Grand-mere est arivee!

Marilyn arrived early this afternoon from Madrid. She had a 13-hour train ride, and a change at the border between Spain and France. Turns out the track gauges in the two countries are different, so only a limited number of trains (with some special adaptations) make a direct run. On the other hand, she got to change to a TGV, so it runs at 160 mph to Paris - the boys are thrilled with the idea of riding one, so we're trying to build that in to our vacation plans.

We are only three stops from the Montparnasse station where she arrived, so we spent the morning at the market (again) and then having a simple lunch. The boys made these great greeting signs for Marilyn - check out the pictures - and we headed over the find her. The train was packed, as the Paris Marathon was just ending and the train we were on starts at Etoile, but we got to the station and negotiated our way to her train. We arrived about a minute before she came down the moving sidewalk from the TGV.

We came back home with no problem, and all took naps. After nice naps and a lovely dinner courtesy of Betsy, we took a walk across the Champs de Mars, past the Eiffel Tower, to take a ride on one of the Bateaux-Mouches, one of the many fleets of boats that give tours up and down the Seine. Of course the battery on the camera hadn't been recharged, so after letting Calvin take 50 pictures of nothing it was pretty much dead. We took a couple of last shots with the dying battery ... enjoy!

Marilyn will probably take the poor deprived darlings to visit some old churches tomorrow while I run some errands and poor Betsy goes to work. We'll keep you posted.