Paris (II)

[i have 2 computers running for me now, so i can relax and write the next chapter...:) ]

After a great lunch, we took the metro to the Louvre.

we didn't have a lot of time to see it, and even if we did have all day - the book says that in order to see it all you need 3 months. it's huge.
i'll only talk about the things that i was moved by in some way.

first, the Mona Lisa. don't think less of me, but i was really, really not impressed. i know, people told me not to get my hopes high, i knew ahead of time that it's a small piece, but still - i found nothing special about it. to me it was just another one of those commissioned renaissance portraits - and i've seen others that have touched me more. maybe it's the fact that there were lots of people around and we couldn't see it from very close (trying to justify... hmmm...).

my favorite item that afternoon was a sculpture, "The Rebellious Slave", by Michelangelo. The sculpture seems to be unfinished, and the figure of a mostly-naked man is emerging out of the rock that it's carved from. i like the italian sculptors, and Michelangelo in particular - the attention to details and the anatomic accuracy are mind blowing. but those unfinished sculptures, like this one and the four that i saw last spring in the Accademia Gallery in Florence, i can look at them for hours. they are, to me, more interesting than, say, the David.

i can't help but think about the artist's state of mind when he was working on this piece. some parts of it are highly finished - muscles and veins come out of the marble and almost come to life. other parts are rough and unpolished, including the face and hair. it's as if Michelangelo was done working on the interesting bits (to him), and then got to bored to do the obvious parts. like "eh, this is too boring. i'll finish it some other time".
you can really see the process in this sculpture, and not only the finished artwork.

Paris (I.5)

some local entertainment on the metro... after the show was over, the puppet guy walked down the car and collected coins from the audience.

Paris (I)

ben and i have never been in paris before, so we decided to spend the weekend in the middle of our (work-)trip to france there.
it's pretty amazing how distances are made short just by having some reliable, efficient means of public transportation. the train ride to paris took just over 3 hours, whereas google map says that it would have been a 6+ h drive. wish we had something like that connecting Chicago with Ann Arbor! it would have been awesome.
but back to our trip.

the baby seems to really like train rides - i didn't like it as much, because of the 1. pressure changes every time we went in/out a tunnel, which hurt my ears, and 2. the obnoxious french family sitting across from us, who wouldn't shut up the entire ride, and didn't bother using their "indoors voice".

when we finally got to paris at midnight, excited to reunite with Assaf at the hotel, tired and still letlagged, going down the escalator to the metra, i suddenly remembered that we forgot something on the train. totally forgetting that i'm on an escalator and not normal stairs, i turned around and started running up... bad idea! i lost my balance and fell up the stairs, catching myself with my hands and knee, which at first seemed to be nothing. we kept going down the stairs, and ben returned to the train and got our missing bag. after a minute or so, i noticed that my jeans was torn, which i dismissed, and after another minute i realized that i'm also bleeding.
it turned out, that even though not painful, my knee-bump was unfortunately aimed at the sharp end of a stair, and the jagged cut obviously needed some medical attention.

so i got a trip to the hospital for my birthday.
fun!

the hospital, or maybe it was just an all-night emergency room, was, um, weird -- but it seemed like the people there knew what they were doing. they didn't know much english (!!). the doctor and i had only one language in common - spanish - and mine is kinda broken, so i managed to communicate the important things to him (i'm 6 months pregnant, yes, it's our first baby, and it's a girl... we had quite a chat). he guessed right away that it was a subway-escalator-related injury (hehe, i'm not the only one!). they dug up a nurse who spoke english, who made sure that i didn't tumble down the stairs and don't have any abdominal pain.
a couple of stitches and an x-ray later, we were released and took a taxi back to the hotel.

my parents were supposed to meet us in paris, but they had to cancel their trip at the last minute :(
fortunately they could give their ticket and hotel room to Assaf. we were both very happy to see him again! it's been so long :)

the next morning my knee was a bit swollen and stiff, so we decided to take it slow but still see as much of paris as possible in a day and a half.

Assaf was our wonderful tour guide (i knew he was going to be - he was my wonderful tour guide a few months ago in Italy!). it was a gorgeous day (although the wimpy israelies would probably say that it was cold), the sun was shining, and Champs-Élysées was vibrant and beautiful.
we walked up the street to the l'Arc de Triomphe with it's impossible roundabout. cars were generally driving counter-clockwise, but were cutting each other, entering and exiting the roundabout without any noticeable warning, that all i had to say was "i'm glad we're not renting a car" :)


from there we took the merto to the Eiffel Tower. the first sight of it is very impressive. we took the obligatory (all family!) photo, and went over towards the elevator to go up - but the lines that snaked under the tower seemed to be much much longer than we were willing to stand in.
so i suggested to the boys, that i will sit on a bench and take a break, while they go up the stairs. that seemed to be a good idea - ben and assaf are both in good enough shape - but the line to go up the stairs was just as long! shocked but not too disappointed, we decided to skip this tourist must and headed towards our next stop, the Louvre.

no, no, wait. we had lunch first. mmmmmmmmmmm!
Foie gras appetizer, big salad for me, and juicy burger and steak for ben and assaf, accompanied by baked potatoes, and some chocolaty dessert. NOW we can go to the Louvre.

Orchid update

we have bloom!
i'm so proud.

Marseille

i'm reading a paper which is so annoying to read, i figured i might as well take a break and blog for a while.

so last week ben and i flew to Marseille, France for work (you say it "marsey". france is weird, half the letters in the word are pretty much redundant).
the trip was a great success, i met with some people at the cosmology institute, and spent a long time working with them. it's so refreshing to be around people who do exactly what i do, and run into the same problems as i! i didn't have such a work environment in a long time.
plus, they were all so nice!

there's not much to tell about that week besides work things, we didn't get to see much of the city (we spent the weekend in paris, that's another story) but there are a few anecdotes:

we stayed at a small apartment-hotel at the center of town. the bedroom has a bathroom, toilet and a small kitchen, and opens to a small living room. i walked around and opened all the doors in the room, looking for the bedroom - and then realized that the bed is actually a fold-out couch. hmm.

the second night there, we asked people at the institute for their recommendations for restaurants in the area we were staying in. when in France, eat like the French, no?!? someone suggested the area around the port, that is pretty touristic and has lots of restaurants. on the metro on the way there, consulted with our lonely planet chapter and selected a Marrocan restaurant that was a few blocks away from the train stop.
we navigated to the restaurant easily, but were very surprised to find that it was closed! looked around, and basically everything was closed! hmm. 7pm, on a weekday, the tourist book says that the restaurants should be open way after midnight, what's going on? this was so weird. i thought, maybe it's some national holiday? but someone would have told us that... hmm.. as we kept walking around, more and more places were closing their doors, and we decided to stop at a grocery store, so at least we won't go to bed hungry. we got some ingredients for dinner and breakfast (juice and cereal, and milk that tasted more like half-n-half) and made our way back to the hotel.
still puzzled, we stopped at a bakery to buy a baguette, and to our surprise the guy behind the counter was wearing a black yamaka, and spoke hebrew. i asked him what's going on? how come everything is closed today? he thought about it for a minute, and then said - ahhhh, i bet i know what it is. there's a soccer game today, so all the restaurants are closing early.
yes.
there's a soccer game.
so all the restaurants close early.
surely, you can follow the logic behind that?!?

french. go figure.


all in all, i'm really glad i went there, and very happy that ben could join me :) ...and sorry, no pictures.

way behind on my blogging

wow, can't believe it's getting to the end of February already. A lot has happened in the last 2 weeks, i'll try to write about it all -- our trip to Marseille, Paris, baby shower... also need to update my belly photo-shoot. (that blue shirt i was wearing a couple of posts ago is too small now)

but starting from the end, in those 2 weeks our family gained -9 lbs (yes, minus 9). the baby and i gained 1 lb (about 1/2 kg), and ben lost 10 to lack of exercise, walking super slow because of me, and trying to keep warm while doing that.

the good news, is that i'm wearing my pre-pregnancy pants (they're very low-cut so they fit under my belly -- and yeah, my butt didn't get any bigger in the last 6 months, hurray!)

the bad news, is that i'm not sleeping very well. could be jet-lag leftovers, or just some random pregnancy symptom - i wake up in the middle of the night (to pee, duh) and then can't fall asleep again. i'm comfortable enough, i'm tired enough, but still can't fall asleep.
it's kinda ridiculous that i actually can't wait to have a screaming baby at home just so that i can finally get some sleep :P

reserved parking!

who said being pregnant doesn't have perks?

scrooge likes those packages too!

:D

yayy!

the little hugs you send us between all the wonderful gifts from israel make us very happy :)

prenatal yoga

i ordered a prenatal yoga dvd and it arrived yesterday. i didn't try it yet, just watched the introduction chapter.

the exercises are tailored to different stages in the pregnancy:
depending on your trimester, you have to follow a different model.
-- i particularly liked the fact that while the 1st and 2nd trimester models were doing squats and such, the 3rd trimester model was sitting on a chair :P lucky me!

the visitors' map is resetting once a year. frankly, i'm pretty sure that most of those hits are from autobots of search engines... except some dots in israel, the us and germany :)

28 weeks

last night ben put his ear on my belly and was able to hear the baby's heartbeat.
whoa!!!

on other related news, i didn't have a full night sleep in the last 2 weeks. i wonder if i'll sleep again before 2012.