Volubilis

I do love me some good ruins every now and then.

We packed up the rental car and headed out of Fes, towards Rabat. This whole area was really beautiful farmland and rolling hills. The olives were being harvested, and fields were being plowed and seeded. It's hard to believe that this is winter.

Not far from Menkes, there is an abandoned town of excavated ruins of the Roman town of Volubilis.

Most of what is still there was built in the 2nd century AD, with an older Carthaginian site exposed as well.

I wish I could have timed my visit later in the day. The overhead sun made shooting really tricky.

From afar, we didn't really think that it would take us more than an hour to walk through. Once you get into the site though, there's just so much to see.

The Capitoline Temple:

I actually found it more engaging than I did Rome. You could really get close to this, while, understandably, the ruins of Rome you are kept a safe distance from everything and you are up on a walkway above it all.

Volubilis isn't even fully excavated yet.

The Basilica:

The Arch of Caracalla, with an inscription that we should all be Hailing Caesar:

There were lots of mosaics. This one had a shadow of the barricade rope over it that I couldn't get rid of, so I had everyone stand in front of it.

The interiors of houses, bathhouses. Open for the world to see. Places like this do a good job of creeping me out in the best possible way. Thousands of people lived their lives here.

Oh, my dear man Bacchus. Why couldn't you have been more of an influence here? We actually did try some Moroccan wines as they do grow some grapes, which were pas mal. Alcohol is just not a thing here, and you have to go to a western-style hotel bar or an upscale restaurant to get it. Two places I just don't want to go to while I'm traveling. I will consider this my detox.

I wasn't aware of Nazi dolphins populating this area.

It took a while, but we found Diana bathing with her nymph.

They were right next to the lone cyprus tree.

It was an amazing site. Stupidly, no one brought water since we didn't think it would take us too long to do a walk-through, and it was blazing hot. So we had an abbreviated visit, but a good one none the less. If you were really into Roman architecture and art, I would be so bold as to say you should allot a full day here.

Bonne année!

Hello, Happy New Year!

I'm back from a really good long adventure. It was hobbitesque even, and I'm still sorting through the 1500 pictures that I took and the stories that they tell, and just kind of recovering mentally from the whole thing.

So, here. Before it gets to be April or May and while we are still currently in galette des Rois season (PS- they are nothing like that bastardized version from New Orleans that I love, but more on that later), here are some pictures of Paris right before Christmas.

I caught these people, with their pretty man-mannequin, trying to hail a cab up near Pigalle. The menfolk were stressed, but the woman was just laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Christmas shopping is the same everywhere. Awkward, tiring, and stressful enough to convince me the giving handmade gifts is the way to go.

They do embrace Christmas with gusto here. There is no Halloween or Thanksgiving to kick off the festive season, or to distract and steal thunder from Christmas. It just changes overnight, and suddenly it becomes Christmas. The department stores are slathered in LED glows and bows and the grocery stores have a huge section of Champagne and chocolates that I've never seen before. I developed an alarming habit out of Baru chocolaté covered marshmallows with a good glob of salt caramel sandwiched in there for good measure. I'm almost glad they stopped stocking them at the local Monoprix, but that doesn't keep me from hopefully searching for them each and every time I'm in there. If you ever see these babies in the store, my advice is to buy them all.

The lights were amazing. I had it in my head that there would be more pure, white lights and traditional decorations. Oh, how wrong I was. It was all neon. The Champs-Élysées looked like it was auditioning for a role as the "new Las Vegas".

There was a huge Christmas market that lined both sides of the Avenue starting at Concorde (oh, there is no "happy holidays here. Just the un-PC Christmas to shake things up.). It was a touristy overkill, but I was happy being a tourist since I felt like I had been avoiding all things holiday-like for almost all of December as I am a well-documented scrooge in the sense that I think we should be happy and giving to people all year around and it's just too bad that it's socially reserved for this one time of year.

These aren't my best shots as, quite naturally, it was raining, and balancing big camera with umbrella in a crowd wasn't the easiest activity for someone with very limited athletic ability.

The holidays are apparently just too much for these gingerbread men. So young. So much delicious potential.

Oh, and the parties. Americans love to be entertained and any excuse for a gathering is a good one, and we know a whole lot of expats that get an odd homesickness this time of year. Only one thing will help ease the dark-day blues: Cheese, and lots of it, with a healthy dose of vino thrown in. While the goat cheese that announces spring is a little scarce right now, there are plenty of good aged cheese that are perfectly ripe right now.

Another ex-pat friend of ours helped us to discover the joys of Alsatian Charcroute:

A huge pile of homemade sauerkraut topped with unthinkable amounts of roast pork, pork belly, and a vast variety of sausages slathered with a healthy bit of spicy mustard.

It was also a great way to load up on pork products before an expected drought. Where I ventured next there would be a scarcity of bacon:

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday and that this coming year is amazing.

La Défense

A little bit of 6th ave in Manhattan, just outside of Paris in the aire urbaine.

La Défense is the business end of Paris. I recently spend an afternoon wandering around in the canyons. Unlike midtown, the whole main axis is a pedestrian plaza, so it's much quieter than you would expect. The grand arch completes the straight line of monuments called Axe historique that start with the Louvre, the Concord monument, down the Champs Élysées, through the Arc de Triomphe.

It's a little sterile, with malls and mall shops and mall food, and even a giant shop that is described as "The French WalMart".

I did something that I never, ever do...I grabbed a sandwich and a bag of chips at Pret a Manger (I didn't even know they had these in Paris!) and sat on the steps of the grand arch with the working people and had a nice sunshiny lunch.

There's a lot of really big companies out here...there isn't a whole lot of vertical office space in Paris, so they moved the office park way out to the 'burbs.

Towers, glass, metal, abstract sculptures. Just not what you would expect in Paris.