Tuesday . . .

Evan declared Tuesday the day of phobias. We started out at the catacombs, where we were forewarned that a) people of a nervous disposition should strongly consider an alternate activity, and, b) small children should not enter unless their parents are OK with months of nightmares. Claustrophobia and nightmares be damned, said we. So down the stairs we went, 20 m below the city, and began our trek towards the ossuary.







Stop! This is the empire of death.








Any guesses on how many Parisians are buried in the catacombs? Evan said 30,000, and I guessed 50,000. We were off by two orders of magnitude - there are 6 million bodies (or the remains thereof) in the catacombs. At one point, the bones were sort of haphazardly piled underground before an initiative for a more "decorative" arrangement. Ha!

Fear of shellfish and/or Belgian beer was next on the menu, followed by a stroll through the Jardin Luxembourg.








And for our last phobia, we took to the Eiffel Tower after wandering along the Seine.




View from the summit

Monday . . .

Monday was gorgeous, so we started off the day at the Jardin des Plantes (which seems a bit redundant, don't you think?).















Hotel for bees - les abeilles sauvages


The stegosaurus in front of the natural history museum - this one was for Charlie!


From there, we began a tour of notable houses of worship with the central mosque.














From there we went on to Notre Dame . . .


Love locks on the Pont de l'Archevêché








Note the finger




All this walking then culminated in an eating extravaganza, which we kicked off with crepes. And thus began the embarrassing skirt chronicles. I managed to drip crepe juice all over my skirt, bringing my outfit down to hobo status. But we soldiered on, and while heading down Boulevard Saint-Germain, I walked over one of those air vent/grate thingies and the grease-stained skirt flew over my head. On the Bl St-Germain. In front of hoards of people. Only chocolate could tend my wounds.



Clockwise from the top left: Lemon-basil, pistachio, hazelnut praline, jasmine tea


The chocolate was a perfect appetizer for macarons from Pierre Hermé (left to right - rose, chocolate, coffee, caramel, black currant, vanilla, passion fruit)


And then I nearly peed my skirt laughing over this unfortunate English mangling by the French fast food chain, Quick. Hard Pepper? Seriously?


And then it got even better, as Hard Pepper stepped into the ring with its menu rival, Strong Bacon. Sweet mama pajama! Maybe I could get a job in France helping with these translational snafus?

Sunday in Paris

After the usual airport/airplane indignities, we arrived in Paris on Sunday to beautiful blue skies. [I should reveal that this trip was made possible thanks to our local NPR station - we won their summer fundraiser giveaway.] We rented an apartment for the week, which was fantastic. In a city with so many amazing things to eat, it was fabulous to have a refrigerator for stinky cheeses, yummy desserts and wine.

The courtyard of our apartment building


The Marché Bastille - just around the corner from the apartment




Our bounty - the chicken came from the chicken lady - the birds are cooked in a huge rotisserie oven, with potatoes stewing in the bottom in all of the chicken juices.

September Roundup

September went by in a blur . . . here's a quick recap of the month's excitement:

Owen's adventures with food . . .






At Sam's birthday bowling party




Happy Birthday, Grandma!


Snuggled up with Great-Grandpa


Miracle Wrestlemania

Two First Days

Charlie sort-of started kindergarten on August 30th. Our school system does staggered entry, during which small groups of kindergarteners come in on just one day for assessment.



Shunning the parental paparazzi


He had a great day, though getting information out of him was like squeezing blood from a stone. I finally learned the following:

A: Did you do letters?
C: Yeah, the teacher asked me what sounds the letters make. Then she did it again with lower-case to make it harder, but I still knew the answer.

A: How about numbers? Did you do any counting?
C: I wanted to count to 200, but they told me I could stop at 93.

He went back to school, like, for real, on the 1st. We marked the occasion with a traditional Schultüte, schlepped over from Germany by my aunt. [This makes her sound like a mule for German handicrafts, which is partially true.] The Schultüte was filled with some school supplies, books, and of course, Legos.





We had an unfortunate memory card issue with our camera and the first day front porch picture has disappeared. Charlie was wearing the same dinosaur shirt again yesterday, and I convinced him to do a re-take. He kindly obliged, and thankfully, he hadn't changed much in a week. :)