33 is hot!

It's 33 celsius in Paris today, a high for the year and (finally) reminiscent of last July's "petite canicule" (little heat wave). Looks like it's almost exactly the same in Washington, where we'll be arriving Thursday night - and probably departing immediately for Lakeside, Ohio, where it looks to be a slightly milder mid-80s for the next few days.

Updated photo album from Denmark

I've added a bunch of nice pictures taken by our new friend Helmuth to the Denmark album. A couple of them even include me & Mike!

Denmark trip

Around town

Here's a catch-all, including Carter at a birthday party and waiting to start his "class nature," the boys disassembling a dead DVD player, and visiting the Harry Potter train in Paris.

Boys around town

Calvin's sortie

In early June, Calvin's class had a picnic in the square and then a gardening workshop at the Jardin des Tuileries. Here's the proof.

Calvin's sortie

Let me know if you strongly prefer either the slideshow or album-link style of including photos.

Trip to Annecy

Can you tell it's turned into catch-up day? It's a lazy one today, well, at least for me. Betsy's already made breakfast and gone to the market with Calvin, Carter's been working on his summer homeworkbook, and the Tour de France is on. So I'm going through the photos and realizing how far behind I am in posting! Anyway, this trip actually happened in mid-May, when Carter and I went to Annecy in the French Alps. Betsy had gone a few weeks prior with her girlfriends Lisa, Meredith, and Bronwyn, and thought we'd really enjoy it. We rode our bikes along the beautiful lake, took a boat cruise, rented a pedal boat, and explored the lovely town. I'm sure it's lovely during ski season too, but mountain towns in the summer are just wonderful.

Happy Mother's Day (belated)

Here's some photos from our (French) Mother's Day boat ride on the Canal St. Martin. It's a really neat way to see the city, and includes a 1.5-kilometer tunnel from Place Bastille. Enjoy!

Bike tour report, from Bernie the boss

Here's the report from Bernie, our intrepid organizer and the soul of the sister cities bike tour.

SISTERBIKE VII
“IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW FAR YOU ARE GOING, THE BOAT DOESN’T GET ANY BIGGER”

Lots of boats – big ferries, small ferries and two small cruise boats – we cycled across seven Danish islands enroute from Flensburg Germany to Copenhagen. Having been warned that one small cruise boat might not have space for 25 bikes, I approached the dubious captain and assured him we were only going one stop, not his full route all around Tåsinge island – that is what prompted his cute reply. We all managed to squeeze on board!

It was summer on the calendar, but the weather was cool and gray. Despite dire warnings of a full week of rain, we had some sun and some rain, with only one day with a force 7 storm when I chartered a bus for the group rather than cycling.



The group – a little soggy, but enthusiastic!

Good hotels, very good food and a lot of excellent Danish beer….

NOT one of ours….



Two people lost wallets to gangs of pickpocket kids in Copenhagen, and we had one accident – but, thank goodness, she is recovering. No missed trains or ferries, no lost cyclists, and everyone did very well – even the few who were worried about keeping up.



Æroskobing – the biggest town on Æro - about the cutest little island ever!



We had an excellent back-alley tour of Copenhagen, many of us took a boat tour of the city, some went to see Hamlet’s castle in Helsingor, we had a great meal in Tivoli, and a farewell lunch in a brewpub.

As has always been our experience, the camaraderie of the group was the highlight – our ‘rainout’ day when we took the bus was spent in our thatch-roofed hotel with marathon pool games and a great dinner – German-American relations on a person to person level are the basis of our Sister City group, and they were great!

Many of the group are already signed up for 2008 – Magdeburg/Prague.