Packing for France -- Summer Edition

Holy moly, packing for this most recent trip to France was a challenge for me because I have so few items in my wardrobe that are suitable for the heat of a proper summer. Truth be told, I did a fair amount of shopping here in San Francisco before I left, which is good because I also didn't buy much while traveling this time. Here's a quick rundown of what I took:

Three cardigans and 5 tops. I could've gotten away with taking only 2 cardigans, but I got good use out of all the tops. The 4 jersey ones on the right were all light enough to be able to easily wash in the sink.

One pair of jeans, one pair of shorts (which I had to buy specifically for the trip, since I didn't really own any shorts), one dress, and 2 skirts. The dress (from Athleta, along with the shorts) was also purchased for the trip, and was perfect. I could've worn it every single day.

To keep things stylish even with jeans and t-shirts, I brought along 3 lightweight scarves. Truth be told, at least one of these ended up doubling as a sweat rag. Good thing I brought laundry soap along. I'm a wimpy San Franciscan; I'm not cut out for heat.

Here are the 3 pairs of shoes I brought, along with my clothes all folded and ready to pack (minus my traveling outfit, which you saw in the last post). Note how little space everything takes up; this is a huge advantage of taking multiple lightweight layers instead of any one bulkier piece.

Finally, everything all packed up. The main compartment of the backpack was completely empty for the outward bound trip, which meant I could stuff my purse inside and thus have the allotted 2 carry-on pieces. For the trip back, when I had to check the red bag anyway because it was filled with delicious herbal liqueurs from the south of France, I put the overflow into the backpack and the blue purse became my second carry-on. This is a typical packing strategy for me, as I often bring back exotic liquors which force me to check a bag on the way home.

The purse is also new, and is the ideal travel bag. The fabric is water and stain resistant, the compartments are well organized but not so numerous that I spend 15 minutes zipping and unzipping pockets to find stuff, and the bag itself weighs next to nothing. The color looks very bright here but it's really more of a rich peacock color, which goes with so much of my wardrobe. The bag is by Tumi and was on the pricey side, but well worth it, especially for someone who travels a lot.

Below are a few different outfit combinations; some were worn for my work days in Strasbourg, and the most casual ones were worn in Aix-en-Provence.

 

Of course, I also wore several of the top/scarf combos with the pair of jeans I brought as well. This seems like an awful lot of outfits for a 10-day trip, but in the end it was good because there were several days where the heat forced me to return to the hotel in the afternoon and take a second shower and change. Which, considering the extreme heat wave that the eastern half of the country experienced last week, sounds incredibly foolish in retrospect (the hottest it got was 92F in Aix). Like I said, I'm a wimp when it comes to weather extremes. This is why I usually vacation in the fall.

In the News

Here I am all packed up and ready to go for my recent trip to France. This was my traveling outfit and all my luggage for my 10-day trip. How I planned my wardrobe and managed my bags will be the subject of an upcoming post, but today I wanted to talk about the news.

During the last week, what is probably the biggest scientific breakthrough of our lifetime was announced and predictably, 99.9% of the world hardly took any notice. The concept of the Higgs boson has been kicking around in the physics world for 40 or 50 years now, but was finally proven this week. Now don't ask me to explain to you what it is or what exactly it means; despite what my best friend might think, I'm neither physicist, M.D., geologist, or anything other than a biologist with an emphasis in immunology. Physicists are a whole other breed of scientist and I am certainly not talented in that area, but even to a layperson like me, this is exciting stuff. For me this is huge because as a life scientist, I was used to thinking of physics and chemistry as the study of "inanimate" things, but it's hard to classify something that can impart mass to other particles as inanimate. Even if that was the only amazing thing about it, that in itself sort of rocks my world. Do yourself a favor and find out more about this nifty little particle; it has huge implications for all of our lives, which few among us can probably even begin to fathom yet.

Also in the headlines this week, an aging, egotistical and quite possibly insane actor and his too-young starlet wife have announced that they're splitting; something which also probably could've been accurately predicted 40 or 50 years ago. This will change your life precisely not at all.

Strasbourg and Paris Sights

As promised, here are some photos from the France portion of my trip. I'll start off with a few from Strasbourg.

You can't visit Strasbourg without taking a look at the magnificent cathedral, which is so large and imposing it can be seen for miles around.

 The west side of the cathedral is built in the late Gothic style.

 It's impossible to even fit the whole building into a single frame.

 Here's the other side of the cathedral, which is in the Romanesque style.

 A quaint little square near the cathedral, with lots of the German style timber-framed buildings that are common in Strasbourg. And a giant boulder. I'm guessing it was too much trouble to move it, so they just built around it. That's what I'd do anyway.

The next stop on the trip was Paris, where I was lucky enough to meet up with the fabulous Déjà Pseu of Une Femme d'un Certain Age. This was the second time we happened to both be in Paris at the same time, so I figured it was a sign that we ought to meet. Sadly I did not take pictures, which is actually ok because to me that just means we were enjoying our conversation.

You've all seen pictures of the usual Paris sights before, so I'll share a few of the details that stood out. 

The spectacular interior of the Palais Garnier Opera house, with its beautiful Beaux-Arts detailing. On the left is the grand staircase, and on the right is the foyer.

Inside the theater is a modern ceiling by Marc Chagall, and a bronze and crystal chandelier that weighs an impressive 7 tons.

Here's the only other outfit photo I got while I was traveling.

I love how it looks like this guy is squeezing the fish really hard to make it spit water. Another statue looks like he's playing air guitar with his fish.

Another fish; this one on the Pont Alexandre. Grotesque and beautiful.

Suits of armor on the windows of Les Invalides.

 Incredible craftsmanship on these old cannons; also at Les Invalides.

OK, you've seen this structure before, but I thought it looked pretty cool with its head buried in the fog.

Creepy gargoyles on Notre Dame.

Offsetting the creepiness, thousands of locks on the nearby Love Bridge.

That's it for my travel photos! I hope you enjoyed reliving a little of my trip with me. I'll get back to my regular outfit posting in a couple days.

Lisbon and Surrounds

Today I thought I'd share some photos from my recent trip abroad. I'll keep the explanations brief and mostly let the images speak for themselves.

The first stop was Lisbon:

 This is the Rossio train station; my hostel was located inside the station

 Commercial Square

 A few examples of the beautiful tile work that can be seen all over the city.

 The view of the Tagus river from the Alfama district

 The Castle of São Jorge on the top of the hill

 Inside the castle grounds

Overlooking the city center from atop the Santa Justa lift, shown below:

Which, incidentally, gave me terrible vertigo.

While in Portugal, I took a day trip to Sintra and Cascais:

While in Sintra I toured the Quinta da Regaleira estate:

 The whole place is amazing, but to me the best part was the acres and acres of lush garden filled with tunnels, grottoes, towers, statues, and all sorts of other surprises. Climb a tower and it leads to a hidden path; go down a dark tunnel and come up behind a waterfall; the whole property is designed to keep you exploring one place and then the next without retracing your steps.

 One of the few pictures I had someone take of me. This was out at the coast near Cascais.

I also spent about half a day in the Belém area, which is a short train ride from the Lisbon center:

The Padrão dos Descobrimentos on the left, and Torre de Belém on the right. And yes, that is a bride posing for photos in front of the monument and a mini Golden Gate Bridge spanning the river.

A few views of the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Monastery of the Hieronymites):

 And with that I will leave off, since that's a lot of photo posting for one day. I'll share a few from the France part of the trip in my next post.