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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