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!

Kate and ANdy come to London--part 1

Everyone else is out doing fun stuff (except Jim, who is working...decidedly not the most fun option) and I am home feeling crappy, so I thought I would use my time at home productively by updating the blog! Plus, our neighbor is experimenting with the different alarm sounds on his newly purchased scooter (similar to someone testing out all the rings on their cell phone...but much, much louder), so an excuse to go to the other side of the house was in order. The most exciting part about this blog is that I have NEW material to update with because Kate and Andy are here!

On their first evening in town, Kate and Andy were good sports and went with me to a pub where they met all my work friends. I didn't take pictures during this time, but Kate did, so as soon as I can get her to download them onto my computer, I will add them to this blog because they are pretty funny. There is one of me where I look especially beautiful as only a person who carries billy bob teeth around in her purse at all times can.

Jim met us, too and after we had enough of the pub, we headed up to Primrose Hill. Here are Kate and Andy at the top (they look pretty good for being jet lagged!):


Thus ends my pictures taking for THAT night, but after we walked up Primrose Hill we then wandered down to Chalkfarm/Camden, where we had dinner, followed by the usual cab vs bus arguement (bus won). Kate and Andy were troopers. I never would have been up for so much after 16 plus hours of traveling.

The next day, we headed out on the town, with the plan to go to Borough Market. Kate and Andy posed for a picture on our fabulous street.


We dedided to take the long way to Borough Market and got off at Green Park (called Green Park because it doesn't have any flowers..something to do with a jealous queen). We were heading towards St. James Park (named after a leper hospital, Kate informed me...how romantic!) when we stumbled upon the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace. It was a thrill and a half! Jim perched on a wall to watch:

Can you see it? Yeah, neither could we:

The music was festive, though!

At least we got a good sister picture in front of the palace. Don't be fooled by my 70's fro...this was only taken a few days ago!


The white pelicans were hanging out in St. James' Park. The last time I was there they were pink. This time, they were just having a rest. The one on the far left was having a rest with a big blob of grass on his beak. Kate and I wanted a rest, too because we (and everyone else in the park) were having seriously bad sneezing fits and itchy eyes from the unidentified white substance that was coming out of the trees. But Jim and Andy were power walking, so we had to move on after the pelicans.



We did finally make it to Borough Market, where we spent a small fortune on steak and got some lunch. It's always great when people take pictures of you when you are in the middle of stuffing your face. Thanks, Jim.


That night, Meg, Dan, Tony and Sophie came over for a Kate and Andy bbq! (We didn't bbq Kate and Andy, but they were the highlight of the evening.)

Meg made some incredible trifle. We finished that entire, giant bowl!

We got a little distracted from catching up on old times by the Eurovision Song Contest which is unbelievably bad and cheesey and really fun to watch in a big group of friends. We were shocked....SHOCKED...that Russia won (picture this: cheesey guy with no shoes, lying on the ground and singing off key while his friend plays the violin in another spotlight and then, out of nowhere, a third guy shows up with ice skates on and starts doing an ice skating circle around the other two...on plastic. At least I assume it was plastic because if not, the cheesey guy with no shoes is REALLY tough. It was HORRIBLE!). We decided that people voted for Russia because they had been threatened by the KGB. There could be no other reason. Definitely political voting. The best part, actually was the guy commentating. He was seriously funny. The UK got like 1 point I think. Not so great.

Anyway... it was a fun and gluttonous evening and the next day, because our arteries weren't clogged enough with steak and trifle, Kate, Meg and I went to Claridge's for high tea. It was GOOD. We started with finger sandwiches and champagne, followed by the most delicious scones I have ever tasted and some interesting desserts.

One dessert, in particular, was just plain weird. It was rose flavored macaroons. Here is how the dialogue over the macaroons went:
Kate: Hmm...it tastes like potpourri.
Claire: Do I want to taste something that tastes like potpourri?
Kate: you should taste EVERYTHING!
Claire: (tastes it) It tastes like bath salts.
Meg: (tastes it) Yeah, it kind of tastes like my grandmother....smelled.

Overall, we didn't really like it. But the scones....


Kate and Meg outside of Claridge's:


Kate and me inside of Claridge's:


The next day, the weather was horrible, so we decided to go to some museums. Kate and Andy went to the Natural History Museum. Jim and I had been there recently (and, after hearing about it from Kate and Andy were really glad that we didn't go again because there were huge crowds) so we went to the Victoria and ALbert Museum, where we looked at fashion, photography, a Medussa-like glass chandalier and some gigantic pillars before we grew tired of the rain and the museum and went home. Kate and Andy took a botony tour that they liked and never got to see the dinosaurs because there was a line 1.5 hours long to get in. Sheesh. I think the Cleveland Museum of Natural History has a better dinosaur exhibit anyway.