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.