Fontainebleau Gallery Posted

New photo journal posted.

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Hello Florence

What to say about my first experience of Florence? Well, first let me share the brief bus drive through the Tuscan landscape on our way to Florence from Pisa. A lot of movies romanticize Tuscany and show only it's most beautiful spots - and from my brief drive I can say there are lots of them to choose from! I am hoping we will have a day to rent a car so I can see more of the countryside... but I'm not sure if I will be willing to tear myself away from Florence! So far I love it here! It is very busy and bustling, but much cheerier than Paris. It actually reminds me a lot of Venice (Italy, not Beach). There are modern shops situated in historic buildings, there's a flea market where they sell amazing leather goods at reasonable prices, and the coffee!!! We arrived around 10:30, too early for the hotel to have our room ready, so we wandered the city while we waited. We found one of the many little walk up cafes where you enjoy your coffee at the counter. I ordered a cappuccino and Ryan a mocha, and oh my stars! I've been to Italy before, but I don't think I've ever had this excellent of quality of espresso! If I wasn't so sensitive to caffeine, I probably would have ordered five more!

After our little coffee break, we then wandered the streets some more and found... an H&M! Previous readers will know of my obsession with visiting an H&M in every city I find, so when I say I did not leave empty handed, there should be no surprise! To be fair, when we left for Europe, the weather forecast was showing rain everywhere - now it appears we are here in time for a slight heat wave (mid 70s) - so I was really not prepared clothing-wise for these warmer temps, and where better to rectify this problem than H&M? Followed by Zara, of course! :D

For lunch we hit a pizzaria Ryan had eaten at on one of his past trips to Florence - Ryan had a prosciutto pizza and I had a quattro stragione - artichoke, olive, prosciutto, and mushroom. They were pretty big pizzas, but so good we both cleaned our plates, and then got gelato (pistachio for me, chocolate hazelnut for Ryan).

To burn off some calories to make room for dinner later, we walked across the Ponte Vecchio to the Pitti Palace. The grounds here are very lovely and peaceful so we spent the majority of our time here viewing the gardens and the many statues throughout. We did spend a little time in the museum itself, which consisted mostly of china brought over during the Marco Polo era, and formerly used religious paraphernalia, like ivory incense burners and such. There were multiple tour groups being lead through while we were looking around, so we cut our visit short to head back to the hotel to relax before dinner.

Before dinner we went up to the top of our hotel, which has a tower balcony over looking the entire city. Not a bad place to watch the sun set, what with the Duomo and the Campanile and Gallileo's Observatory all clearly recognizable and so close it felt like we could touch them (we could not).

For dinner we visited another restaurant that Ryan had frequented on his past trip here. We ordered the mixed crostini antipasto - I ate the crostini with the mushrooms, tomatoes, white beans, and pâté, and Ryan kept it safe with the prosciutto and salami. I tried to get Ryan to try the pâté - he made a face and placed an infinitesimal amount on his fork and then, just before placing the fork in his mouth, wisely asked, "How is it?" My response, "Pretty good - smells and tastes kinda cat foody." He chose to skip it and I got to keep it to myself. And then I licked my paws and cleaned my face with them. After that, Ryan had ravioli in a tomato and ham sauce and I had truffle risotto. All in all, pretty good eats on our first day in Florence!

The Palazzo Vecchio, aka the old Medici palace, conveniently stays open til midnight on Sunday's, so we decided to visit around 9pm, after the tour groups had been bussed away for the day. Cosimo the First built it for his lovely wife, who said it wasn't grand or opulent enough for her, so poor Cosimo built the Pitti Palace instead and left the Palazzo Vecchio as a museum. It has beautifully painted ceilings as well as ornate furniture throughout. They even have a reliquary in their chapel (they found some bones buried under the altar when renovating, and though I don't think they know whose bones they are, they decided to keep them in the chapel as relics).

By far our favorite room was the cartography room - I never knew Ryan shared my love of staring at old maps and laughing at just how wrong they were. In all seriousness, I actually am really impressed with how much they did know then, considering their only means of transport to foreign lands would be by boat, and without refrigerators, modern bathrooms, or bottled water, that could not be an easy trip.

All in all, a very nice start in our home away from home for the next 4 days!

 

 

Last Day in Fontainebleau

Yesterday was our last day in Fontainebleau. We had the crash pad until 2pm and the rental car til 4, so we made the most of our morning with a few hours of climbing (see Ryan's post) followed by a visit to the chateau. After climbing, we were starving, so we decided to make our last meal in France really count... we got Chinese. I would say it was adequate but we did get a complimentary shot of sake before leaving :D That was not actually our last meal in France - we will be staying one more night in Paris before returning home, so we will worry about getting in a good last meal then!

We got to the chateau too late to actually see the inside, but we were more interested in touring the gardens anyway - it's a very pretty area, with multiple man-made lakes and pools (thank you, Napoleon) that kept the grounds nice and cool. Nice little spot for a picnic on a hot day.

We discovered last night that today was Europe's Daylight Saving switcheroo, so we ended up losing an hour of sleep, which was a bummer because we already had to be up and ready to go at 5am for our taxi to the Orly airport, from which we would be flying to Pisa to Florence. But we managed to get up and catch our flight in a timely manner - and now here we are in Florence!

Some last impressions of Fontainebleau before sharing my first impressions of Tuscany. Fontainebleau is a warm and friendly town, and it is cleaner and just as scenic in a woodsy way than Paris. There is some very good food with a wide variety of options, AND they have a store called Monoprix, which is like a French Target! I feel like there is something else special about Fontainebleau...Oh yeah! Did I mention that the climbing here is amazing? There is something for everyone, and even a coward like me can find fun stuff to get to the top of! The fact that we had beautiful weather the entire time we were here, when we were expecting rain, made it that much harder to leave, but then I got to Florence...With that cliff hanger, I bid you good night!

 

 

Font Photo Journal

I finally got around to posting a photo journal of most of the Fontainebleau climbing shots. I have more but they're stuck on the iPhone for now.

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Or goto the photo journals page.

 

 

Font Day 5: Bois Rond

Weekends in Fontinebleau are known to get a little crowded, so for our last day I decided to head to a less populated area called Bois Rond. This area is known for lowball boulders and high quality traverses, and most importantly-- no crowds. It also sports a very difficult Red circuit (up to 7a), a purportedly high quality Orange circuit, and what the guide book says is a disapointing Blue circuit. This is exactly what I'm looking for on my fifth day on straight.

One thing I should mention about Fontainebleau is that the climbing is divided into major geological areas. Within those areas, clusters of boulders are further defined, and each major cluster of rock usually has between 100 - 200+ different boulder problems! Realize that you're never more than about 20 minute drive from the furthest area (and there are dozens of areas with as many as 5 or 6 sub areas), and you begin to understand just how much bouldering there is in a very small proximity. For the Orange County climber this is like driving to the beach from Fountain Valley or Huntington Beach! An insane amount of climbing right in your backyard.

Font and Food

I realize we have been neglecting the foodies out there with our recent climbing only posts, so here's a brief post to fill you all in on what you've been missing out on. :p

Since we have spent all day climbing pretty hard for the past 4 days, we've been brown bagging our breakfasts and lunches. For dinner, we've been pretty tired, so one night we ate at the little Indian restaurant (for the second time!), then another night we did the Belgian brasserie (for the second time!). However, these meals were definitely not throw always! I'm actually really amazed at how good the Indian restaurant is - we got an appetizer that we had never had at any other Indian restaurant we had been to before. They were essentially ground chicken beignets with some super tasty Indian seasoning. Then I had chicken korma and Ryan had the chicken tikka masala. The flavor was really good, but one thing I have noticed about getting "ethnic" food in other Western countries - they are afraid of spice. It's a shame, but I get it. Not everyone grew up with spicy Mexican food as a staple in their diet. I'm just impressed that France allows other countries to share their food with the French public!

Font Day 4: Éléphant Area

We were told that the area called Elephant was an area not to miss, so on our fourth day we decided to pay a visit. Being sore from the previous day, I keep swearing to Rachel that I won't be climbing much today, and especially not anything hard. She never believes this...

Once again, as soon as we get to the climbing area I'm a kid in a candy store. We warm up on a couple Blue climbs (like 4a-5a-ish) and the then I turn a corner and see sangri-la! Crazy-rad 45-degree overhang walls all over the place. I can barely restrain myself long enough to drag the pad over to the sit starts.