Paris day 2

Ten years ago, I spent a few days in Paris around Christmastime. My enduringly memory is of eating savory crepes from street vendors, partly because they were so good and partly because my attempts to get served in cafes and  restaurants  were frustrating. Now that I'm more capable of the latter, it seems I've become incapable of finding crepe carts. Or rather, incapable last night at dinner time with tired kids. Because I must have passed eight or ten on my run this morning! Too bad I didn't note where this actually was!

It is so much fun to run in the city. Yesterday I did hills circling the Sacre Coeur Basilica. This morning, from our hotel in Montmartre, I went past a market near Les Halles, a chalk artist outside the modern-art Pompidou center, a long queue for mass at Notre Dame, and millions of padlocks on the Pont Neuf that apparently show unending love (?).

A quick turn around the left bank and I headed back to meet up with the family. After a cultural morning of French cartoons in the hotel (while Dave and I ran), and patisserie ogling while eating chocolate croissants (

) we fulfilled Adi's one request for our visit to Paris. 

Honestly not what I would have chosen but apparently someone's been educating our daughters. I still think that visiting the Da Vinci museum in Amboise was better than viewing this one painting, but there's obviously lots else to see at the Louvre. After the Mona Lisa, The big girls and Dave went through Greek and Egyptian exhibits while Viv and I checked out the coffee and juice in the pyramid atrium.

We finished with a boat ride on the Seine, sweet crepes from a cart when we couldn't find any cheese ones (argh!) and a lovely dinner at one of many sidewalk cafes near our hotel. We even got the kids to bed early in preparation for a big surprise tomorrow. (Hint: they don't know there are princesses and roller coasters in/near Paris...)

Paris

On the way up.

 Vivian was disappointed, saying she thought "it would be taller than that."

We met the Coes for the afternoon.

We had hoped for toy boats on this little fountain near the Louvre but the girls were happy to sit by the water.

There were chairs everywhere, for old men to take afternoon naps.

Cool boys

Cool girls (don't worry, they just drank juice)

It was so nice to meet up for the last evening with the Coes.  Luckily, we found break-dancers and then tap-dancers on our way down this lively road, to distract us from our sorrow at saying goodbye.

10

Goodbye Pau

We couldn't have had a better place to call home in France. I will miss the huge river, our lively gîte and being part of Leen's extended family. For our last night, we got dinner from the pizza truck at our boulangerie for dinner in the garden with Leen's and Béatrice's  family.

I loved being able to play, or run, along the river about a kilometer from our home. This is the view of our suburb from a chateau on the other side of the river-- I think our house is in the far back on the right. 

The chateau itself (de franqueville).

When we arrived, the corn behind our house was barely knee high. It tasseled during our last week there. It was from this window that Vivian and I watched the distant fireworks in Pau on Bastille Day.

Our gîte used to be the attic of a barn (owned by Jean Marc's uncle-- he said there were fleas when he was growing up). This view is from our living room French doors. Our host, Béatrice's, house is white with red shutters and the gîte is brown. The closed shutters are the girls' room; our bedroom is just out of view to the right.

This is the view from our bedroom, once we opened the shutters and doors every morning. Béatrice's husband, Xavier, works as an architecture in the office below us and the garden is beyond the stairs.

The street side is much starker. This view is from the edge of the cornfield and shows the window to the bedroom and the hall as well as the bathroom window. I love the piece of old stone wall , which is a common view around here. The house and barn are present in a map from the nineteenth century-- like many structures here, their age is only known to be greater than that.

Time to move on... Waiting at our local bus stop on our way home via Paris...

 And on the train...

Modern technology: we're the blue dot, picking up speed on the high speed tracks past Bordeaux. The cluster of yellow stars is in and around Pau, and the other stars are places we stayed this summer.

Tired in the Paris Metro but so much better than when we arrived eight weeks ago! Suitably global, we were between a group of young women speaking Russian and two older men speaking Italian. 

The Mediterranean

 

We headed three hours east to where the Pyrenees meet the Mediterranean Sea. The small town of Torreilles provided everything we could have asked for in a beach vacation. 

Sand bathing

Stone skipping

Sand castling

Sea life 

Running away from waves... And swimming 

Lots of salt!

 And karate, of course

The baker next door to our rental house will be remembered for the smell of baking bread at 4am 

And the bins of baguettes that vans picked up from our tiny street like drug dealers.

And the lively town provided stray cats, cute cafes and rock concerts.

But as always, the best memories are simple from bring together with family.

Biarritz with Kara

When I travelled to France ten years ago with Dave's family for Christmas, I fell in love with the Atlantic coastal town of Biarritz.  It is known for its surfing and language school, even combining lessons, and I had hoped we'd be able to spend time there this summer. But since the school doesn't accommodate small children, and we came earlier than their classes started, it slipped from the list. Luckily, Kara and I were able to escape for a day trip there (it's 1.5 hr drive from Pau), thanks to the Awesome Day Camp run by my brother-in-law Eric.

just as beautiful as I remember it

My sister Kara

The main beach

After the baking heat, it was nice to have it barely break 80 deg. This is another beach.

Lots of surfing students!

Another beach. Any idea why I like it so much?!

We bought paintings from an artist... on the beach.

Other than to smile for pictures, we didn't stop talking for eight hours. A great day!

Coes in Pau

We were so lucky that my sister's family, the Coes, came from their adopted home

in Russia to visit us in France.

Their first night was the day after we'd picked 21 kilos of blueberries with Leen's family. I only took home a third, but even with the ten people in our house, it took a dedicated effort to eat them all. This dessert consists of nothing but blueberries and cream.

Our 7 kilos of blueberries...

We toured the city center and chateau-- I think I finally know my way around.

The kids loved seeing each other, even DJ (14) and Tim (12). Thanks to their youngest, Ella, being barely older than Adi and Mae, the families merge together well. Although Adi and Mae appreciate their male cousins too, Vivian is very much at the age when she's obsessed with older girls. She'd wake in the morning and ask immediately where Ella was. And we had many tantrums concerning the seating arrange mtns at meals.

There was a heat wave (40 deg C= 104 deg F) while they were here so we spent most of our days in the river , along with many other residents of Pau.

Or in the nearby stream where they built this dam. DJ and I jogged one day, stopping every 10 mins to soak our tee shirts in the river, and ending up lying in  the deep pool they created. It was the only way to survive running in that temperature.

The boys were enthusiastic about practicing karate, which was inspirational for Adi and Mae.

In the heat of the day, we practiced in the house.