Here’s the link to the films they show on the beach during the festival … I hope to be there Wednesday night!

http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/2009/programmeBeachCinema.html

Amanda is coming over to get dog-sitting instructions (I will miss my Levi!), and then I have to run to Greenville to Wal-mart to buy some plane supplies and frozen food for Amanda’s stay. I didn’t do as much on here as I wanted to record my research for my trip, but ah well. I am excited, and don’t care if I don’t sleep until the plane leaves at 1:50 p.m. tomorrow from Detroit. We’re heading out around 9 a.m.

Just checked the weather and it’s 54 degrees in Paris, and it’s supposed to rain the whole time we’re there. I don’t care! I’ll post the Cannes Film Festival lineup next, and then I’m off to shop and stay up all night. Good thing I have a lovely itunes mix emanating from my Mac laptop and its fancy Bose speakers, shakin’ up da house. OK I’m getting punchy.

Just a few more days and you’re on your way to France.  How excited are you?  You did say you were also going to Nice, right?  If I remember, there was a great market in Nice where I bought a beautiful cutting board made of olive wood – which of course I never cut on – - or maybe I’m all wrong and it wasn’t Nice, which makes that little story totally irrelevant. Anyway, I hope you have a fabulous time. 

It’s too bad words like “awesome” aren’t reserved for places like Paris, because it is.  You will fall in love with it. 
Have a great time. 

Love,

Mom

Hotel de Latour-Maubourg

Been busy this week finishing grad school classes, dealing with swine flu issues at the hospital (preparing-type stuff, no cases here!), and organizing the house for my dog-sitter to take over next week … Wanted to get some info about the books and references and resources I’m using to plan on here, but will do that later this weekend. In the meantime, here’s the most lovely confirmation e-mail I’ve ever received from a hotel online reservation system!

Thank you for your reservation. The Hotel de Latour-Maubourg is a splendid private mansion of the epoch Napoleon III.  It is ideally situated only a few steps from the Invalides Square , in the triangle of the Eiffel Tower , the Champs Elysées Avenue and the district Saint Germain des Près.

The hotel has been entirely refurbished in a Napoleonic style of gold, colours and silk. The 16 rooms and one Junior Suite, have been individually designed using fine materials and antiques pieces reviving the historical background of the building. Original mouldings, fire places, the stunning spiral staircase and the vaulted cellar have been combined with modern and elegant comfort.

The peaceful inner court yard with terrace and garden allows a view of the parisian neighbourhood.

Paris, France

OK, it may seem morbid but I am incredibly excited about all of the cool graves I can go visit in Paris. The coolest cemeteries in the world with the coolest dead people that ever lived are in Paris … Here are a few I’ve googled around and found that I definitely want to wander for a few hours to find …

Louis Ferdinand Celine (my favorite bizarro French writer)
buried in the cemetery:
Cimetière de Meudon in
Hauts de Seine, France

Voltaire
The Pantheon 
Paris, France

Simone de Beauvoir is buried next to Sartre at the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Colette is interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. (my favorite French female writer)

Alexandre Dumas (no, it’s not pronounced ‘dumbass’ it’s dooo maahhhh’)
Panthéon of Paris Cemetery

Marguerite Duras (2nd favorite female French writer)
Cimetière du Montparnasse. Her tomb is marked simply ‘MD’

Victor Hugo (wrote Les Miserables; awesome book)
Pantheon of Paris Cemetery

Marcel Proust
Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

Moliere
Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris (also where Jim Morrison of The Doors is interred) and Balzac and Sarah Bernhardt and Chopin and Oscar Wilde and Georges Méliès and Edith Piaf and this guy:
Victor Noir — journalist killed by Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte in a dispute over a duel with Paschal Grousset. The tomb, designed byJules Dalou is notable for the realistic portrayal of the dead Noir, and for the fact that he appears to be at least partially sexually aroused, his large penis pushing his part-unbuttoned fly open. In consequence, the sculpture has become a fertility symbol. His lips are kissed, the genital area is rubbed and flowers are left in his hat. In 2005 a fence was erected around his tomb to prevent people rubbing the said area, as this was damaging the sculpture, but it has subsequently been removed.

After looking around some Paris sites, I found this on wikipedia, which is probably where I should’ve started on my hunt for the graves of cool dead writers, poets, musicians, and general characters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Père_Lachaise_Cemetery

I can’t believe I’m so excited to visit a bunch of cemeteries!!

Picture is of Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport …

Just to keep it somewhat factual and helpful to anyone fantasizing about taking a similar trip … Here are some details (with some minutiae left out in case I have stalkers that want to follow me to France) about reservations and whatnot:

We’re (I’ll explain the “we” in another post!) leaving from Detroit (DTW) on Friday, May 8. This date was chosen because 1) I wanted to use two weekends for my 10 days in France so fewer vacation days are shaved off my annual PTO, 2) Thursday, May 7, is my last official day of grad school at MSU for this semester, and 3) The tickets were cheap! My original plan was to be in Paris on Bastille Day, which is July 14 every year. It’s France’s national holiday, marking the day the peasants stormed the Bastille and freed the debtors and continued on to fight the French Revolution and behead the King and his lady. Well, tickets to France in July were in the thousands of dollars, and I found tickets on my current travel dates through U.S. Airways (on travelocity.com) for about $500 round-trip.

On the way there, we have one stop in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a total one-way travel time of 10 hrs. and 50 min. It’ll be about 7 a.m. Paris time when we arrive at Charles De Gaulle Airport, technically on Saturday, May 9.

The trip back will be longer – more like 12 hours – with a stop in Philadelphia. … Oh, ipod, where are you??

My plan was to bring my digital camera and laptop to record everything every day and have a nice little digital diary when I got home, but I’m sorta worried about lugging around my MacBook and possibly losing it or damaging it. The Hotel we’re staying at in Paris has an iMac in every room, so I think it will work out to blog from there each day until we head south to the French Riviera, and then I can still blog from an Internet cafe and catch up on the photo downloading later.

Anyway, so our hotel in Paris is booked, and I’m still searching out funky little places on the ocean near Nice, France, which is our first French Riviera destination via train from Paris. Cannes is about a 20-minute train ride from there, but Nice is the “hub” town.

I’ll list all of the helpful web sites I’ve found to explore hotel options, as well as the great books I’ve been given or purchased that have been a huge help (in figuring out the Eurail system, etc.).