Fine and Full - What’s up with Jay and Anastasia

The sound of the police sirens here in Paris is really distinctive, and is to me, one of the many iconic sounds of this city.

The following sound recording captures the sound of a passing motorcade (the main car was a tiny, unmarked, Smart car—that it was a motorcade made no obvious sense to me, unless it maybe was a police escort for a woman about to give birth, on the way to the hospital).

Listen to Paris Sirens

Part of the Paris, week 2 photo set.

Just a quick update: we have some new photos up, check out:

Paris, Week 1 and Paris, long photos (hold your nose on this one).

We bought a six-day museum pass, which gives you access to a lot lot of museums, so we’re trying to squeeze in as much as possible before it expires on Monday. We’ve been trying to go on somewhat off-hours (in the evenings) to miss the crowds.

Bonne nuit! (Tired, as are my feet.)

So the other evening (10/7), we thought we’d hop the Metro over to the Eiffel Tower, and get a nice look at it. We got pretty close, but then, for reasons obviously beyond our comprehension, Jupiter, god of lightning and thunder, decided to stop us short. First there was a terrific downpour, and then the following went on for 30+ minutes:

So, ok big guy, we got the point. Rain, thunder, lightning—very impressive!

Now, we’re still looking forward to getting over to the Eiffel Tower—and getting all the way there, in a few days.

For our three weeks here in Paris, we’re renting a small studio (about 250 square feet) on the 5th floor (4th floor as they’d call it here) in a building from the 1600s. We have views out on other buildings built around the same time here in the 3rd Arrondissement (the Marais area) of Paris. When they were originally built, they were mansions for the aristocrats of the time. This is one of the few neighborhoods in Paris that didn’t get drastically changed in the 1800s, so it’s got a lot of small cobblestone streets and alleys.

The inside of the apartment (photos soon) doesn’t really have much of an older feeling to it, but looking out the windows—you definitey feel like you’re someplace old! And the walls are super thick (i.e. quiet) which is really nice when you’re in a city.

We just posted photos of some highlights from our last two days in Iceland (October 2 & 3). We drove on the Ring Road from the Gauksmyri horse farm (about 30 minutes south of Blondous), to Reykjavik. We lucked out and had a beautiful (but cold) sunny day in Reykjavik for our last day there.

View photos

If you know Nikita (the cat) or Rube (the fish), you know there’s a lot of chillin’ that happens at Fine and Full Manor. Even when we’re not there, of course.

Fortuitously, Ian (Anastasia’s cousin) is chillin’ at Fine and Full Manor now—and so there’s like a power trio thing going on, except, since it’s all chillin’, it’s not really so much a “power” trio, but like a quantum counter spin / looks like you’re going backwards but it’s really so fast it’s time travel thing—as seen is this most excellent picture:

chillin' with the petz

Thanks to Ian for sending the picture!

I just posted the next batch of photos from the last two days:

View photos.

We’re heading out now for a 2-3 hour drive to Reykjavik in the blustery weather (light rain/snow). We’re looking forward to being in a city again!

This is probably part 1 of a longer video about our aforementioned adventure day (yesterday). Please note that some of the facts and observations in this video are later proven to be mere optimism.

We’ve been driving a lot the past few days, and the car has a CD player, but no input jack. We’ve got iPods, but no CDs.

Last night, we remembered to burn a CD with some mp3s, starting from a very small collection that’s on Anastasia’s laptop. This worked out great today, as we had music for our whole drive.

We listened to 4-5 albums, and I thought a couple were particularly nice with today’s scenes (including: oceans / fjords, rivers, river deltas, lakes, ponds, snow covered hills and mountains, farms with and without snow, sheep, cows, horses, birds, dogs, one cat, and a couple dozen people)–all interesting. These were:

“Salvador Kali,” by Sir Richard Bishop

and

“Lost Channels,” by the Great Lake Swimmers

I probably should also include the new Rodrigo y Gabriella album we enjoyed today, too. And, then there were another couple good ones, too. But those two above really stood out to me.

We ended up with a big adventure today, with much of the day driving slowly down a totally remote, unpaved road, in a snow storm. Pictures and video coming soon.

We started from our hotel in Reykjahlid (Hotel Reykjahlid, which is really lovely) on Lake Myvatn (also really lovely), and headed out to get to Husavik via the route 85 864 (edited: route 85 was the nice road we got to later, after 864) where we would see the Dettifoss waterfalls. En route, we also tried to see the lava fields by the Krafla Geothermal Plant—we couldn’t see any bubbling sulfur through the snow, though we saw lots of lava rocks (comparable to the Big Island of Hawaii).

And, anyway, lots of snow and unpaved roads, and then a beautiful drive along the coast of the Arctic Ocean to get to Husavik—and we had some fine pizza (at Salka) and a nice visit to the local baths, and now we’re warm and safe in a room at the Fosshotel Husavik.

More photos and video in a day or so—the next evening we’re sitting around with web access.

It’s getting late here (almost midnight, and only 5pm in Seattle), so I’m just going to post some links to photos I uploaded:

Travel Day

North Iceland (where we are now)

More commentary later; in short we’re having a really good time!

Fine and Full will be back (here) soon – Tune in / same fine time / same full channel.

Hap
py
Ha
lf
Birt
hday
Ja
y!

We had a great time in Palm Springs and at our first time at the Coachella Festival! We saw lots of good bands and had fun with our friends.

Here are some photos from the festival: