Family Family Family!

This is my first attempt at blogging from a mac. We shall see how it turns out...

We have been very lucky that we have gotten to see so much of our family in the last month! Last week, the Avants came to visit and we had a great time being all together and enjoying all that London has to offer.

Jack, Mindy, Mendy and Olivia all stayed at the New Inn, a Pub/Inn in St Johns Wood. It sounds like it was "interesting."

On the first day they were here, The Avants were good sports and came over to our house for a BBQ. The next day, after they got a little sleep, we all went to Borough Market.

We discovered that, as a group, we are taller than most people at Borough Market.


These guys were in a blow up raft in the Thames. They seemed to not be having the smoothest trip, but they were laughing:

We hit all the tourist hot spots that day! Here is everyone on the steps of The Globe Theatre!

Having a rest on the Thames:


St. Paul's Cathedral...outside of which we caught the 15 bus OLD SCHOOL STYLE!




Before we went to the Tower of London, we had lunch at that fabulous establishment Wetherspoons! (a shout out to our friends Richard and Coleena who are Wetherspoon's number one fans!)It was nice to have a break and some food.

I have now been to the Tower of London FOUR TIMES! NEVER AGAIN!!!!!!!! But we saw the changing of the guard at the Tower, which was cool. This time we could actually see them.

You would never know these ladies were related!They look beautiful, even when they are exhausted.

Finally we gave in and walked across the famous Abbey Road crosswalk. Olivia was so excited! I had a little trouble taking it seriously, but it was actually fun and since it was Sunday morning there were fewer people intent on running us over while muttering something about tourists under their breath.


Olivia wrote her name on the wall outside of Abbey Road Studios:

And then a paparazzi guy with a giant camera came by to tell us where Paul McCartney lives. Then he proceeded to meet us there and tell us how much hates Paul McCartney in a very loud voice. Here's Olivia in front of Paul McCartney's House.

Jim and his parents went to Churchill's War Rooms and on their way they saw this parade. We still don't know what it was, but they were excited!

I keep telling people about how cool it is to see 50 bareback horses moving through the streets of London, but I never seem to be able to get my camera out in time. Jim's Dad, though, caught the Barracks Horses in action as they trotted en masse past the Inn.

On the day that everyone visited Windsor Castle, I was home feeling sick. So I'm telling this story based on other peoples' experiences. I missed some exciting stuff!
First, breakfast at a cafe:

Then a beautiful day at Windsor Castle with flowers and sunshine! (when I went it was cold, grey and rainy)


And then they saw the queen on her way to Ascot! From a great distance! If you look closely you can see her in a mint green outfit behind the car.

It was a great visit!

En Paris avec Kate and Andy

I dedicate this blog to my friend David, who has recently started reading about our life pre and post moving to London. You may remember him as the "dancing fool" in my work Christmas Party blog. Usually, though, he's a teacher and a friend and a sometimes running partner (we are terrible slackers of late). It's fun to know that so many of our friends are keeping in touch with our lives--near and far!

Anyway, enough sentimentality. The day we went to Paris with Kate and Andy was a LOOONG day. We had to get up at 4:30 so that we would be ready to go to St. Pancreas and catch our 6:55 am train. Of course, that meant that I didn't really sleep at all that night (getting up at insanely early hours=never sleeping well in the world of Claire). Needless to say, we were pretty tired.

But we still managed to look cheery outside of the Eurostar!

And as soon as I got on the train, I went straight to sleep with my earplugs, mask and travel pillow. Of course Jim took pictures of me. Evil. These are for you, Dan. You can't say that I don't post unattractive pictures of myself as well as of my friends!! From now on I'm never letting anyone see me sleep!

At least I wasn't drooling....I guess.


Once we got to Paris, I felt much refreshed. Here we are inside of Gare du Nord:

And outside!


We decided to walk from the train station to our apartment in Le Marais, which was actually a nice way to see a new part of the city and also almost get killed by cyclists (our fault. We kept drifting into the cycle lane. Paris rocks for cyclists! They have their own off roade lanes! London needs to update their cycle lanes to one similar to the French and Dutch models. Instead, we get motocycles and scooters in our lanes, people parking in our lanes, and lanes which go for about six feet and then disappear, only to reappear about half a mile later. But I digress.)
Because, we were way early for our check in time, we couldn't actually go into our apartment. That was probably a good thing, because I'm almost positive that if we had been able to go in, we would have all gone to sleep for the entire afternoon. Luckily, though, the cleaning guy let us stash our luggage and we were off to wander around Paris!

This graffitti/tile artist is all the rage. He puts tiled replicas of Space Invaders around large citys. Long live the 80's!




Mom, this is how you walk a cat. I'm pretty sure that Emma will NEVER do this. This lady was just walking her Persian cat along a busy street in the middle of Paris.


Le chillin and l'illin on the banks of the Seine.


By this time, it WAS time to get into our apartment and being the wimp that I am, I went back home to take a nap. SO thus end the pictures for that day (not that I was the one taking them, obviously. I definitely wouldn't take a picture of myself in sleep mode.)

After a night of crepe eating and more sleeping, we felt refreshed and ready to hit the town again. Kate and Andy climbed up Notre Dame and did something to do with the Bastille. Jim and I headed over to Jardin de Louxemburg, which is a beautiful park, where many very cool French people were hanging out and enjoying the beautiful weather. ON our way, we found ourselves in a gaming exhibition of some sort. All around us, people were playing board games and doing puzzles.

Jim posed in front of some giant puzzle structure thing.


The park had lots of cool sculptures. I think I was trying to look footloose and fancy free in front of this one:


Jim does LL Bean in Paris:


A fountain:


Some important building in the background:


Jim's head is NOTHING compared to this one!


This was a beekeeping school! They had beware of bees signs around and, interestingly, all of the bees seemed to stay on the far side of the school (in the grassy area and away from the paths). It was neat!(long live the 80s!)


Some of you may recall the time Jim and I played boules last summer or fall. We weren't very good and I cheated. Anyway, we spent a good amount of time watching the French play Petanque. They WERE good...even skilled, I would say.


While I took another nap, Jim went out around Le Marais and took some pictures. Most importantly, he found this hummus bar. YUMMY!




We had "date night" that night, where each couple went out and had a romantic dinner together. Jim and I had dinner at a Yiddish restaurant, where they had live Yiddish music in the basement! It was a very hearty meal and the entertainment was great, although , because they explained the meanings of the Yiddish songs in French (we were the only non-French people there), we had no idea what the long monologues were about. Oh well.


Saturday was our "let's do things all together" day and we headed to the Eiffel Tower. Before we got there, though, all bladders failed us and we had to use one of the public bathrooms. They are free, but not really very nice or clean. You go into the pod and when you come out, it self-cleans before the next person can go in. Always the gentleman, Andy escorted Kate in and out of the toilet.



The Eiffel Tower was really crowded, so we didn't go up, but we did go under and get accosted by people selling Eiffel Tower keychains for one Euro.

After the thrill of the Eiffel Tower, we wandered through the remains of a market and bought some "fruit" drinks. They were frozen fruit flavored sugar and were better used for posing in silly pictures than for drinking. I also had my first experience of an anti-tourist Frenchman, when I forgot to say "Bonjour" before asking a security guard where the toilet was. Some people are so grumpy!

Kate had some hard core blisters:

Waiting desperately for someone to take our order for quatre cafe au laits s'il vous plais! No luck.

Before we headed back to the train on Sunday, we enjoyed some time in the sun in a small park. I tried to get a sparrow to eat out of my hand, just like Cinderella! It didn't really work.


Back at the train station, all the trains were delayed and there were hordes of people going back to London after the school holiday. We were there entirely too early and Kate was not happy about it. So I had to do a little Billy Bob on her.



It was so fun hanging out with Kate and Andy for 12 days! We miss them!