Here in Cluj we have a great winter opening. Lots of snow have already fall upon our streets, and this makes our neighborhoods seems like a mountain resort, while all our hills are covered in white sheets.
A great time, thus, for a winter dream or for a winter tale about the hot season.
We started our summer time this year as great as this winter begun. Lot of sun, hot summer days, and a good plan for a summer holiday.
It was in our intention since April this year to have a long trip towards France's western coast, someware near Dieppe city, were Mela's childhood friend lives since she got married. Her name is Alina and they spent their green green years of their lives learning at the same musical school in Timisoara, traveling with the same tramway back to home, teasing each other along the way, jumping from a tram wagon to another during the stations or even punching each other.
Well it seems it has been a great childhood for them as they still talk to each other for a couple of hours each time Alina calls Mela. From my point of view these girls really have something to say.
We took our departure a few days after Eli's birthday, planning to split the trip in maximum of two stops, so that we could reach the seaside fast and bask in the sun as much as we can.
We finally left home at 6 o'clock in the morning.
It was a big deal for us to be able to still be going, as just a few days before departure police got me cutting too early to a street on the left, going over the continuous lines that separates the ways. They stopped me and wanted to pick up my driving license. I bagged and I bagged and the human part reached out of them. A bit humiliating, but it was nothing comparing to what I would have suffered telling Mela we no longer can go to France. Moreover, I suppose I would have lots of nightmares about why couldn't I wait until cross streets to turn left.
So it was a relief for me to get only some consistent penalties.
We managed to reach near Salzburg in the first day meaning that I drove about 1000 Km.
There we planned to stay for a night to Hollerweger family, a very nice family that Mela met when her music school sent the kids in Austria, just after 89's Romanian events, for a couple of beautiful weeks. Reaching there after 1000km driving I was exhausted. I remember I slept over 10 hours in that night, and when I got up my legs and my back hurt. I was zombie at the time of arrival.
We managed to visit, however, Salszburg the town of Mozart, and the neighborhoods of their village, Hollerweger family living pretty close to Atersee lake, in Alps Mountains.
After two days of rest we finally head towards France.
We left Maria, Franz, Magdalena and Julia in 15th of August in the day when they and us celebrated Virgin Maria.
Salszburg was only at 60 Km from their village and right after that begins Germany.
The best thing about Germany was that the highway was free. The worst thing was that they didn't had toilets along the way. That's a big problem when you travel in sunny days and drink lot of mineral water.
Eli managed to pass over this better than me. In fact all this long way she was a pretty little dolly. Only on our way back home she started to say : Mom, when do we get home, or more over, When do we get back to Alina. We had to be very careful with what we reply because if we said next year, she knew very well it was a long time, so we said at autumn. She finally was happy with this.
Straszbourg, was the next stop.
We didn't managed to get to the European Parliament but we were surprised to find a Notre Dame cathedral there. After that we had to find that there are plenty of Notre Dame cathedrals not only the one from Paris. In fact each town in France has it's own Notre Dame cathedral. So at the first one we found, we climbed up to the top platform. At the others we've seen we resumed to admire only their interior and exterior from the ground. That's a very hard thing to do , to climb 50m with a 3 years old child in your hands.
But the view up there was spectacular. However, after 5 minutes the clouds and rain chased away all the visitors. Inside the cathedral we were able to see some instruments that our medieval ancestors used to track the human and the astronomic time. There were even automates to buy medallions with Notre Dame orologium. During our visit to this cathedral Eli was getting tired and tired and she kept telling me to tell her a story. So I invented some stories with a little mouse that is so tired that his father must carry him, but after the little mouse makes himself comfortable keeps asking for baby stories, and his father tells him a story about a little mouse who is so tired that his father must carry him, and so on.
It finally turned out that it was a good story. If I stopped telling the story, she asked for more, more, more.
So it was a pleasant visit.
We intended to leave Strasbourg at 12 o'clock. We visited the town until 4 PM.
At 8 we were close to Reims, so we stopped there. In fact after we found a reasonable hotel there we realized that this was the place were the kings in the old days were crowned. And guess were exactly: in Notre Dame cathedral of Reims.
I forgot to mention about France way of administrating the highways. Lots of taxes, each at every 100Km but plenty of toilets. They call it "aire de ...".
The road through France from Strasbourg to Dieppe wasn't very amazing. Comparing it with what we are used here in Romania , or with the Austria's views it was quit boring. It seems to me it was much like Hungary with it's Panonic fields.
However, the roads administration wasn't so perfect as it was in Austria, and it led us to concluding that this was just due to latin temper much similar with our temper.
For example, we were able to see some lianas breaking through roadway. I believe that this could be also due to a bigger and thus harder to administrate highway infrastructure.
Heading towards Dieppe we sow that the weather begun to be cloudier, and we finally reached into the Upper Normandy region were the ocean is the one that makes the rules.
Alina told us from the beginning that there is only one month per year when the sea is good for swimming, and that the normand people are usually people with great endurance to coldness, they support 15 degrees in their houses during summer.
And this is what we got all the time we spent in Normandy: rain, clouds, wind, big waves and very few sun.
Finally we left the highway to Dieppe and after 50 km we saw the Ocean. It took us 2000 Km till there and Mela first thought that it was a mountain, a blue mountain. The Normand coast is 50 m above the Ocean's level so we were in fact going downhill when we couldn’t believe our eyes how big the ocean is. And how blue.
The Black Sea doesn't have this blue color.
We enjoyed the building stiles in Normandy much like the ones we show in Strasbourg but besides that there were the medieval castles which seemed to be extracted from children’s stories, with their towers, big walls and solitude up the hills at good and secure places, so that the kings or just the heads of their region could see far on the sea.
Dieppe is a nice town, small and discreet, and is a good access point for many of the European big cities like Paris, Londra or Bruxelles.
Our plan included only Paris as a must go during this trip, and the other two towns just in case the weather wouldn’t be on our side. It wasn’t, but still, we didn’t leave Dieppe until our final departure from there. We did it just for the local attractions, like Fecamp, or other small resorts by the sea. So after 7 days of waiting for the sun to bask our belly we headed towards Paris, hoping for a better weather.
We had fun with Alina’s cat a very playful pet. His name was Tigru, and Eli learned how to call him in French: viens la, Tigru! (Come here, Tigru)
Alina graduated the pharmacy in Timisoara and now she was supposed to equalize her diploma. She was hired at a Paris Pharmacy, but during our stay she was supposed to catch up with the learning plan, as at the end of September she had to give her final graduation exams. I suppose that we didn’t much encouraged her during our visit, but mostly contaminate her with our holiday spirit.
However we were so tired after this long trip as we didn’t felt the strength to go for one more trip to Londra by boat or to Bruxelles by car. In fact we were getting up at 11 AM and went visiting the town at 1 PM when all the French restaurants are closing, and no meal is served. This is what happened when we finally, after much struggle, managed to reach Fecamp.
Besides the fact that it was a lousy rainy and windy weather, after visiting the Benedictine palace in Fecamp we didn’t had the chance to take the meal at the first restaurant that seemed to best suit our needs and budget, because it was closing.
We found a pub that served a meal were all the late tourists, no matter their nationalities – Romanian or Anglican, found a place to quit their hunger. The wind was so upset with us that the door from the pub was keep opening itself. I guess it just wasn’t the perfect weather Normandy could give, but I suppose that this is how I will ever remind it.
After the meal we venturesomely went to the cliffs. Our car was covered in 30 minutes with sea salt. The sea salt is good for health, and this is what we were looking for by going to the sea side. However, considering the fact that the ocean mostly chased us from it’s view, I think that the few times we managed to venture near it didn’t gave us the desired effect. As often Eli is getting could to the kinder garden I believe that, really, it wasn’t much of a deal.
Anyways, the awesome part of our trip was the one that we spent in Paris. I was surprised by the multitude of cultures that coexists there, by the big number of Arabs, mussulmans, or Indians that were traveling through Champs Elise, or that were packed in the La Fayette stores. But I think I was as much as a stranger there as they were. However, their big number made the difference between us.
I’m not thinking about Paris as a strange collection of cultures, but as a consequence of what Paris meant, and means, in the world’s view. I suppose that this kind of city was New York before 11 Sept, and probably still is. And I can’t imagine why one of this Arabs would ever through a bomb in the middle of Champs Elise, as everybody is like nobody there. And also anybody is like everybody.
However we enjoyed our stay there, visited as much as we could, having Eli with us. She enjoyed it too, as we didn’t got her to her afternoon sleep, and one day she resisted till 1 AM, when we were staring at the Eiffel Tour and it’s amazing lights, or when we took the ‘La Bateaux Mouge’ for a panoramic trip of the ‘L’Ille de Paris’ by the Sena. I just can’t remember which one of this was the most amazing, but I know that we also enjoyed our trip to ‘Jardin des Tuileries’ and our rest on the long chairs having part of the sun that we traveled for, for more than 2 thousand km. And I also remember that meanwhile Mela was about to fall asleep in that chairs I was struggling to calm down Eli not to punch me to hard, as she was too excited by this sun, and by the fact that I finally have some moments to give her. On the other hand she struggled to make me laugh of her as much as she could, making strange noises with her little nose.
Everybody there was looking for a bit of a shadow and a good long iron chairs. It was very relaxing. Mela did too. The trip we did before going into the park to the La Fayette and Montparnasse tour was exhausting. I would have prefer a sunnier place more likely to the middle of the park near the artesian well. In fact this was what I was looking for all this trip.
I certainly didn’t enjoyed the day when we lost each other in the Louvre museum. It was tremendous. I had to search them for about 4 hours, all around the Louvre, going around this for two times, letting some messages to the information center, wondering weather they could reach back to hotel as all the money were at me. I was really stressed up.
In fact it was my fault, as I was trying to take some more pictures during the renascent hall. I went a few steps further. I turned back and I couldn’t see them. I took an adjacent hall, thinking they took it too, and went on by this, until I realized that we were lost.
Mela and Eli went on by the first hall till the exit, asked for a way to announce me that they were there, but she was told that this is impossible. She finally met a Romanian women that was so pleasant to give her money for a metro ticket.
I managed to calm down only when I saw them in the hotel room. All this story was more stressing as at the time we lost each other we had to met Alina, which came too in Paris to begin her work to the Pharmacy, in the La Fayette. We really blew this meeting up.
Considering this event I suppose that we will have to have a second trip to Paris and Louvre. There were plenty of other halls that left unvisited.
However in the evening we met Alina in one of the most Parisian style restaurants. I finally forgot its name, but it was impressing. I liked it. This time I passed over the Parisian specialties like snails, that we could see on the others table, but asked for a more common food.
I had the chance to taste the French ‘cucina’ on the last evening when Alina and her husband Piere invited us to a pleasant restaurant near their village, at about 15 Km from the sea side. (I must say here that Alina lives in a village at 3 km from seaside and at 20 km from Dieppe) . I tried then some oysters boiled in champagne, and Mela some shrimps that couldn’t eat.
The second day we were supposed to leave France back to home. But we left Paris at 1 PM and didn’t reach to further, but just till Disneyland Paris, which is on the way to Reims and Strasbourg.
We spent there more than 5 hours, paid about 200 EUR for entrance and weren’t able to use any of the most important attractions that were included in the price. We should have wait for 30 or even 90 minutes to reach to the train, or to the Dumbo’s flights, or to have a trip with a western style boat.
However, it was fun to climb up on Robinson Crusoe’s tree, to visit captain’s Hook boat, wander through pirates caverns and see their hidden treasure, and a skeleton besides it, perhaps a forgotten guardian, which didn’t left it’s position even if the hunger came upon him.
We also passed by the sighs gate, were all the children were having fun, jumping on it, as hard as they can, and everybody was laughing more relaxed after reaching the end.
The sun was very generous with us that day so everybody took an ice cream and enjoyed it at Pocahontas garden. We didn’t miss the lollipops too, and also seen Mickey Mouse, Donald, Pluto, Chip and Dale singing and dancing at fixed hour.
Paris and Disney turned out to be a big attraction point for us. After leaving Disney, I missed the exit to Reims, which was under construction and didn’t see the alternative, and was about to get back to Paris, so I turned back and reached again to Disney. The second time it happened the same. After an hour of wondering up and down I found the alternative to Reims, were we spent the night.
After two more nights near Munchen and Vienna we reached home.
Even if we didn’t had the chance to bask in the sun at the seaside it turned out to be a joyful holiday, and I’m sure that we gathered a good experience so that in the future will be more confident when planning a trip. However, I think that from now on I will rather try the airplane as it’s cheaper and faster, and less painful (when everything is all right).
