To the City and Back

It had to happen sooner or later.

I've always tried to pay a lot of attention to non-game weekends ever since coming to Europe. I feel like it's my calling, to take advantage of the ever-disappearing antagonist of time.

We've had a mixture of thoughts since moving to La Fère, but the constant question we have asked ourselves is:

"Will we miss Paris?" 

A good wander.

#eiffelprettygood

I took an early morning train on Saturday into Gare du Nord, and metro-ed my way down the line 7 to Villejuif in the south of Paris. My train had been late, so I walked as quickly as I could to find Erika's apartment to drop off my purse and get her keys.

Erika is a new American volleyball player from Colorado who signed a contract with one of the teams I tried out for last spring. Between her and Amy, I will always have American volleyball friends in Paris now! Yes, all I dropped off was my vintage purse because that's all I brought - for 2 nights.

Erika and her Estonian teammate/roommate, Dorit, had volleyball obligations all day, so I got to trek back to Paris my favorite way: solo.

I miss the speed of Paris. 
I miss the proximity of grand things. 
I miss the lighthouse-ness of the metro signs. 

So Paris.

The Abbey.

I sat on the wall of the Seine, eating a crepe while admiring the backyard of Notre Dame. I wandered through the familiar Shakespeare & Company bookstore. I made my way to The Abbey bookstore for the first time, tucked a few streets behind the main road. The Canadian counterpart had better prices, higher stacks, and served us free espresso with a shot of maple syrup. Canada wins.

The Petit Palais.

I had to walk some of the Latin Quarter and Boulevard Saint-Germain to get to a metro to take me north to the Champs-Elysées. The Grand Palais exhibit didn't appeal to me, but the Petit Palais across the street had no line and always has free entrance to the permanent collection. It was small, but every detail was beautiful, and the quaintness of the courtyard café next to the garden is an excellent reason to go here. 

The courtyard café.

Parisian doors are perfect.

I headed north through parks and neighborhoods to get to the Jacquemart-André museum on Boulevard Haussmann. I have heard about this home-turned-museum since my first visit to the Carnavalet back in 2012. 

All of the Jacquemart-André doorways.

The namesakes, Nélie Jacquemart and Édouard André, were an artist + collector couple, and took great pride in collecting Italian art inside their gorgeous 1800s mansion. The building itself held the most charm for me (a winter garden, staircases, furnishings, etc.), but from the intense scholarly concentration exhibited by the other visitors, I gathered that the Italian art collection was very fine indeed.

Hallway to the winter garden.

I never noticed before that Paris is tall. Very tall. 
Like can't-see-the-sunlight-on-certain-streets tall. 
I didn't like this. 

Looking up.

Bring your sunshine.

North was my direction once more, and I walked through the rues and avenues to arrive at another new-to-me destination, Parc Monceau. We had taken a bus numerous times past this green area filled with arches and pillars, and it took me moving away from Paris to finally go to it and see for myself. What I forgot was the fact that any time it's sunny in Paris, every Parisian is in every park with every person they know. I did find a nook to read my book from The Abbey, but was regularly interrupted by some friendly children with plastic hammers and shovels trying to "rebuild" my bench. 

Not really Roman ruins, but one likes to think so.

The canon fountains at the Trocadéro.

My next reading location was better. I took metro line 2 to the 6, and got off on the best stop, Trocadéro. I hastily made my way to claim the feet of the statue facing the fountains that frame the Eiffel Tower, and happily read Hemingway for half an hour. 

We started a trend.

As the afternoon slid into evening, I made my way down to the tourist-free bank to read with my feet dangling above the Seine.

The view from Bir-Hakeim bridge.

I crossed the Bir-Hakeim bridge as the tower began to glow, stepped back into the metro, and went back to Villejuif for the night. 

Erika and I had all day Sunday through Monday afternoon before my train left to return to the Picardy. We took her metro line 7 from Villejuif to the Louvre district, where we enjoyed a classic lunch at Café le Nemours. For "dessert," we walked down Rue de Rivoli to my favorite chocolate destination, Angelina. They have updated their menu to include a cold frappé version of their traditional "Le Chocolat Chaud à l'ancienne dit l'Africain," and it was so delicious and refreshing! I also spent a chunk of euros on an adorable tin with perfect salted caramels inside. If you want the tin, let me know; the caramels are unfortunately unavailable (to you).

Another bridge with the love locks.

We belong on Pont Neuf.

We walked through the Tuileries, past the Louvre, took photos on the Pont des Arts (love locks), laughed about Pont Neuf, said bonjour to Notre Dame, and strolled down Boulevard Saint-Michel to arrive at the Luxembourg Gardens. The park was sunny and full, and we cut through the center to come out on the other side to our afternoon church service at Trinity International. 

People. Everywhere.

I remember Paris being crowded. 
I don't miss the crowds of smells, noises, and personal space invaders.

We had a moving sale appointment with an American expat in the 7th arrondissement at 19h30, and we had planned to walk through the Musée Maillol until our rendezvous. However, the museum was closed for renovations...until Wednesday! We walked around the area and found Le Pain Quotidien, where we partook in the organic bread, organic mozzarella, and organic wine. If you need organic food in Paris...

Sidewalks, take notes.

It was really cool combing through the leftovers of 20 years of another American's life in Paris. Among the many things we found, Erika picked out ankle weights, mosquito repellent, and a beautiful Sake set. I loaded up with two glass carafes, an untouched aperitif bottle, a scarf, and an espresso maker for Marc. For dinner, we went downstairs to the sushi restaurant and lugged our goods back to the metro to return to Villejuif.

To finish off the weekend, on Monday we met up with Amy from La Rochette and Dorit at the Académie de la Bière for lunch. I had the traditional "moules et frites" (mussels and fries), and we all had fun catching up and chatting around the dark wooden table. 

I did more in 3 days than I usually did in 3 months.

The last time I had seen Erika and Amy was during my two weeks in Colorado. Being altogether in Paris is one of those connecting moments, where all of our stories and experiences meet in rhythm. To have made fellow American volleyball friends during these years in Europe means that thirty years down the road, we will be able to reminisce with another insider's perspective. 

I'm so thankful in advance for those future conversations and laughs.

I took the RER B back to Gare du Nord to wait for my train. 
I don't miss the messiness of Gare du Nord. 
I read more of The Sun Also Rises (thanks to my Uncle Ed for the recommendation!) as my train sped deftly through the sunny meadows and shady trees of the Picardy. 

Marc picked me up in Tergnier, the next-door-town to La Fère where the train from Paris goes through. We came back to our apartment, grabbed my volleyball backpack, and I walked down the alley to the empty street to my gym. I unlocked the volleyball cabinet and got out the net with my teammates. I sat down on the bench, pulled on my knee pads, laced up my ankle brace, and tightly tied my volleyball shoes. I stood up, ready for another well-planned practice, ready to get better, ready to work hard.

I like it here.

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Monthly Musings with Marc - September

Welcome my awesome husband, Marc, to the blog! He will be posting monthly on his experiences in Europe, and my disclaimer is I will only sometimes add an introduction and edit for grammar and spelling. What you get is all Vilas! Enjoy!

What To Do, When To Do What,

and Who To Do What With

Life is a journey full of twists, turns, and forks in the road. When you're growing up, your parents help point you in the right direction, put a roof over your head, and tell you where you're supposed to be. If you are lucky enough to have siblings, then you have some company with you on your travels. Friends add to this, but if you have moved as much as I have, then friends come and go while adding to the experiences, but brothers and sisters are there from start to finish.

When you get married all of that changes.

Now you and your spouse have to make decisions on the path to take, how to handle the twists that come with those choices, and be prepared to make a turn when an opportunity presents itself.

For Christy and I, we have had two major directional decisions as husband and wife. Moving to Simpson University and moving to France. Both were tough decisions, but both were made with each other and both journeys strengthened our marriage and gave us many great experiences.

The journey to SU was a pretty easy one for me: I wanted to coach college basketball, period. The only thing I wasn't sure about was moving to NorCal. For Christy, it was different and multi-layered: she didn't want to teach high school, and she wasn't sure if she was qualified to be a college head coach, but wanted to live in NorCal. So we were looking at the situation from different sides of the spectrum. Ultimately, the athletic staff, namely Joe, Derrick, and Robin, made us comfortable and SU was such a beautiful campus we decided to take this path.

The second intense decision as a married couple came two years later: the decision to move to France. After spending our hearts and souls building the volleyball and basketball programs at SU it was time to move on. Christy, who was 25 at the time, missed playing and felt she had too many good years left in her body to sit on the sideline as a coach. She was right and I had to support that. This was a twist in my life journey as I was about to achieve a long-time goal and become a head coach at the college level.

Christy got herself in top-shelf shape and went off to Europe to see if she could get herself a job as a professional volleyball player.

After three months in Belgium she knew that was the life she wanted.

What did I want? I wanted my wife to be happy. When traveling on the road of marriage the words, "Happy wife equals happy life," are words to live by. Leaving the relationships, the players, and the coaching position at SU was going to be tough, but moving to Europe with Christy was the obvious decision.

Three years later that decision is even more obvious. Our marriage is even stronger; traveling together and living in small spaces helped this, and we love our life in France. God has added some twists and turns during our journey in France, but having a wife like Christy makes the journey that much sweeter.

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Where, Oh Where, is La Fère?!

Congratulations to us!

We live in an apartment tall enough for adults!

Dining room with space to move!

Our apartment is finally big enough for us, but La Fère is smaller than anywhere either of us have ever lived. Fortunately, it really does have multiples of everything we ever need: 4 grocery stores, 2 pharmacies, 3 doctors, 3 cafés, our bank, 3 bakeries, the post office, and other random stores we have yet to enter. There are also at least 5 hair salons that we will never use.

For as much stuff as we don't have, and for as many times as both of us have moved in our lives (we're somewhere around a combined 25 times, plus the now 5 apartments in our 6 years of marriage!), we have been exceptionally slow at finishing this move-in.

Living room with real couch!

My club was extremely helpful in so many ways: all of our things were already in the apartment when we arrived, and they even painted, decorated, and set up all of the furniture in advance as well!

Kitchen with huge fridge!

Anything we have needed, they have come through for us, and we have felt very welcome and included in everything.

Kitchen with toaster oven!

There was A LOT of cleaning to do. We were the first to live in our last two French apartments, which still demanded a level of cleaning, but not to the same extent. We also think the apartment had been empty for a while...as evidenced by the overwhelming spider population and cobweb presence in every room.

(I literally just stepped away from the laptop to kill another spider just now.)

Bathroom with rain shower head!

And by every room, I do mean that, yes, we have more than one room! We have so many doors (5!) in this place, we don't even know what to do. We live on the first floor on the one-way street that takes you out of town, so the noise level in the front living/dining room is loud, but easily ignored.

Bedroom with France map!

The front room has access to the bathroom (with a really nice new shower) and the kitchen (with our first oven-like appliance in 3 years). The kitchen acts as a quasi-hallway to our bedroom in the back (we can't hear the street at all, it's amazing), and the backyard.

Backyard with work!

The backyard has been a hot mess of rotting plums, flies, and bees, but we're hoping that once the plum tree is finished, we can open our back window more often. I hate yards, I think all they make is extra work for everyone, and this yard is no exception.

I did put in a solid two hours of work, picking up rotten plums and dodging bees. I also picked as many good plums as were left to make what hopefully ends up being a decent jar of plum jam. Our neighbor who shares the yard cut back the tree a ton and cleaned up more of the plums. The problem with the plums is the day after everything has been cleaned, there are just as many new rotten plums all over the ground again.

Like I said: I hate yards.

Doesn't every French entrance have fedoras, coats, slippers, and champagne?

I don't know how old our building is, but I would definitely categorize it as pre-1900s. Most of the structures in La Fère date between the 1840s and World War I. During those 70 years, La Fère was a bustling French village, boosted by a Royal Artillery School, and it fit itself nicely. Don't get me wrong; this place was never a metropolis. The largest population ever recorded was barely 5,400 inhabitants...in 1891.

The building across the street.

Now, not even a century after World War I, La Fère is dwindling around 3,000. As we walk and drive around, the history of a larger town is obvious: abandoned homes, businesses for sale, buildings completely overtaken by nature.

La Fère is dancing on the fence between future boom town and future ghost town. 

We hope it will continue to lean more toward the former. The infrastructure already exists, and the population of the city is surprisingly very young. We will do our part to help while we are here, for however long that may end up being!

Aside from documenting #whereohwhereisLaFère on Twitter, Instagram, and the fresh new face of the blog, we have, of course, already lined up our next couple of adventures! I am also very excited to announce that Marc will be "guest blogging" monthly to give an even deeper insight into our life here!

I have 3 volleyball matches in Paris this season, and plenty of friends to stay with while I'm there! I'm also going to be able to continue to tutor about 2-3 times a month in Paris, which is such a blessing/relief/miracle because I love working at the engineering university so much!

In mid-October, we're taking the Eurostar to London for a night to catch a show and visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum. Yes!

For Christmas, we are flying to Madrid! We will be doing day trips all over central Spain, and hopefully getting to bask in some sunshine while we're at it! Get ready for #NavidadenMadrid2014!

We may be "out of Paris" now, but we are still very much in Europe, and we hope you will enjoy this new small-town perspective of our lives in France.

The cathedral down our street.

Being in the middle of nowhere in France is happily 

still in the middle of somewhere in Europe.

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The Voorschoten Venture

VOORSCHOTEN

On my way to somewhere.

This was a true bike quest day.

You can imagine my delight when Wikipedia revealed there was a castle within biking distance (20 minutes).

Horses.

I set out for the Kasteel Duivenvoorde (I cannot pronounce this to save my life) underneath misty skies. I pedaled slowly through pastures, next to tractors, and past resting horses.

When I arrived at what was supposed to be an entrance, all I saw in front of me was a large locked gate. To the right was a V-shaped walk-in door that swung back to let you in, then forward to let you out.

Driveway.

What was I supposed to do with my bike?

I loitered on the driveway for a few minutes, alone in the vast expanse of swamps, fields, and trees. Could I wedge the bike through the V-door? Will the gatekeeper come and unlock the gate soon? Is there a latch I'm not pulling correctly?

Gingerbread garden house.

A Dutchman zipped up on his bicycle. I slowly asked him, "Does the gate ever open?" He shook his head, "No," and proceeded to lift his entire bike over his head. He stepped right into the V-door, then left out of it, hopped back onto his bike, and disappeared down the drive.

Barn.

I should have asked him to lift my bike over the fence...but I hesitated, and by the time I realized that was the best idea, he was gone.

Princess and the Frog bridge.

I pretended like I could lift my bike over my head, too, for about 5 seconds.

I finally just decided to lean the bike up against the side of the fence in the grass, and hope for the best upon my return.

The cows and sheep called out to me as I walked silently down the pavement toward more trees. The canals along the driveway were bright green with the reflections of the trees and light. I passed a gravel parking lot where I think I was supposed to buy a ticket to walk the grounds...but I didn't.

Bayou boathouse.

I passed a maintenance barn and garden house. Not a soul in sight. I took a right turn to the boathouse and went down the path that may have said, "Verboden."

I walked toward a large field of freshly mowed grass and looked out at the farms in the distance. As I turned back around, there it was: the Kasteel Duivenvoorde.

This castle is not particularly significant for any reason, except that it is a castle - and those are always worth my time. I didn't go inside, or on a tour, or see anyone else the entire hour I was inside the gates.

Narnia bus stop.

Canoe on the moat.

I had this nagging feeling that I wasn't supposed to be there, sneaking around with a camera...which made me love it even more.

It was simply my castle for that hour, and I was enjoying my extensive grounds.

I may have gotten a little bit lost in neighborhoods on my way back to Wassenaar.

Need to live on this street, STAT!

But being a little lost just makes you that much more satisfied when you finally make it back home.

Thanks to the rain and my bicycle for a great week!

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