Bonjour!

I am very excited! I'm being sent to Nice, France at the end of May to attend a conference, or more specifically a dinner. I have to schmooze with some European doctors. Since they'll all be in Nice for the conference, my bosses want me to be there and have some face time with them because I'm going to be coordinating this large scale international multicenter clinical study. Work will cover my expenses while I'm in Nice (totally fabulous!) and the flight to France (a whopping $1500!), so I figured, since I fly through Paris, it would be the perfect time to check out The City of Lights. Paris isn't on my current list of places I'm longing to go, but I have always said that I would be 100% willing if someone sent or took me there. I figure this is close enough. I'll only be there for a weekend, so I expect to do a lot of walking, picture snapping, and eating.

Until recently I had been a little stressed about the logistics of lodging. It's at least 100 Euros per night for an inexpensive hotel in the city, and although there are lots of hostels in Paris, they require your credit card number via email to simply check availability (that makes me nervous). Plus I've heard stories of people making hostel 'reservations' only to arrive and be told there's no room for them. Plus I was concerned about leaving my luggage in a shared room with strangers while I toured the city. I know that thousands of people stay in hostels all over the world every year and have great experiences, but for whatever reason, it was making me nervous since I'll be traveling alone (I don't think I'm normally a nervous person). Thankfully the problem has since been solved. Eben's friend Simon visited us from Scotland last week and he set me up with his friend Jess who lives in Paris and is being super generous and letting me stay with her! There's even a chance that she'll be able to show me around a bit. With that worry out of the way, my excitement is building!

Now it's time to decide what exactly I want to see. My list currently consists of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triumph, at least the outside of the Louvre (don't know that I'll have time to explore inside), and eat a croissant or two. Does anyone have any specific suggestions for additional things to see or neighborhoods to visit?

Those Who Save Us

This past month's pick for my book club was Those Who Save Us. It is a rare occasion when everyone in the group likes the book, but the only thing said that could be construed as negative was one reader's dislike for the lack of quotation marks (something which everyone else enjoyed). Jenna (the author) is actually a friend and client of mine, and I've taken care of her wonderfully energetic black lab, Woodrow, a few times.

The book is captivating. I had trouble putting it down. It was to the point where I would grab the book and read a paragraph while a program was loading on my computer at work.

The book is about two women, a mother and her daughter. The story takes place in Nazi Germany during World War Two where Anna is in her late teens/early twenties and Trudy is a baby, and also, fifty years later in Minnesota where Trudy, now a woman, struggles with her roots of which her aging mother refuses to speak. The book travels back and forth in time revealing the horrors of war, but even more poignantly unveiling the lengths a mother will go to protect her child.

I had never read a story told from the perspective of an Aryan during this period and it was a welcome one. I don't feel I can do the story justice to write more synoptic descriptions, so I will just say be prepared to go for an emotional ride with this book.

I definitely recommend this book to everyone (it was recently added to the New York Times Bestsellers List, congrats Jenna)!

Bike Ride

In honor of the beautiful weather today, Eben and I got home early and took our bikes out for a ride.  My bike was my Christmas gift from Eben this past year.  He re-vamped and rebuilt his mother's 13th birthday bike for me.  It had been hanging in their garage for years and was covered in rust without functioning gears or breaks.  He took the whole thing apart, cleaned it, steel-wooled it to remove the rust, and then rebuilt it.  He also added a basket and little yellow horn for me!

We rode along the bike path in Cambridge to Spy Pond.  It was really nice to sit on the sun warmed rocks. Lots of people were out, running, biking, and rollerbladeing.  We journeyed through Arlington Center where I finally found what looks like a really great fabric store (high quality fabric is surprisingly hard to come by in Boston).  We also saw several restaurants we're excited to try in the coming summer months.  It was really nice to get out and enjoy some warm fresh air! 

When we got home, I made us sweet potato orzo with chicken and goat cheese.  It's a recipe I got from this month's issue of Cooking Light.  The sweet potato orzo was one of the few purchases we made while on our Pacific Northwest trip a month ago.  We got it at Pike Place Market in Seattle from a gourmet pasta vendor.  Tonight's dinner was a nice fresh, light change from the (super yummy, but super cheesy) lasagna I've been eating for the last 3 nights.

Science and Murder

I just finished Thunderstruck which Juan gave me for Christmas. I had read The Devil in the White City a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it, so I was excited to read Erik Larson's next similarly constructed non-fiction story.

Larson's technique in each of the books is to follow a notable man of science and his pursuit of change and fame, all the while following a seemingly regular fellow who will ultimately become an infamous murderer (I'm not giving anything away, you get this from reading the back cover).

I had an easier time getting into The Devil in the White City because it was so full of 'pop culture' from just before the turn of the 20th century, but once I got into Thunderstruck, I ended up liking the characters more. Devil in the White City takes place around and during the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, while Thunderstruck was primarily based in England (although there are jaunts across the Atlantic here and there) during the Edwardian era and the development of wireless telegraphy.

With both books, I really enjoyed reading about a time that, although not so long ago, was incredibly different than the world we know. People getting rundown on city streets by trains or horse carriages being a commonplace occurrence. Streets that are so dark at night that you can't see a block in front of you because although there are street lights, they are gas and throw very little light (actually though if you want to experience this, you can walk through Beacon Hill in Boston at night because they have kept the original gas street lamps. Fun for effect, but also can be unsettling on a moonless night). Or being a part of a scientific community where you're expected to reveal every method and secret to everyone before you're sure you've found a solution or explanation. This last part may not mean much to a lot of you, but as someone working in the science field, things do not work this way now!

I really enjoyed both books and learned a lot from them. Larson does a great job turning these historic accounts into cohesive stories that propel you forward wanting to know what and how things happen. Unlike in The Devil in the White City, I truly liked the 'villain' in Thunderstruck, he seemed like a sweet man, and I bet most readers come away feeling badly for him.