London and our Hosts

We have just returned from a fantastic, whirlwind tour of London and it's suburbs.  We met Caroline

Caroline and Jon

and Jon in New Zealand.  Fate tossed us into the same boat off the Abel Tasman national park coast. Later we met again in Queenstown and celebrated a traditional American Thanskgiving without turkey, gravy, pumpkin pie and pretty much all the fixins.  We did offer them Jambalaya, rice, salad and some sort of dessert (also known as pudding in England).

Jon works for the defense department in one of those M numbered organization. He is pretty vague on what he does but we assume it is a cross between James Bond and the Terminator stuck in a Notting Hill movie. Jon is a bit like Hugh Grant only not neurotic and a whole lot funnier. Caroline works for an oil company but her real passion is quilting.  Listening to the wordplay between the two of them is absolutely precious and reminiscent of the last time I watched a Wimledon match. Caroline will tell us on the train that on the right just ahead is the Thames river.  Jon will return her serve with "Oh really, just where are you seeing this river".  Racing to the far corner, Caroline returns ball with "Well it's around here somewhere. You take the train more then I do". Jon takes the point with "I very well do and there is no river here".

There is no frustration or anger between the two just the wordplay that two tennis teammates might

Bronze Magna Carta Chair

have while practicing at the end of a day.  Together we learned so much about London and the enchanting country outside of the big L.

Both Jon and Caroline are enormously proud of their two daughters, Sophie and Ellie. We were so lucky to have lunch with Sophie at a Mash and Pie shop.  Mash and pie is basically a shop that sells pot pies like the ones we get at the market in the frozen food section.  Only these Pies are actually really good.  They are not exactly the healthiest choice of food but they are delicious.  The Mash stands for mash potatoes or other fixin's that are popular at the time.  Beyond chicken, steak, and new age vegetarian such as goat cheese with rocket smothered virgin carrots, you can get the typical pies with someones kidneys or bone marrow in them. Perhaps the latter two might actually be healthy for those already sick from eating too much Mash and Pie.

Sophie works as a staff writer for one of the online rags for people 16-26. She doesn't report the news, talk about celebrities or anything as trivial as that.  No she writes about weird thoughts that occur to her, that must in fact occur to anyone 16-26. Articles like, if my shoes could talk what would they say? What foods if I ate when I was 16 would make me a new girl today? And finally, I just read my teen diary and learned these 10 things about myself, Yikes!

Sophie is like her parents.  She is smart, funny, and talks faster then anyone I know.  If she played on Downton Abbey, they could shorten the show to 30 minutes or 9.144 meters. I am not sure if that is the correct conversion, the English don't always use the metric system so I get confused.

Caroline and Jon are the kind of people that gave us their bedroom for the three nights we were there.

Queens for the Day

I am not sure but I think they slept in one of the girls room, one on a twin bed and one of the floor.  If Jon slept on the floor after 3 nights, I can here him saying after we left as Arnold S in the Terminator, "I Need a Vacation". Or to quote a bond movie, "My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done."

Since their daughters have moved out Jon has come up with an ingenious way to empty out the girls bedrooms.  When Sophie called and asked for a pair of shoes for an upcoming wedding, Jon handed her three pairs of shoes, none of which were the right ones.  I envision him having lunch each day this week, Mash and Pieing, bring three pair of shoes at a time.  Fifteen pairs gone, but possibly useful if Sophie decides to write about her shoe story.

As you can tell from this posting, I have nothing but great things to say about this family, smart, kind, funny, insightful, generous, and terribly real.  Now we just have to get them to visit us in Paris.

Photos From Paris

Well this post has been a long time coming.  Today I took a forced day off from touring.  Of course a strong dose of a stuffy head, runny nose, and crappy outlook has made this a mandatory affair.  Gayle and I have had a great deal of fun with our Meetup.com activities. It's a worldwide organization that put people with similar interests together.  Naturally, I signed up for all the photographic Meetups. I even accidentally signed up for the Makeup Lovers Meetup group.  I really just wanted to know who they were.  Are these scorned lovers,  people desperate to get over that last love,  who are they?  Well they are men and woman who love makeup.  They have nail sessions, getting your eyes right, lips that demand to be kissed.  After a number of offers for a group meetup, I kindly unsubscribed to it.

The photo group has been very interesting.  It's about 40% women, which to me seems pretty high on the woman ratio.  All different ages, 70's to 30's, over half are French but many are expats and some are from Morocco, Israel, and England to name a few.  One outgoing gal is half French and half English and when she speaks she slips languages like a shoe model changes shoes. At the end of our last group meeting, she started wrapping up her Guinness beer stein.  She said she was going to kip the glass as it was really nice and they get them for free.  One aha moment is going on a photo shoot and looking at everyone's photos after the shoot.  Holy crap, there are some really talented photographers in the group and were not just talking about the photos themselves.  It often about the composition and what they say.

Last Saturday we meet at 6:30am on the Trocadéro which is a small park and structure opposite the Eiffel tower.  Our goal was to see the blue and golden light of the dawn as it hit the tower.  To me, it wasn't really a remarkable morning but later some of the images that people shot were amazing.  There was one real find. There was a professional photographer with two model having a photo shoot. The gals were using this silk wrap to simulate a butterfly.   It must have been 50 degrees and as far as I can tell that was all these gals were wearing.  I got some candid photos of the shoot.  Then a guy drives up in a classic car probably for another photo shoot later in the day.  So we got great photos of the tower with the car in the foreground.  I told SylHo our tour leader that he was the best.  "He said yes I am the king of tours!"  I countered with he was "the emperor of tours!"

Below are some images taken by members of the photo Meetup at two different events.  I am so impressed.

We got Reamed in France

Well really we got champagned in Reims.  We took a side trip from Paris to Reims, the capital of champagne and bubbly good living. The arrival was a bit stormy with constant showers and an Airbnb owner who kept pushing out the time of our arrive.  Picture us sitting on her doorstep, melting in the constant wet patter, only to get a text saying let's meet in another hour.  We went through this 3 times! I was ready to kill Sihame.  Just as I was looking for other accommodations on Booking.com under an archway which was next to a monument for the people mistreated by the Gestopo, Nicholas appears.  He is her charming boyfriend of 2 months.  He took us to a swank bar inside a push hotel for tall glasses for champagne.  He offered us coffee but we strongly urged a bubbly upgrade.

The water and dismal spirit ran from us like water from a duck.  Nicholas is a hospital HR manager at a teaching hospital.  I loved his strong FREEENNNCH accent and his good looks didn't hurt the gals any either.  Eventually our timeless host arrived Sihame.  Her olive skin, smirky smile, excellent English made us all smile.  She is half Moroccan and works for a Cognac and Beer company in their laboratory.  She was testing an experimental beer wort cooking method which caused all the delays.

The apartment was clean, roomy, and just what we needed.  We went out to a nice restaurant  and prepared to wait out the rain.  The next morning was magnificent and eventually a bit warm for us Northwesterners. I think Caro thinks we are crazy always crossing the street to stay in the shade and acting like were on a death march at 85 degrees.  We just followed Caro long strutting steps to Pommery champagne house for a tour that Sihame arranged.  This famous bubble house was run by a woman starting in 1856.  This was in an era where that simply was not done.  But she ran it well caring for the winery and the employees, making it one of the largest champagne houses in Reims.

Our arranged English tour was rather odd.  Our guide was perfectly English, think the butler Carson on Downton Abbey now added a 30% strong French accent.  Yup you got it, another tour where we understood maybe 35% of what was said.  I dropped into camera mode and tuned into the talk on occasion. When the tour was done we each got two smallish glasses of bubbly. Here is the deal, you can spend $100, $50, $25, but here in Reim's it all tastes good.

The next morning we took off early to take in the farmers market and to walk through the cathedral.  In the church we found a free catacomb walk in French in a half an hour.  We waited, and waited, and 35 minutes later a nun/guide pops up and tells everyone in French that the tour is in French.  She looks at us with her evil, red pinprick, Gargoyles eyes and asked Gayle if she could speak French.  "Yes I understand French" timidly replies Gayle.  "Well can you understand rapid French, it is very important in the catacombs", speaks the demon spawn.  Gayle buckled, and the she devil, kicked us out of line.  I should have gotten her picture but I know it would not have worked, there would only have been emptiness.  Oh Van Gogh, I know your troubles friend! (Originally Van Gogh wanted to be a preacher but was kicked out for strange behavior)

Our last day after the market we ran into Sihame and

You Can Buy Anything at the Market

Band that Serenaded us at Coffee

Cathedral

Cathedral

Nicholas, Sihame, and Caroline

The Loser but Good Form

Nicholas in a bar courtyard drinking very expensive champagne.  They told us to join them as they were waiting for friends.  Oh that cool frothy nectar was nice.  We talked and talked and then decided to play boules besides the tables in the courtyard.  Gayle lost, Nicholas won, we all won.  This was our time in Reims!

So Many Visitors, So Much Fun

I am way overdue for a blog post. It truly not that were sitting around our little apartment watching

cars and people whip by.  We are just out and about, savoring each moment with people we love.  Jenny and Basti from Marbourg left 4 days ago. Poor Basti had a nasty cold and was coughing and sneezing and probably feeling like death warmed over.  If I get his cold I am going to make him feel worse.  Ha.

But the cold didn't keep him down and we kept him fueled up with Bordeaux and Beer's.  On one of our days, I contacted a retired school teacher to take us on a tour of the Luxembourg gardens and the historic area nearby.  Martine was really special but her accent was as thick as a brick.  It was English but really sounded more like FinGlish. We did learn about 25 percent of what she said.

On another day we toured the main sightseeing sights, Eiffel Tower, Arch de Triumphe, Notre Dame

and the Sacre Coreur to name a few. I think all of the people and all the rush, rush, was making Basti crazy especially in his cold induced haze.   Our last day we spent relaxed walking trip in our favorite park, Parc des Buttes.  It is a park that was design to imitate nature.  Of course it was built over a mountain of trash, toxic wastes, horse entrails, and it was the ideal spot for local hangings.  It's lovely just keep the history in the past.

Walking back from our the parc, we stopped at a Brasserie.  Two guys run the place and they were precious. We tried to ask for our bill at the end in nearly perfect french.  Our waiter called out to the

bartender that he needed the "Biiiillllll"  He was teasing us of course.  I asked him if he knew how to speak German.  He said he knows "I Love You" and they other one was a curse word.  Basti feel he could go far with those two!

Below are just some of our candid moments we spent on our last days walking about.

Lazy Drunk Man Walk

I am having a considerable difficulty keeping up with my blogging these days.  Too many fun balls tossed into the air at one time.  Right now we have Caroline and Jenny and Basti visiting us.  Yesterday we went on a free walking tour with Martine a retired teacher here in Paris.  She has an interesting story.  A number ofT years ago she had cancer. The doctors started treatment and told her she must stop teaching as she is susceptible to infections.  They gave her a "make work" job of grading papers which she hated.  After the treatment they told her she could continue grading, or retire early, regardless she only had a short time to live.  She said screw this, retired and started guiding people from across the globe. Now the doctors say she will live a long life but sadly by retiring early she has little money.

She took us on an interesting heavily accented tour of  the Port Royal and Luxembourg garden area.  One of the statues we saw represented the 4 phases of the day.  In each statue the man is lounging

around rather helpless, while the woman feeds and nurtures him.  The man in the statue was created by using a real model while the woman is always a representation of the ultimate female.  In the last statue the woman is finally dressed and lays tiredly wrapped around the man's legs.  "Let go to bed, I am so tired", she says, but naked and proud he wants to go out and party.  Shown here is the morning scene.

Below are some photos of our walk through the gardens and the streets of Paris.  You will see one photo of a poem written by a famous French poet.  One night he stole into the tower of a building and got totally drunk.  While up there, he wrote this poem backwards.  The French so loved the piece they plastered it on a wall across from the tower.

Wandering about and still standing

We had two main thrusts in today's adventures. Get food and drink for the pantry and frig, feed

ourselves, and feed the iPhone a new sim card.  We have good news, we succeeded in all three.  Here is the scoop on shopping in Paris.  Number one, if you want cereal your only going to find two dozen kinds and 1/3 of those are special K.  Secondly if you want peanut butter there was a jar of something that looked like PB but the label just mentioned vegetable protein.  Then there was one jar of "Genuine American" peanut butter from an unknown brand since 1865.

Being predominately a chicken eater, we found both Good chicken and Ass chicken to choose from.

No surprise to you, we opted vegetarian falafels.  I am surprised they weren't named Foot Flafels, or Butt Cheek gyros. One of the aspects of Paris (AKA not Sequim) we love is the diversity. We found a little park in the Jewish section of the city and on the right was a Jewish couple, the left 4 Arab men, and directly across a young blonde euro type with heart sunglasses, sun bathing while reading a book on French Food naming techniques. Did I mention the 4 camo'd military soldiers outside one building with automatic weapons.  I think they were watching the gal with the heart shaped sunglasses.

I've included a photo of Gayle ready to devour two amazing falafels from Chez Hanna self proclaimed "Best Falafel in the World".

After we ate ran across the most amazing Roach Coach eating establishment we have ever seen.  Why be outside in the the City of Light and Love when

you can be indoors, sheltered from all the crazed lovers.  Note the young boy with that dazed look in his eyes.  Wait till you reach puberty buster!

Once again, the city of diversity and surprises awaiting each step.  Tomorrow we check out Jenny and Basti's Airbnb, and have a relaxing picnic in one of Paris' many parks. Think Central Park in New York only replicate it in 5 separate areas each with it's own theme.  And who knows what kind of Butt Chicken we might run into tomorrow.

We made it in good shape to Paris. The apartment is very nice and considerably roomier then Merilee's old unit.  The neighborhood is not some place you want to hang around. A bit noisy and slightly shabby. Of course it is where real people live and that makes it interesting.  It is weird seeing so many small boutique type shops closed. Most Parisians leave in August for holiday but come September they will be open.  When we arrived Megan was here to greet and welcome us.  She was a sight for tired red eyes. She even helped us get our bus/metro/train pass for the remainder of the week.  One funny thought. On our first leg from Seattle to Iceland, nearly all the business class fliers were seriously over weight. Could this be the blessing and curse of those with a full economic cup of plenty. The second leg from Iceland to Paris the travelers were a great deal trimmer.  Tomorrow evening Jenny and Basti arrive plus we have a meeting with Marilee, and finally a meet and greet with Jenny's Airbnb owners. Also, we have to try and get a SIM card with a phone number and Internet access. Yikes, can we do it without being ripped off? I am prepared  now, no Puk number no euros and I can put my own nano sim in, mercy very much!

I have updated this blog, Wednesday at 5:06  am, Bob normal time. The fog of flight has lifted and everything already seems cheerier, brighter with the slow rhythmic breathing of Gayle beside me. Keep in mind it 5am, steel shutters closed, and black as a witches cat. All is well in the world!

Megan and Company