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| notre dame statues |
We made it to Font! We arrived jetlagged in Paris and picked up our car with no problems. Thanks to the trusty GPS we found our way to the campsite near Milley-en-Foret. The GPS is the most wonderful invention ever. I have no idea how we would navigate without it. After we got to the campsite and got established we decided to go into town to buy a crashpad and supplies. There is a carrefour (which is sort of like a walmart) and decathalon (sporting goods store), about 20km from camp. We stumbled our way around in a jetlag fog to buy what we needed for a few days. After getting back to the campsite we realized that we had forgotten to buy any fuel for our campstoves. We made a few extra trips because I-Matthew thought that all propane/butane cylinders were alike. Eventually we fell asleep in our tents with our bodies not sure what time it was, but completely sure we were exhausted.
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| Ectoplasme |
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| the atari arete (Matt's name) |
Our first full day here, we walked from the campsite into the Trois Pignons area of the forest into a group of boulders called 95.2. The boulders here are amazing!! The friction and tecture of the rock is crazy, the landings are all mostly flat and sandy. We quickly learned that just because we can climb a grade at home does not mean you can climb it at font, especially when still in the jet lag fog. So, we've mostly been trying problems from some of the easier marked circuts that look fun and are starting to try a few harder ones as we get more of a feel for how things climb here.
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| sandstone texture |
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| cul de chien area |
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| le petit toit - super fun heel hook traverse |
People have been bouldering at font for much longer than most places in the us and the style is very different here. They made up many circuts of climbs through an area which are maked with colors giving an idea of how hard the circut is and numbers to show where you are on the circut. This is actually marked with painted arrows and numbers right on the boulder. So, we have an idea that a blue circut problem is probably around a V0-V2, and a red circut problem is maybe between V2 and V5, but you don't usually know for sure. Some people seem to just climb the circuts and others try individual problems. The bouldering scene is very different here than in the US. In the US we sometimes feel like we're pretty old for boulderers with most people you see in their 20's or under. Here, you're just as likely to see people in their 40's and 50's usually walking around in their climbing shoes and just as often without a pad as with a pad.
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| how the problems are marked |
The forest and amount of boulders here is absolutely ridiculous. In two days of bouldering, we have explored two areas of Trois pignons which is just one of 5 or 6 main huge areas of font all which have 10-20 areas within them which would take at least a day each to explore let alone actually spending the time to work on a harder problem that you want to get. It's pretty mind boggling.
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| le biblioquet -- they say it's a dog head, we think it's a turtle at least from this angle |
The weather has been a bit rainy the last couple days. We took the train into Paris yesterday while it poured here. It takes about 40 minutes by train to get to Paris and they run every half hour. Very convenient! We made our way to Notre Dame and walked through the main cathedral while mass was going on. The light through the stained glass windows was beautiful and the detail in all of the statues was amazing. With the sermon being given in French and the smell of incense in the air it was quite moving. From there we walked to the Louve where we stayed in the outside plazas then walked into the adjacent park. We might go back to Louve in a couple weeks since entrance is free on the first sunday of the month. The park had beautiful gardens and statues all throughout and was a great place to walk and have a picnic. It's amazing how much art there is outdoors here. If you want to spend a day in Paris and see a lot of statues just walk around for a while and you'll see lots for free! After a little more wandering we realized we were pretty close to the Arc de Triumph. We stood looking at the craziest traffic roundabout I've ever seen and were terribly puzzled how we were supposed to get across into the center to the Arc. I promised Cassie $10 if she made it across the insane roundabout alive, but she declined and we finally figured out that there was an underground passage. We were super lucky to find out that admission to the top was for free that day (still not sure why), so we went up the long spiral staircase for some amazing views of the city.
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| notre dame |
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| light through the stained glass |
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| stained glass |
We had debated on which way the Eiffel tower was from the Arc, and as luck would have it the view from the top easily showed us the way, that is until we spent 5 minutes walking down a spiral staircase inside the Arc. (If there are no flights of stairs in a spiral staircase how do you describe how far you walked?) When we got out we were literally dizzy and it took us a minute to figure out what direction we were pointed.
We walked down a street toward the Eiffel (sounds weird to leave the word "tower" off), but kind silly to leave it on since you know exactly which Eiffel we are talking about. The street we took had expensive looking clothing shops on it, but was basically deserted which was quite odd since only 1 street over was the busiest we had been on in Paris. On the way to the Tower we walked past an photography exhibit and enjoyed being totally puzzled by what is called art. Eventually we arrived at the Tower and decided we were too tired to spend any real time exploring, so we hopped on the metro and headed back to camp. Total cost for the day was $2.00 (4 x .50) for the public bathrooms. Very weird to have to pay to get into the bathroom and even weirder in the metro when the attendant lady says to you in French "go ahead" and she is pointing to the same row of stalls that your wife just walked into and you're thinking "will they arrest me for being some weird pervert if I go into a womans bathroom, or will she think I'm an idiot if I just stand here looking dumb". Tough choices. Luckily they are unisex bathrooms or I might have rang you all up for bail.
On the train home we were completely confused as to what train we were supposed to be on. Even after asking (in english) a couple of guys standing at the doors and they confirmed it was the right train it looked completely different than the one we had gotten on. It's amazing how completely inept you feel in someone else's country. In our heads we know we are reasonably intelligent people, but when you can't speak the language you have to depend on the kindness of strangers. We've found that the French people are quite happy and helpful to point you in the right direction, even while you massacre their language just trying to ask if they speak English. If I have an accent I'm pretty sure its the one you get from a labotomy.
This morning the weather is looking better but it's still wet from yesterday, so we're hoping this afternoon things will be dry enough to climb a bit more. We were waiting to for the tourism office to open to find out where an internet cafe was when we met a nice Indian couple who we chatted with for awhile. He was looking at attending the university here and told us there were free computers that we could use, which is where we are now. We're hoping the weather will cooperate and give us more good climbing days, but we can't complain about a few forced rest days to see Paris and some other sites.
We have more Paris pictures but they are taking for ever to upload so we're going to try later. Here's a few that we were able to upload
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewandcassie/sets/72157627580104407/
and some from bouldering
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewandcassie/sets/72157627580094735/
