Paris - Luxembourg

From: Inna Bakker <innabakker@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 6:18 PM
Subject: trip Paris--Luxembourg

My dear family and friends

i exchanged my apt. on apt. in Paris for 2 weeks on the website  Home exchange,

for me it was my 4 Th visit to Paris and Ron also was there many times
and worked in Paris in 1973,  our apt  in Paris was a big artistic
loft  near metro Republic, no elevator,

so we walked every day to the 4 Th  floor  which was useful after all
very delicious pastries i ate ,first we had a wonderful walking tour
with" Paris  greeter"--a lady volunteer  who spend with us 3.5 hours
showing  us   different   places and telling about the history and the
present ,

we went to Zhiverny  by train , 45 minutes  from Paris  to visit
Claude Monet  house and garden which he cultivated for 40 years and
painted his famous  pond and water lilies

[in French--Nympheas ]  in different times  of  day, season and light ,

we visited museums of French Impressionists in Paris--Orangerie and Marmotan,

every day we walked streets of Paris admiring   architectural genius of Baron Hausmann

who planned and rebuilt this city  in time of Napoleon  3 Rd--not Bonaparte, 1850---1880

all buildings are the same height--about 6 floors surrounded by beautiful iron cast balconies,

there are a lot of outdoor arts, old and modern, palaces, big and
small, parks, gardens,  greenery, cafe and restaurants one after another full of people,

we went to the most visiting cemetery in the world--Pere-Lachaise
where are graves of Chopin, Edith Piaf,Modigliani, Oscar Wild, Yves
Montand and  memorial to French Jews who were killed in the concentration camp  Dachau.

We visited Shoah [Holocaust]  Museum  and went to  memorial in  Drancey
 from which railroad station  French deported 76 000  Jews to the
concentration camp Auschwitz to be killed, horrible history.,

for Yom Kipur we went to Chabad on Champes Elisees  and met a lot of young families.

weather was wonderful most of the  time, sunny and warm  60-70 F  or 15-20 C

the interesting part was to meet French friends and  listen about their life,

we took high speed train to Luxembourg--only 2 hours of very comfortable ride,

the only European country i have not seen, it is a very small country, less than half a million of people bordering
France, Germany and Belgium, with highly developed economy  and

3 official languages--French, German and Luxembourgish, one of the capitals of
European Union, 65% of the people living in Luxembourg were not born there, the government has very strict rules on immigration - no illegals in the country.

the city is very very pleasant, combination of old and modern,

we  took a bus tour--hop on--hop off and than walked the city,

my cousin Leva Bekker-son of my late uncle Aron  came for a visit from Dusseldorf, Germany,

we had a wonderful dinner with my friends in their beautiful artistic house, they invited their friends

and we learned about life in Luxembourg.

back in Paris i visited   Pompidu Center -ultra modern building of thousands of colorful pipes,

full of modern art, went to Arabic Institute which is a complex of few modern buildings,

now Louvre  added the whole new wing  for  Islamic Art,

probably half of crowd on the streets of Paris are people from Algiers, Tunis , Morocco, etc,

we used Metro-  sign Metropolitan - every day, very efficient, clean ,
fast but you have to walk inside miles   between stations,we also
noticed --no overweight people in spite of all delicious food, sweets,
cheese, fat foie gras and wine.

Paris is one of the most beautiful, interesting and inspiring city of the world.

now we are back home,

love to all, Inna

 



--------------------------------
Inna Bakker
www.innabakker.net

 

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