salt
black pepper
cilantro
1 green onion, sliced thin

Bring to boil chicken and water with a pinch of salt. Once starts to boil, turn heat down to simmer for 30 minutes. Saute garlic until golden brown and then add the rice until it's opaque white. Add the rice mixture to the water. Cook chicken and rice together for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take the chicken out and let cool. Cook rice for an additional 45 minutes. Pull the chicken off the bone and throw the bones back into the rice mixture. Shred the chicken into thin pieces. After the 45 minutes, add shredded chicken, ginger and fish sauce to taste. Serve with lots of black pepper, a sprinkling of cilantro and green onion.

Taking a small break

The first picture perfectly captures our first day in Belfast - sitting at a Gaelic football field sipping on a Guinness. Jacob and I decided to take a small break, "mini-retirement" as he likes to call it, and travel around the world. It was kind of a reward for the last two years of hard work with my masters program.

It was a hectic couple of weeks wrapping things in DC, cleaning, packing and getting things ready to sublet our room. The last few days were a little crazy. But I think that we got things in order pretty well, and hopefully our new sublet is enjoying the room as much as we did.

After some flight delays out of Washington, we arrived in Dublin and made our way by bus to Belfast. Our friend, Paul, met us and has been hosting us at his house. The weather's been beautiful ever since we got here. It's almost not like Ireland. Jacob and I last visited in 2002 and toured Southern Ireland where it rained off and on every day of our trip.

Yesterday we were able to take a drive down the coast of Northern Ireland to the Giant's Causeway. It was beautiful. Jacob claimed an island that he found that wasn't on any of our maps. He named it after himself.



You can see the island over Jacob's shoulder in this picture.

The Giants Causeway was awesome! It was perfect weather to walk around. The rock formations were really interesting. They really look manmade rather than natural.



We have a few more days in Belfast. It's a really interesting city and Paul's been telling us a lot of the history. I'll post of the murals that the city is known for next time.