Paris - A tryst with history

After a long 8 hour flight where sleep evaded us for the most part (you cannot cheat the body clock after all. We were all up at 6 am IST!), we landed in Paris. We looked up the electronic schedule board and took a metro to the station closest to our place of stay. The do it yourself started right there :)

After lugging the heavy baggage up two flights of staircases, we emerged on the streets of Paris. I was impressed by the first sight! Chilly and rainy weather, European style buildings, broad roads and a 'Cafe Metro' that beckoned our hungry souls. We had a sumptuous cheesy veg pizza and chocolate mousse for lunch. The kid instantly gave a thumbs up to this life :)

First look of Paris

Kid digging into the treat at Cafe Metro 

A misjudged distance and really long walk later, we tumbled into our apartment, set everything down and dived into bed for a much needed nap. Refreshed after sleep, shower and coffee, we set out to the Seine river. At the metro station, we had trouble figuring out what destination to give as input in the ticket machine. A sign language conversation between us and the lady at the counter ensued and ended with her throwing up her hands and storming out to print out our tickets. Nevertheless, we thanked her and a dark dingy metro ride later, we emerged into this beautiful rainy scene.

A short stroll took us to the Seine river and breathtaking would be an understatement to describe the long watery strip crisscrossed by bridges and surrounded by historic architecture.

After strolling up and down the riverside to our hearts content, we hunted down the starting point to the sunset cruise. Tickets bought, hot chocolate in hand, we sat on the deck of a cruise boat and a chirpy guide started her monologue to educate all of us on all the sites that we would pass by.
The weather was perfect and we took our first sight of Eiffel tower, Notre Dame and several other magnificent historic buildings, as we sailed past them. It was like a trailer to what all we were going to see later on and a perfectly picturesque one at that!

Cruising by history :)

When we passed the Eiffel tower

Kid and I look up to catch a view of Notre Dame

After an hour of floating by history, we jumped off at the dock and tried our hand at some local cuisine at this quaint little crepe stall. Tasted like a very eggy dosa :)

The crepe stall by the seine river bank

Our Cheesey crepe being prepared 

Night fell and Paris lit up to give a very surreal feel to all its inhabitants.

We took a bus ride back to the apartment and drank in all the sights that we passed by. This was totally new scenery after all. The day ended with hot upma that we made in the kitchenette and we settled down to escape into dreamland from dreamland :)

Europe Travel Diaries - A trip to remember!

A trip to Europe had been in the cards for years together for us. We kept thinking about it, looking it up and mulling it over, questions zooming in our heads - Should we plan it ourselves or safely go with a tour operator? Is our kid old enough for us to do such a big trip? What about food? Which all countries should we visit? How many days would we need? Will we face language problems? Is it safe? .... I could list 10 more but this clarifies our train of thoughts.

Finally, sometime in June 2019, we decided to take the plunge! The first choice to make was between the tour operator and self planning. While my husband was more for going with the former, I was adamant that I did not want to tick to a schedule drawn up by someone else - stay here, assemble here at so and so time, get into the charter bus, get down here now and you have half an hour to look around. Aaaaargh!

What if I wanted to just aimlessly walk by the Seine river in Paris and take in the sight of the imposing historic buildings, artists doing amazing water colour paintings amidst a display of their work and all the flower embedded french windows, instead of marching to the Eiffel tower and take must have photos?  What if I was not interested in standing in a killer line just to see a small frame of Mona Lisa but rather walk around the Louvre pyramid and marvel at the structures around it? 

More than all that, what if I wanted a break NOW and not see anything? What If my kid could do with a nap NOW? 

On the downside, we were going to have to do a crazy amount of research to decide on which all countries to visit, read a million reviews for places to stay, figure out commute between countries and within cities. Not to mention the paper work for Visas and reservations. It is indeed a Himalayan task and the husband was worried precisely about this. 

The tour operator, on the other hand had some advantages too - Negligible amount of paper work,a set of ready made itineraries to choose from, all bookings taken care of, Indian food provided.

After a lot of thinking and debates, we settled for doing it all by ourselves! Husband came around with some trepidation and thus started our two months of research - talking to friends who have done it before, scouring forums and travelogues in the internet, maps for best routes, Air BNB, Booking.com, a gazillion reviews. Whew!! Considering that this was all for a holiday, it was ironically super stressful!

Initially, when the trip was still a month away, we were enjoying the research. It was intriguing to read about each country and a treat to the eyes to see the lovely pictures of places we could go to. Finally, having chosen the list of countries, as we neared our Visa appointment date (the data and forms that husband put together for this had already left him pretty cranky :)), we ran a race to route out the trip and have all our bookings in place (by the end of which I became cranky too !)

That done, Visas arrived after sometime and stage 1 was all done! With about two weeks to go for D day, I spent a very enjoyable weekend shopping for the trip with my sister :) Post that, lists were drawn up and clothes packed including a lot of cold weather gear. We had booked apartment style accommodation with kitchenette in all the places we were to go to. So along came a suitcase of  provisions - Rice Cooker, Sambar and rasam powder, Bru Instant coffee, tea bags, Paruppu Podi, Puliogare mix, Pickles :) You see, Europe is no food haven for vegetarians and in our defense, what if we hated the trip just because we had to eat bread and pizzas all through?!

Departure day arrived and after playing tetris with two huge suitcases, two duffel bags and a back pack until 9 PM, we hurriedly bundled ourselves into a cab only to be welcomed into the roads with a downpour and the traffic snarl that accompanies it. With pranayama and namasmarana keeping us sane as we snailed through, we reached a nail biting finish after a special traffic jam just outside the airport (during which I told the husband with a halo around my head - 'Even if we do miss the flight, its only some money we lose, don't worry'. And received a gigantic scowl from him in return :))

Post the bang on time check in, as we waited for boarding the flight to Paris, coffee in hand at 1 AM, we both nervously smiled at each other for what lay ahead. It was a mixed feeling of thrill for an impending adventure, expectations for all the lovely places we were going to see and experience and a good deal of concern as we watched our excited 5 year old hopping around. We ought to come back in one piece and bring him back safely too, without any illness bouts and ensure he does not get travel fatigued at any point of time.

Boarding was called over the PA and with fingers crossed, back pack and stroller hurled across shoulder, kid in tow we boarded the Air France Flight, warrior style!

Spoiler Alert : We had a wonderful three week trip which will remain to be one of our best memories ever :)

Book Review : The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - By Abbi Waxman

Books about bookworms, book stores, books and reading is a favourite genre of mine. I really marvel at the skill that writers have, in spinning a story centered around this theme.The main character is usually a bookworm and the storyline is about how his/her world revolves around books and reading, how they tend to gravitate towards similar people or how they manage to get along with the other tribe.

The cover page and title itself half won me over, when I happened to read a review of 'The Boookish Life of Nina Hill' by Abbi Waxman. I immediately looked it up and downloaded a sample on my kindle. The language, light tone and most importantly, Nina herself won me over! Here was a girl who lived with a cat in a small apartment that had bookshelves dominating the walls, worked in a bookstore where she ran book clubs for kids, spent her spare time between reading, being part of a trivia team and movie nights. Her carefree stage of life had me wistfully looking back and slightly longing:).

Lets get to the story now. The protagonist Nina, the daughter of a single mother, is a complete introvert like every reader worth his/her salt is supposed to be. (Don't ask me who made that rule. I just know that it seems to be universal with very few exceptions.)
The first few chapters gives the reader a good look into Nina's everyday life, her past and how it has made her into what she is today. The story then goes on to unfold an unexpected event that leads her to discover the existence of a hitherto unknown huge family. While she is still grappling with that discovery, she is attracted to a man from another trivia team. The story from that point is about how she reconciles to the sudden presence of  so many relationships in her life which was until then very simple, uncluttered and populated only with people whom she really liked and connected to. Happenings at her workplace (a local bookstore) and the book readings and book club events that happen there weave in and out of the narrative, keeping up her 'bookish life',

There were many things that I could relate to in this book - Nina's reading evenings when she would curl up with her book and a cup of tea, her craze for books and reading and how she looks forward to and totally savours her 'alone time' . Best amongst it all was how she looked at relationships in life. That they literally translated into a bunch of other people's expectations to be met, completely resonated with me. Personally, this is a reason why I meticulously prune the number of people in my life and I was so glad to see someone else think the same way :)

What did not strike a chord was the fact that the author had slightly stereotyped voracious readers as people who had trouble connecting to others during childhood, a trait which according to the book, develops and continues well in adulthood too. There seemed to be a suggestion that books were an escape route to hide this disability. She had spun a kind of 'weirdo' halo around book lovers.

From my experience of being a reader and knowing several others who are, I feel this is not entirely true. I loved books since childhood but still had a lot of friends all through. Am now an adult who reads much more than I did as a child and I still have a friends circle. And the reading bug has rubbed off on some of my friends too!

Also, the book's ending was extremely predictable. All loose ends tied in the expected way and they lived happily ever after! :)

In spite of the above points, I still enjoyed the book and my love for the genre only grew with reading it. So if you are looking for your next read, do pick this up for the laid back life that it portrays, the central theme and most of all, the lucid writing (even though it was peppered with a lot of slang and informal English). Go, delve into your bookish life by picking this one up :)