I figured since we were so close to Ireland (well, relatively close compared to the States), St. Patrick's Day would be celebrated in France. To my disappointment, it is barely celebrated here. Even the Irish bars in Montpelllier's neighborhood didn't have any Guinness or Killian's specials. It was really surprising. I guess I am used to the American celebration. People didn't really wear green, there were no decorations anywhere and there was only one real event, that I was aware of. Some of the bars had live Irish music but there were cover charges and it started late. :(
At the biggest English bookstore here, called "Book in Bar", they had a 30 minute presentation from a real live Irish man (who incidentally was a singer in an Irish band). He told us a lot about the history of St. Patrick, the celebration in Ireland and we got to see Gaelic written out. We learned the Gaelic alphabet, which was really interesting. In Ireland, St. Patrick's Day is a national holiday and nothing is really open. St. Patrick's Day is now a week-long celebration in Ireland and there are tons of bands that perform in parades and on St. Patrick's Day night they have fireworks!
Oh, I also learned that the alcohol content in beer in Ireland is much lower than it is in France. Which explains why people say they can drink 10 pints and still be able to stand. If you did that here, you might not be so strong. I can't remember the exact percentage but I know in Ireland it was like 2-3% alcohol and here it's like 6-8% alcohol.
After the little presentation (complete with a little handout), there was a free beer tasting at the Book in Bar (they are also a cafe, by the way). We got to have some Guinness and Killian's. Killian's tasted a bit different here than I am used to in the US. I was told that it's brewed differently and in the US, we have a lot more carbonation in beer in general in comparison. After the presentation and free beer tasting, we just headed over to my place and sat on my back porch and drank more Irish and German beers and enjoyed the nice weather that is finally starting to present itself here in Southern France.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Rude awakenings and Symphonic sounds
On Thursday of last week, my landlord's mother stayed overnight with us, in addition to their daughter who is actually moving in on April 1st to my great sarcastic delight. Her mother stayed with us due to some sort of spell she experienced at home. She has advanced Alzheimer's and some dementia. Anyway, they told me that she was spending the night and that she would be going back to her own house where she rambles around alone, apparently, the next morning. On Friday morning at about 5:30AM, I was awakened by my door being opened and my light being turned on. Apparently, grandma was ready to go and was looking for Léa (her granddaughter who was supposed to take her home that morning). Needless to say, Léa was not in my room and I was a bit confused as to what was going on. I told her Léa wasn't in here and she left. At about 6:15AM, my door was again opened and my light was turned on. Léa still wasn't in my room and grandma left me alone. When I did actually get up, after returning from the bathroom, grandma was just standing in my room asking where Léa was. I had no idea where she was and no one was actually in the house which was weird because who would leave grandma alone and especially, leave her alone with me, who doesn't know her? After locking my door so I could change in peace (yes, she tried to get in again while I was changing), I explained that I didn't know where anyone was but I was sure they would be back shortly and I had to go to work. I did actually lock my bedroom door before leaving because I didn't want grandma stumbling into my room and falling on my computer or anything.
Meanwhile, apparently later that morning, Léa came to get grandma and she was nowhere to be found in the house. Apparently, she had just left the house in her housedress and slippers and started wandering around the neighborhood. Several blocks away, a kind neighbor found grandma and took her into her house while calling the police to tell them that she had found this confused old woman wandering the streets. I guess Léa called the police too and eventually Léa and grandma were reunited. That's what they get for leaving poor grandma all alone in an unfamiliar place. I am glad that grandma was found safe and unhurt but how irresponsible of my landlords and their daughter, right?
Moving on, this weekend was full of symphony. Montpellier was host to the Quebec orchestra who had 4 free concerts that Dawn and I greedily took advantage of on Friday, Saturday and 2 on Sunday. Friday night's concert was a modern rock interpretation type thing. The first half was all music set to conincide with a crazy video montage. There were 4 pieces in the first half and most of them were not so great actually. I actually didn't pay too much attention to the music because I was so busy watching the crazy trippy video montages. There were a lot of blinking flashes and honestly, I am surprised people didn't go into epileptic seizures. Dawn said it was giving her a headache. One of the most notable videos was this artsy video of a girl. It was mostly just a closeup of her face. Sometimes she blinked, sometimes she smiled, one time she pulled her hair back, but mostly she just stared at the camera. And they set music to that!! The last video montage interested me the most but that's because I am a fan of horror movies. There were a bunch of flashes of red & black images of a disturbing nature. They were all close-ups of eyes blinking or teeth snarling or scary faces. I liked it!
And now for the second half.... where to begin? Well, it was definitely not at all the same as the first half. For one thing, the second half had no video. It also involved what they considered "singing". If only the people in the 2 pieces could actually sing. The first piece of the 2nd half was supposed to be in English (though I really only understood about 5 words in the whole 20 minute piece). There was one guy singing with the orchestra backing him up with music. Unfortunately for this guy, the music was about 2 octaves below his range so the whole song sounded forced and unintelligible. Besides a normal orchestra collection, they also used a wide array of random instruments/noise-making devices including crumpling newspaper, a kazoo, popping brown paper bags and those tube things you swing over your head that make a faint "woo" noise. At least the diversity in the instruments detracted from the fact that the singer was clearly out of his element and he had these crazy body movements he was using in order to poorly convey his message/lyrics.
The second piece was simply ridiculous. The singer was also the conductor. The singer was a soprano with a great range but besides that, she was not much to speak of. First of all, her "costume" was completely inappropriate. She was easily in her late 40's yet wearing these knee-high patent leather black boots with ridiculous heels that she couldn't really walk in. Her skirt was the length of a wide belt and that too was black patent leather covering hideous fishnet stockings. Her bodice, made of course of black patent leather, wasn't any better and it was topped by a long black jacket (of different material so it really looked out of place). At one point in the "song", she decided to rip off the jacket and throw it to the ground. Ridiculous and completely unnecessary! I say "song" because I don't think I actually heard any intelligible words. Dawn claims to have heard some but I'm not convinced. I felt like I watched a 15 minute piece where all the woman did was sing scales. She was also conducting the orchestra that was set up to her right so every few seconds she would make some random hand movement that I am supposing was conducting. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy her performance and yet she came out to bow 4 times. Good God!
Saturday night was definitely better...well, the 2nd half was. A funny thing happened to us while waiting for the symphony to begin. We were sitting in a box seat on the balcony (which was an amazing seat!). The crazy high-strung old woman usher felt the need to slam the door behind us when we got in and again slam the door on Dawn's face twice while we were trying to get out to use the facilities before the show. For whatever reason, you couldn't leave the door open to the box at any time. Which is fine and we could understand. But then when we tried to get out, she was standing at the door and closed it right behind me as I was exiting, meaning that she closed the door on Dawn's face. Then she had the audacity to ask us where we were going. I was like, uh, I don't need to explain myself to you at all. Let me pass. It was really ridiculous and she definitely had some sort of power trip for no reason.
After settling into our box seat (there were 4 of us, Junko, Dawn, Cathy and I), these 2 women came in and sat behind us. The box is big enough for 6. Meanwhile, they asked if their conductor friend from the 1st half would be able to sit in the front when he came at intermission. We said ok but it seemed a bit odd. About 3 minutes later, they had the audacity to ask to see our tickets because apparently, they were promised to sit in the front of the box and figured we had just snuck in. Now, remember that this was a free performance and it was first come, first serve tickets. You just had to go to the box office and say how many tickets you needed and at random, you got a spot. Apparently, the box office printed duplicates because we had the same tickets as these women. They left in a huff because we weren't going to leave the front of the box. And why should we? We were there long before them. Then! About a minute before the performance began, 4 people piled into our box and brang chairs with them. They sat in the very back of the box and surely wanted to move forward but we weren't about to move so they just complained behind us, thinking we didn't understand them since we were speaking English. Fools! Incidentally, they also felt the need to discuss the show or whatever on occasion during the perfomance of the piece. Real considerate, right?
The first 2 pieces in the first half were lifeless. I felt like they kept building up and building up and nothing ever came from the symphony. The 2nd piece of the first half felt like a soundtrack for a movie. Someone's running through the forest and then BAM! Something jumps out. They continue running through the forest and they all meet up. It was really weird and didn't actually come to an end. It just sort of stopped without any kind of finale. Very disappointing!
The 2nd half was great and, in my opinion, the best we saw all weekend. It was all percussion and wonderful. There were all sorts of drums, gongs, cymbals, etc. on the stage and very, very entertaining. There was even a female percussionist which made me happy to see. The pieces were upbeat, toe-tapping and great!
Sunday involved 2 performances. The first performance at 10:45AM was a string quartet. Now 4 of the 5 pieces were contemporary and the other piece was Beethoven. The contemporary pieces were really bad! I mean, really bad! The first one sounded like a screaming cat and the same chord for 12 minutes. We were super close to the stage and I kept watching their music, praying for them to get to the end of the piece. It couldn't end soon enough. The other pieces were about as bad. The Beethoven piece was great and it proved that his work is still wonderful and especially when put up against contemporary crap!
The 2nd performance on Sunday evening was a bit lopsided. The first piece was an orchestral piece written for a guitar soloist. That piece was first and fantastic. The guitarist was really talented and the piece was well-written to show off his talent. There were a couple full orchestra pieces that were pretty flat and lifeless. I found myself watching my watch, timing out how much longer the piece was. The final piece was an orchestral piece written for a violin soloist. The violinist was quite talented as well and the piece was well-written to display her talent as well. In general, I didn't think the pieces were all that good but the soloists, in their own respective performances, did a great job in trying to make the piece more interesting and lively.
Your British word lesson of the day: sore head = headache In a sentence: This video is giving me a sore head.
Meanwhile, apparently later that morning, Léa came to get grandma and she was nowhere to be found in the house. Apparently, she had just left the house in her housedress and slippers and started wandering around the neighborhood. Several blocks away, a kind neighbor found grandma and took her into her house while calling the police to tell them that she had found this confused old woman wandering the streets. I guess Léa called the police too and eventually Léa and grandma were reunited. That's what they get for leaving poor grandma all alone in an unfamiliar place. I am glad that grandma was found safe and unhurt but how irresponsible of my landlords and their daughter, right?
Moving on, this weekend was full of symphony. Montpellier was host to the Quebec orchestra who had 4 free concerts that Dawn and I greedily took advantage of on Friday, Saturday and 2 on Sunday. Friday night's concert was a modern rock interpretation type thing. The first half was all music set to conincide with a crazy video montage. There were 4 pieces in the first half and most of them were not so great actually. I actually didn't pay too much attention to the music because I was so busy watching the crazy trippy video montages. There were a lot of blinking flashes and honestly, I am surprised people didn't go into epileptic seizures. Dawn said it was giving her a headache. One of the most notable videos was this artsy video of a girl. It was mostly just a closeup of her face. Sometimes she blinked, sometimes she smiled, one time she pulled her hair back, but mostly she just stared at the camera. And they set music to that!! The last video montage interested me the most but that's because I am a fan of horror movies. There were a bunch of flashes of red & black images of a disturbing nature. They were all close-ups of eyes blinking or teeth snarling or scary faces. I liked it!
And now for the second half.... where to begin? Well, it was definitely not at all the same as the first half. For one thing, the second half had no video. It also involved what they considered "singing". If only the people in the 2 pieces could actually sing. The first piece of the 2nd half was supposed to be in English (though I really only understood about 5 words in the whole 20 minute piece). There was one guy singing with the orchestra backing him up with music. Unfortunately for this guy, the music was about 2 octaves below his range so the whole song sounded forced and unintelligible. Besides a normal orchestra collection, they also used a wide array of random instruments/noise-making devices including crumpling newspaper, a kazoo, popping brown paper bags and those tube things you swing over your head that make a faint "woo" noise. At least the diversity in the instruments detracted from the fact that the singer was clearly out of his element and he had these crazy body movements he was using in order to poorly convey his message/lyrics.
The second piece was simply ridiculous. The singer was also the conductor. The singer was a soprano with a great range but besides that, she was not much to speak of. First of all, her "costume" was completely inappropriate. She was easily in her late 40's yet wearing these knee-high patent leather black boots with ridiculous heels that she couldn't really walk in. Her skirt was the length of a wide belt and that too was black patent leather covering hideous fishnet stockings. Her bodice, made of course of black patent leather, wasn't any better and it was topped by a long black jacket (of different material so it really looked out of place). At one point in the "song", she decided to rip off the jacket and throw it to the ground. Ridiculous and completely unnecessary! I say "song" because I don't think I actually heard any intelligible words. Dawn claims to have heard some but I'm not convinced. I felt like I watched a 15 minute piece where all the woman did was sing scales. She was also conducting the orchestra that was set up to her right so every few seconds she would make some random hand movement that I am supposing was conducting. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy her performance and yet she came out to bow 4 times. Good God!
Saturday night was definitely better...well, the 2nd half was. A funny thing happened to us while waiting for the symphony to begin. We were sitting in a box seat on the balcony (which was an amazing seat!). The crazy high-strung old woman usher felt the need to slam the door behind us when we got in and again slam the door on Dawn's face twice while we were trying to get out to use the facilities before the show. For whatever reason, you couldn't leave the door open to the box at any time. Which is fine and we could understand. But then when we tried to get out, she was standing at the door and closed it right behind me as I was exiting, meaning that she closed the door on Dawn's face. Then she had the audacity to ask us where we were going. I was like, uh, I don't need to explain myself to you at all. Let me pass. It was really ridiculous and she definitely had some sort of power trip for no reason.
After settling into our box seat (there were 4 of us, Junko, Dawn, Cathy and I), these 2 women came in and sat behind us. The box is big enough for 6. Meanwhile, they asked if their conductor friend from the 1st half would be able to sit in the front when he came at intermission. We said ok but it seemed a bit odd. About 3 minutes later, they had the audacity to ask to see our tickets because apparently, they were promised to sit in the front of the box and figured we had just snuck in. Now, remember that this was a free performance and it was first come, first serve tickets. You just had to go to the box office and say how many tickets you needed and at random, you got a spot. Apparently, the box office printed duplicates because we had the same tickets as these women. They left in a huff because we weren't going to leave the front of the box. And why should we? We were there long before them. Then! About a minute before the performance began, 4 people piled into our box and brang chairs with them. They sat in the very back of the box and surely wanted to move forward but we weren't about to move so they just complained behind us, thinking we didn't understand them since we were speaking English. Fools! Incidentally, they also felt the need to discuss the show or whatever on occasion during the perfomance of the piece. Real considerate, right?
The first 2 pieces in the first half were lifeless. I felt like they kept building up and building up and nothing ever came from the symphony. The 2nd piece of the first half felt like a soundtrack for a movie. Someone's running through the forest and then BAM! Something jumps out. They continue running through the forest and they all meet up. It was really weird and didn't actually come to an end. It just sort of stopped without any kind of finale. Very disappointing!
The 2nd half was great and, in my opinion, the best we saw all weekend. It was all percussion and wonderful. There were all sorts of drums, gongs, cymbals, etc. on the stage and very, very entertaining. There was even a female percussionist which made me happy to see. The pieces were upbeat, toe-tapping and great!
Sunday involved 2 performances. The first performance at 10:45AM was a string quartet. Now 4 of the 5 pieces were contemporary and the other piece was Beethoven. The contemporary pieces were really bad! I mean, really bad! The first one sounded like a screaming cat and the same chord for 12 minutes. We were super close to the stage and I kept watching their music, praying for them to get to the end of the piece. It couldn't end soon enough. The other pieces were about as bad. The Beethoven piece was great and it proved that his work is still wonderful and especially when put up against contemporary crap!
The 2nd performance on Sunday evening was a bit lopsided. The first piece was an orchestral piece written for a guitar soloist. That piece was first and fantastic. The guitarist was really talented and the piece was well-written to show off his talent. There were a couple full orchestra pieces that were pretty flat and lifeless. I found myself watching my watch, timing out how much longer the piece was. The final piece was an orchestral piece written for a violin soloist. The violinist was quite talented as well and the piece was well-written to display her talent as well. In general, I didn't think the pieces were all that good but the soloists, in their own respective performances, did a great job in trying to make the piece more interesting and lively.
Your British word lesson of the day: sore head = headache In a sentence: This video is giving me a sore head.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Day tripping: Perpignan
Today was another continuation in the day tripping adventures. Cathy, Dawn and I enjoyed the great weather and sunshine (not to mention occasional 30 mph winds) in Perpignan. It's about a 2-hour train ride west of Montpellier, near the Spain border. Perpignan is the capital of the Catalan region. The Catalan language is, from my best estimation, a form of Spanish with French snippets. The pretty interesting thing about being in Perpignan was the fact that most street signs were in French and Catalan (which I mistook for Spanish for awhile until I realized that the word for street was not correctly written if it was Spanish).We walked all over the city and really saw the majority of this great city rich in history and medieval-ness. :) We first visited the Casa Pairal which was a really great tower looking over the city and originally one of the city's gates and then a prison. Drinking a coffee under this arch was really amazing.
After that, we went to Cathedrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste (we weren't allowed to take pictures inside) which was under a lot of repair and restauration. After the cathedral, we tried to go into the Campo Santo, which is the only cloister cemetery in France. For whatever reason, everything was locked up even though they were supposed to be open so we just took a couple pictures though the gates.Then we went to the Tourism Office to see if there were any cool things going on in the city. Nothing too exciting actually. We then headed to the Casa Xanxo. According to the city map/tourism info, this was supposed to be really cool with carvings of the 7 deadly sins on the outside of the house and a DO NOT MISS patio where there was a 3-D map of Perpignan. I can't tell you how disappointing and lame this Casa was. The 7 deadly sin carvings were pretty worn away and almost impossible to really make out since they were really far from the street level view. The 3-D map of Perpignan looked like a train set that had been built in about 1970. Bless the 2 women who wokred there that were overjoyed to have some people to talk to though. Apparently, according to one of the women at this Casa, next month they are decorating all the fountains in the city with flowers and there will be a fanfare following the mayor around as he speaks about the history of each fountain.
After the Casa, we went to lunch and had some pizza (Flamenkuche to be specific which are like really thin crust pizzas made with a cream sauce without tomatoes). Dawn had muscles and fries. :) We then headed to the Palais des rois de Mallorca (Palace of the Kings of Mallorca). This was most definitely the highlight of our day. We got to see amazing views of the city and even paid 2 euros to walk around inside this castle type building. It was built in 1276 and a great example of Gothic architecture. Though the inside of the building was a little lack luster (no furniture to really speak of, just rooms), we went to the very top of one of the towers as you can see below. It was SUPER windy but fun anyway.
Inside one part of the Palace, there was a huge exhibition on different religions popular in the area at various times in its history. Since we weren't in the mood for reading for 2 hours, we kind of just breezed through all the artifacts but they did have a big section on Judaism and I saw some Torah replicas even. Ooh!Anyway, the ride home on the train was most entertaining as we were playing Uno the entire way and disrupting all the people around us. It was great fun.
Here's a link to all the pictures if you are interested:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jkimpfbeck/Perpignan#
Your British word lesson of the day: dummy = slang for pacifier. In a sentence: I think that dummy is cute. You should get it for your nephews.
Quotable Quotes:
Cathy on seeing a sign on a window: 25 Euros a day? I don't care what it is. I'll take it! (It was a sign for car rental)
Cathy on our walk into downtown from the train station: I wanna see something pretty. Not this crap. I've been here for 5 minutes.
By the way, apparently Perpignan considers their train station to be the center of the world. That's what the tourism map says. Perpignan train station : The Center of the World. Here's a picture of it. You be the judge.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Faust
On Sunday, March 1, Dawn and I saw another Opera here in Montpellier. Faust was really great! There have been a lot of articles on this performance in the Montpellier Plus (the local newspaper) actually. After reading the synopsis, I was really excited to see the French incarnation. The show was 4 acts with one intermission. The whole setup was really interesting. The characters were dressed in 50's rock and roll style with very bright colors. There was a huge stage with walls that moved on and off. A huge long couch that was used all the time to wheel people in and out. The lighting was impressive. There was a lot of symbolic random dancing throughout the show as well.
The beginning was really frustrating because they had a scrim in front of the stage to create great shadow looks but it was lit on the side so you could barely see what was happening and I couldn't see anything! I was so frustrated for those 10 minutes of overture and action. Though we couldn't really see the action of the beginning, the devil character was really great! His 2 little cronies wore super tight red spandex bodysuits and had tails. They were really silly since one of them was kinda fat and his belly was really ridiculous. The devil character himself had horns and everything and a painted red face.
This show was really, really symbolic. It was difficult to really follow what was happening in general. Thankfully I read the synopsis beforehand because the show was laced with so much seemingly random imagery that I had a hard time actually understanding the plot. Basically, the guy who sold his soul to the devil to regain his youth fell in love with a woman who at first wanted to be with him. She seemed really interested but she wanted to wait until the next day to either consumate or declare her love for him. It was a little weird. Then at the end of the first act, I guess the guy didn't want to wait the one day and raped/kissed this girl. We guessed it was rape because the 2nd act opened with her being pregnant.
Then she said she was in love with the guy even though she was pregnant and seemingly confused. She ended up going to jail, we think, because it was very symbolic and a bit confusing. There was this really odd dance number in the middle of this act where the entire company came out and danced. The company was huge. I am guessing there were about 80 people in the cast. I think the dance number was showing the people of the city's reaction to the devil in the city or the death of the pregnant woman's brother. Like I said, everything was a little confusing. In jail, the woman gave birth and killed her child in the same instant (that was interesting staging since she pulled a plastic baby doll from under her shirt and stabbed it. Then attached it to a hanging column of plastic babies). The 4th act was the most interesting and confusing.
The 4th act was the girl going to hell and the devil arriving with his cronies. Now I wish I had watched more of what was actually happening but there was a really distracting archbishop type character all the way upstage. This archbishop spent almost the entire 4th act painting with a paintbrush attached to a long pole. He was painting on a back wall that was hanging from the fly space. The first wall/panel he painted an upside down red cross. Then that was pulled up into the fly space. The second wall/panel he painted was this weird drawing/sketch of a devil that turned into a woman. It was really, really impressive and confusing. The third wall/panel was a guillotine. What I did see of the 4th act was a random dance number showing that they were in hell with a bunch of scantily clad girls who decided that topless was the way to go for some of the erotic dancing. At some point of the final act, the guy joined the girl in hell but I couldn't figure out why he was there and what he was trying to accomplish because he never got with the girl. At the very end of the show, I guess the woman went to heaven (we're not sure how or why) because the show ended with a very bright white light on the back wall.
There was a couple of random female dancers that would randomly dance across the stage at random intervals in different outfits. It was really weird and Dawn and I looked at each other a couple times when that happened. I guess I wasn't the only confused person there. A lot of the write-ups in the newspaper are people criticizing the staging and director choices. Not that the show is bad, just that many people didn't like how it was presented (costume choices, design choices, general staging choices). I really enjoyed it, even if I was a little confused.
Monday, March 2, 2009
The 2nd trip to London
For Mom's final days in Europe, we hopped back over to London to spend the night since she was flying out of London on Saturday, the 21st. Since we were only there for a day, we just ran around the city trying to accomplish that which we did not while there the first time. Most notably visiting Buckingham Palace. A few pictures below.
Unfortunately, on the day we arrived there was no changing of the guard so we didn't get to see that. However, we did get to see a cool horse-drawn carriage go in and out of the gates. They picked up some guy inside the gates (no one famous that we could tell) and they went for a little ride. Other than that, there's some cool gardens/grounds to see around the castle but we didn't really walk around in there. Mom really wanted to see the traditional guards who weren't there.
Thankfully, we ran into an "official" guard along the way from the palace. Mom was overjoyed.
After seeing Buckingham Palace, we headed over to Picadilly Circus where the majority of the theare in London can be found, as I mentioned before. In an effort to be rid of me for a few hours, Mom graciously purchased me a ticket to see Chicago. It was AMAZING. The Bob Fosse choreography alone was worth the time. I sat in an amazing seat since we bought the ticket from a street vendor who specialized in half price tickets. I was in the orchestra and pretty close to the stage. The women who played Velma and Roxie weren't all the spectacular but all the other actors were wonderful and very talented. I was so excited to see these numbers performed live.After the show, I met back up with Mom who spent the afternoon wandering around being a tourist and taking pictures. We decided on a traditional pub dinner and we were served by the most British girl ever. She definitely used to be a barmaid turned server. But she was pleasant. Mom had fish and chips again with an ale and I had sausages and potatoes with an ale. It was a wonderful way to end our trip in London. Our hotel room was decent enough though it had the tiniest bathroom with a shower you have ever seen. If airplanes had showers with bathrooms inside, our hotel was the proof. Needless to say, we both banged our head and various body parts while trying to shower. It was entertaining, at least. We got a "traditional" English breakfast from our hotel as well. It was called "traditional". I would call it a hard-boiled egg, toast, tea and coffee. Oh well. Mom flew home Saturday morning and I flew back to Marseille to spend another night with Laurent and the family before finally returning home on Sunday night via the ever exciting train.
I had a wonderful time with my mom being a tourist and seeing so much more of cities I have already visited and many that I had not. I'm so grateful my mom was able to visit me and I won't forget this trip.
Here are all the pictures from this trip if you are interested:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jkimpfbeck/LondonWithMomNumber2#
Mom in Paris
Our second day in Paris was devoted to visiting Versailles castle and seeing Laurent's parents for dinner. Versailles castle is where Louis IVX, XV and XVI lived along with Marie Antoinette as well. It's about an hour outside of Paris by train.
The inside of the castle is amazing as well but the pictures are kind of dark so I'm not posting any of those here. The gardens are beautiful as well but the weather was a bit overcast so they weren't as impressive. I guess they had turned off the fountains because it was still winter but trust me; the castle and the grounds/gardens, along with the fountains, are amazing. After our visit to Versailles and touristy shopping, we were picked up by Laurent's parents and went to their house for dinner.
Here is Mom and Laurent's mom having a great time after dinner. The food was scrumptious, the champagne was plentiful and the cheese was new and interesting. It was a wonderful evening and I hadn't seen Laurent's parents since I lived in France 10 years ago, so it was great to visit with them again. Laurent's mom is much like my grandmother who passed away and both my mom and I really noticed a lot of similarities. It was great to see them! We got to take a cab back to our hotel in Paris, which was fun since I rarely ride in cabs in the first place. The cab driver got a little lost leaving the suburb, Bievres, where Laurent's parents live. That was entertaining since we definitely couldn't help him.Our 3rd and final day in Paris, we took another tourist bus, as we did in London, and went all over Paris. Inside Notre Dame, we saw this fire blanket box.
Notice on the 2nd picture here, how CALM the guy on fire is just waiting for his friend to put a blanket on him. :)
The bus took us all over the area of Paris including all the touristy spots. I finally saw the Moulin Rouge which made me really happy. If only it wasn't over 100 Euros to see a show. Even if a half bottle of Champagne was included, it's still too expensive. :(
Anyway, we had a great time seeing everything in Paris and the photo album below can attest to that. Feel free to skim if you are interested since there are a TON of pictures (and this was after editing).Here are all the pics from Paris:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jkimpfbeck/MomInParis#
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