Roads of Romania and Beyond

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At the beginning of July I went to Paris for a six days vacation. I’ve been to Paris two times before, in the summer of 1999 and in December 2004, not counting the 7 hours I spent there last summer on a layover, when Cris and I were flying from San Francisco to Bucharest. We took the RER to St. Michel, downed some coffee (myself) and beer (Cris) and strolled through the Luxembourg Gardens before returning to Charles de Gaulle airport to catch the flight to Bucharest. In a way Paris was my first trip, the one that opened me to the world of travel. It was in the summer of 1999 when we were already studying in New Jersey at Rutgers University. You could argue that I was already traveling outside of Romania but the truth is that we used to spend all of our vacations in Romania so all I knew of the world was New Jersey, Bucharest and back. That prompted me to ask Cris in the summer of 1999 to go and see other places and I proposed that we go to Paris. It took me a long time to convince him but I eventually did and he agreed to go with the condition that I take care of visas and planning – back in 1999 Romanians needed a visa to travel to France. Passports in hand I went to the French consulate in NY and applied for a visa. Everyone told me I’m not going to get the visa but I didn’t see a reason why I won’t get it. I was in a PhD program in US, I thought that was sufficient evidence that I don’t plan to stay in France illegaly. We got the visa and I took care of the rest of the planning: plane tickets, hotel. It was probably my most researched trip – for months I read about Paris on the Internet, what to see, where to go, what to do. At some point I got tired. Everyone was raving about how great, how marvelous, how charming it is. Give me a break! I said to myself; it’s only a city, how great can it be? I arrived in Paris and I was caught into exploring the city and didn’t think about this at all. A few days later while I was drinking coffe at a small cafe on a side street I realized that I’m already caught in its charm. I love Paris. It’s great and marvelous and charming and I just love it. Paris is for me the quintessential Western European city, the glory of the French and European civilizations. It has everything I want in a city, architecturally, gastronomically, artistically & socially. It’s full of life and culture. In my three trips there I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. There are still dozens of places I’ve yet to discover. Whatever makes you happy in the end, and that’s what this city does for me. I’ll never tire of going to Paris, a city I could easily go back to endlessly, roaming around, revisiting the Notre Dame and the Louvre, looking in windows, going into cafes, tasting the food, laughing at the miniscule rooms and feeling at home because it feels so familiar.

A few Paris images:

Notre Dame church:

Eiffel Tower:

Coffee time:

Place des Vosges:

Paris skyline:

Louvre Museum:

Skyline with Eiffel Tower

Cote d’agneau:

Champs Elysee:

River Seine:

Parisian cafe:

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Day Five. Another day, another museum. This time, to make Cris happy, I picked the National Museum of Natural History. First we took a short stroll through the southern part of Central Park. We passed by the pond – I wonder what happens to the ducks in winter? 🙂 (This was my attempt of a literary joke) – by some baseball fields full of activity, and finally by the Strawberry Fields and John Lennon memorial. The museum was pretty crowded, given that it was a Sunday. Cris got upset when he found out that the IMAX theater was closed. He was looking forward to seeing a movie at IMAX. Instead, we got tickets for the Cosmic Collision, which turned out to be a 20 minutes movie narrated by Robert Redford with some nice special effects. It showed the importance of cosmic collisions and I learned a few new things (about solar wind and how Earth is protected by it by the magnetic field generated by its iron core). After the show we spent most of our time in the Rose Center for Earth and Space. Exiting the big silver globe that is the Planetarium you can descend via a spiral platform that traces the history of the universe. From the Rose Center for Earth and Space we went up to the fourth floor to see the dinosaur halls. Huge dinosaur skeletons dwarfed everything in the room. We left at the closing time regretting that we didn’t have more time to look around. If I were to live in NY I’d probably come here more often.

My morning bagel:

The Central Park Pond:

John Lennon Memorial in Central Park:

Museum of National History, entrance hall:

Rose Center for Earth and Space, Museum of National History:

My diet was too severe:

One of the dinosaur halls:

Dinosaur hall:

Dinner:

The Globe at the Trump Tower, Columbus Circle:

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Day Three. This was the day we decided to visit the Met mostly because it was cloudy outside and it looked like it’s going to rain. We started with the Egyptian wing so Cris won’t get bored. He tends to do that when we visit art museums but he likes history a lot more. The museum was full of school children making fascinated noises at the sight of the mummies: “Miss, is it a real person inside?”. As expected, Cris found the whole wing fascinating and he was trying to read about the Egyptians while I kept interrupting with my impersonation of the Bangles “Walk like an Egyptian” which Cris said he didn’t remember. I was trying to make him remember so I even did the dance. Finally I left him in peace and went upstairs to the Modern Art section which proved to be amazing. I wonder if they own more Impressionists painting than Musee d’Orsay. Room after room filled with Monet, Manet, Renoir and some of the most famous ones too. “The Garden of Sainte-Adresse”, “The Regatta at Sainte-Adresse” and “Grenouillere” by Monet, “Boating” by Manet, Picasso, Van Gogh etc. I even found a painting by Gaugain that my mom liked – she kept a reproduction of it in her bedroom. I had no idea it was displayed here, I tought it was in the Louvre since my mom visited Paris but never been to New York.

We stayed in the museum until closing time, had dinner and headed for the crazyness of lights that is Times Square. I like Times Square, its hustle and bustle, the noise, the crowds, the flickering ads, the cheesiness. Once there we were deeply impressed by the sight of a banner that said “Bun venit”, which means “Welcome” in Romanian. There were Welcome banners in different languages all around the square.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Egyptian Wing:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Temple of Dendur:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Temple of Dendur:

Gaugain, a picture that my mother used to like:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, entrance hall:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, facade:

Delicious Italian food:

The Italian restaurant we ate in (“Erminia”):

Window display, Upper East Side:

Upper East Side:

Times Square at night:

The “Welcome” sign – in Romanian – in Times Square:

Times Square at night:

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We’ve been planning a trip to New York for a long time but kept postponing it for different reasons (birthdays, weather, relatives visiting). Finally, about a month ago we bought the plane tickets and decided to leave on May 5th, right after the May 1st holiday in Romania. About two weeks ago the swine flu story broke out and we hesitated asking ourselves if we should postpone the trip once more. We watched the news on CNN for hours and in the end decided to go ahead with the trip.

Cris and I have been to NY many time before, back when we were grad students at Rutgers University in central New Jersey, about an hour by train south of New York. For this reason Magda, who had also been here before, and I decided that this trip will be more of a “get back in touch with the city” sort of trip in which we would do a bit of tourist stuff but we would take it easy; we’ll try to enjoy things and activities that we didn’t have time to enjoy back when we were running to cross all must-sees off the list. This time we would enjoy sitting in cafes and watching people, we would eat in good restaurants, we would shop a little. We won’t climb the Empire State Building or go to the Statue of Liberty. We’ve done it before and we don’t feel the need to do it again. We’ll probably go to the Met, see a musical or a movie, try to meet friends who live in the city or close by.

Our first night in the city, for example, we went to eat Indian food, something that we miss in Bucharest where there aren’t many choices in terms of Indian restaurants. Magda got out her magic Zagat map that she bought on her last trip to US and we picked Chola on East 58th street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. The restaurant was crowded, noisy and the decoration a bit kitchy as any respectable Indian restaurant would be and the food was very good. I asked for the usual – samosa, chicken tikka masala – while Cris decided to try some new stuff. We ordered a bit too much – I guess we forgot about the American portions – and asked to take home the leftovers which were about half of the meal. Walking from the subway to the restaurant I felt some familiar smells rushing back at me: the ominous smell of food that you find in an American city and – because this is NY – a faint smell of garbage.

On a different topic, we’re staying with friends on Roosevelt island right in the middle of East River. It’s one subway stop away from Manhattan on the F line.
A view from the Roosevelt Island towards Queens:

A view from Roosevelt Island towards Manhattan:

Manhattan Midtown East, Lexington Avenue:

Manhattan Midtown East, Lexington Avenue: