Les vacances sont fini

As you know our vacation here in Paris started Thursday with renting a smart forFour and driving to France Miniature, followed by dinner back in Paris at a Reunion Island-ian resto. Friday we went to Le Grand Répertoire: Machines du Spectacle, at the also-spectacular Grand Palais. The Grand Palais was built for the 1900 World's Fair, and sits by the Seine across from Les Invalides, where we stayed when we first arrived. Ask my Mom how to get there, she knows the long way! ;-> The exhibit is remarkable: over 100 machines built by Royal de Luxe for their colossal, absurd French street theater productions over the past twenty-ish years. The boys and Betsy went TWICE last weekend while I was in Brussels, that's how engaging it is. We spent all afternoon as "les machinistes" demonstrated the various things.



You can see pictures of us with the machines, and also watch video highlights from Thursday and Friday here. It's about 3 minutes, so I hope it dowloads reasonably for you.

Friday night the weather turned sour, and the past two days have been low-60s and rainy. Yesterday we went to a movie at Odéon - The Ant Bully in "version originale" to be exact. The movie was cute, and we had the theater to ourselves. After the movie, we split up - Carter and I off to St-Germain-des-Prés and Musée Cluny, Betsy and Calvin to wander and shop (I think - they might've just gone to a bar or taken a nap). We rendez-voused for yummy Japanese near Odéon before heading home. Oh, and I forgot the camera, so you'll have to trust me.



Today we hit the market then returned for the fourth time to the Cité des Sciences, and its Star Wars exhibit and Cité des Enfants childrens' playground. I believe we may finally have gotten those exhibits out of our systems. I remembered the camera ... but left the memory chip out of it so could only take about 5 pictures. Sheesh. Anyway, even though we're on vacation, we made dinner at home and then watched ... Star Wars. Shocking, eh?

Tomorrow Betsy's back to work, but the boys are off school. Tuesday's another random national/Catholic holiday, so why not take Monday off too? It's likely to be a recover-from-vacation day - sleep, grocery store, clean house, chore-y stuff. We'll keep you posted.

Vacation in Paris

We were going to go to Cologne or Amsterdam this weekend, but decided to stay and have a vacation weekend in Paris. We've been promising the boys to do a lot of things that nebulous "sometime soon," so we thought we'd make that soon come now. Today we rented a smart forFour.



We all love the look of the Smart cars, and thought for a while we might pick up a forFour to bring home (the boys still think we might, so don't tell them). Turns out the forFour has stopped production, but the forTwo is coming to the US soon, if you're wondering. Anyway, since we only know the trains in Paris, Betsy got lost, and well, watch and see.



Anyway, we drove out to the 'burbs to France Miniature. Yes, really. Yes, it was as cheesy as it sounds. But, I have to admit, it was engagingly hilarious. We spent probably 5-6 hours at the place, checking out all 120 models of French sites, located on a plot of land shaped like France, complete with the major rivers, mountains, and trains. Here are a couple of pictures and I'll try to get the movies up tomorrow, day 2 of our Paris vacation.

Our apartment

Our apartment, furnished

Aug 9, 2006 - 33 Photos

(click picture above or link here)

We realized with the recent spate of welcome visitors that we hadn't really described very well what our apartment is like today, furnished. While we continue to decorate, pick up odds and ends of furniture, and of course wreck the place with our daily lives, it's in close enough to final form that we've taken some pictures to show you what it's like.

In our 95 square meters (right at 1000 square feet), we have 9 rooms, plus a hallway. That counts the foyer and hallway as one. Off of the foyer to the left is the kitchen, straight is the hallway, and to the right is the dining room. On the right side of the hallway past the dining room is the living room (connected by a large opening to the dining room), then the office/guestroom/playroom, which has its own door back to the hallway. On the left side of the hallway is the WC, then the salle de bain or sink/shower room. Trust me, when you only have "one bathroom," the difference between one and two halfs is an important one. At the end of the hallway is the boys' bedroom, and to the right of it is ours.

So come visit!

P.S. These pictures are the first I've posted using Picasa Web Albums, from Google. Let me know if it's better than the .mac way I've been using.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Michael

Just to clear up the confusion, it was our friend Mike who visited a week ago, not my brother Michael. August 1st is Michael's 24th birthday. We wish we could be in Nashville (or he could be in Paris!) to celebrate, but in lieu, here are the signs the boys made for him.

(I SWEAR he knows it's Michael, not my sister Michelle, who's having a birthday. He got tripped up by the French spelling and I convinced him to leave it as-is.)

Scroll down if you haven't read the blog for a while, I've posted a few things the past few days.

Boys' day out

Carter and Calvin are both attending "centres de loisirs d'ete" (summer camp) at the nearby public schools. They actually share a building and a partitioned courtyard playground. That's the building in the pictures above.

The environment's pretty much all French, though many of the animateurs (or teachers and helpers) speak some English. The boys have each had some tough days, when they haven't understood what's going on, or when they've thought their new friends were teasing them. But in general, they've been eager to try all these new things, and typically come home both exhausted and eager to tell us about their days. I'll try to get them to record some of their enthusiasm and we'll post it for you.

They offer an amazing range of activities. A typical day they'll have their choice of outings to a park or swimming pool, or crafts and games and such at the school. Today both boys chose the outings, since it was a perfect 75 degree summer (or spring in DC) day. Carter's school went to Tremblay, just outside the city. Calvin's went to Parc de Bercy, on the site of converted wine depots in the 12th Arrondissement on the other side of town.

Oh, and Carter lost another tooth today, his second in about a week.

AF still on sale

Air France's big summer/fall sale ended July 28th, but they have some August flights on sale through August 6. They claim round trips to Paris $750 from Washington, $740 from Houston, and an amazing $550 from New York. Departures between August 22 and September 10. Signed, your friendly travel agent.

Noontime update

Let's try something new: a quick post of the most recent happenings. I'll get caught up on the bigger stuff from July, but want to let you know a little more of our day-to-day.

Thursday and Friday, Carter stayed home from camp with me. Thursday, he cashed in his "half-birthday kid's choice day" card and we went to the Paris Plages (beach) and the beach volleyball tournament. Friday, he stayed home because he had a French lesson in the afternoon, and I didn't realize his whole school was going on an outing. We caught some more volleyball, finished his homework, went to the market, I got my hair cut, he had his lesson, you know, that kind of prosaic day. Friday night we went to dinner at the apartment of our friends Michael, Monica, Tuli, and Coli (not sure if I spelled the girls' names right). It was a lovely evening, and with the heat finally broken we were all happier than the previous few days.

Saturday (yesterday) morning the boys slept 'til 9:30 or so, and we slept a bit longer. We made a big waffle brunch with fresh strawberry/smallredfrenchberry sauce. Afterward, Betsy and Calvin went to the grocery while Carter and I did ... something, I forget now. After lunch we caught the men's semis and women's final at the beach volleyball tournament. It's one of the four grand-slam tournaments on the pro circuit. The women's final was the defending Olympic champs from the US, Walsh and May, against a Brazilian team. The Brazilian's topped them in three games, 15-13 in the third. Quite exciting, and then we ran into our friends who run Fat Tire tours on the way out. That kind of thing makes us feel like we really are part of the neighborhood. Last night we took it easy, with a yummy pasta and brie dinner before the boys sacked out.

This morning we slept in a bit again, then after breakfast Betsy and Carter went to the market while I cut Calvin's hair and cleaned up the apartment. Our friends Tom and Carol, with sons Theo and Sandy, are coming for lunch, along with our friend Kevin. We were going to picnic but it's a bit threatening, so we'll probably stay here at least to eat. Later, we may catch the men's final, or just chill, who knows.

Next weekend I'm going to go to Brussels with Kevin, then the following weekend the boys and we are probably going to Amsterdam. Fares are still high to here from the US, but cheaper to Amsterdam, so if you're thinking of heading there let us know. Fares for the fall look like they're starting to drop, although the big Air France sale just ended. I hope we see you soon.