Travels around the world.

Osaka days 22 - 23

2012-01-24T00:39:00.001-08:00

I was looking forward to Osaka, because I remembered being here before and getting around by myself without too much difficulty and seeing a lot. But this time I find it more confusing. I’ve been trying to figure out why that is, and have decided it is due mostly to the weather. Last time we were here in February. I wasn’t expecting it to be warm and was surprised to find flowers and plum trees in bloom. I did lots of walking in parks and in the streets. This time it is January and it is quite cold, and often rainy or windy. So walking around outside isn’t as pleasant. And walking around inside is very confusing! There are so many underground malls that interconnect. If one knew one’s way around it would be a good way to avoid the cold, but I don’t know my way around and though there are signs in English, they often don’t indicate what I am looking for. Here is a typical picture of a mall. I think this is above ground, but the underground malls look similar.

This morning I decided to go look for a shrine that was near one of the big subway stations/shopping areas. I found it on the map on my phone, which I took with me, but once I got off the subway, I could not figure out which way to go. I found maps on the walls, but could not relate those in any way either to my phone or to my position in real life. The map just did not look like the underground intersection I was standing in. I went outside and braved the wind and was able to get my location by gps, but it wasn’t accurate enough for me to be sure which side of the street I was on. After about 45 minutes of this, a kind lady offered to help. I was able to remember the name of the shrine, because I had recently seen it on a sign, so I told her and she knew what I meant and indicated that it was the way she was going, so I walked along with her for a block or so and she showed me to the entrance, which didn’t look like what I had seen on Google street view or on the website I’d looked at.

Here is what I found after entering the shrine.

And here are a couple more pictures I took there. After spending so much time looking for it, I felt I had to at least take a bunch of pictures.

This big marble sphere was rotating. I think that shows in the photo. I could not figure out how it was doing that.

This shrine has a story with it, which I didn’t get, but it has to do with a lovers’ suicide. Here is a statue of the lovers.

I left there on a small lane heading towards another park on my map.

This was a small park, which I reached by taking several small and not particularly interesting streets.

I had been on my feet for a while by then, so I found a bench in the sun and sat down.

Before long I saw a school group come by and stop on the far side of the park, then a second group came into the park. These were little kids. Each one was holding a rolled up jump rope. Their teacher gave them some instructions and then they spread out and started jumping. One or two had done this before, but most were beginners.

All of the children wore identical navy blue smocks over their clothes.

The little girl in pink tights just couldn’t get the hang of it. She would flip the rope in front of her feet and jump over it, then flip it around again and repeat, but she never got a fluid motion going. Everything came to a full stop before she jumped. She tried and tried though.

From there I walked to another park on my map. The middle of this park was just an open space, but there were some very colorful flower beds near the entrances.

Here’s the open space and a modern building beyond.

From here I walked back to the station, where I had started out. I didn’t have any trouble finding it, but once inside I did wander around quite a bit before finding my train.

Here’s another typical street view.

And this is a very common sight—imitations of all the dishes the restaurant serves, I think.

So that was my day today. I bought myself some delicious pastries which I ate in the station and in the hotel. We bought a French press and some coffee so we could make coffee in the hotel. They provide set ups for green tea, but not for coffee, so we bought our own.

Osaka, Japan

2012-01-22T18:03:00.001-08:00

We’re in Osaka, Japan, now, which is nice, but I’m having trouble convincing the internet here that I actually want English and I don’t speak or read Japanese, so I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep up this blog while we are here.

Yesterday we visited Osaka Castle.

Its history goes back to the 16th century, but it has burned down and been rebuilt several times.

We have actually been here 4 days, but two of them are just a blur, as I came down with a bad cold. I was quite unhappy about that, but one can’t expect to go around the world and not have some troubles like that. The cold started on the day we left Beijing- Wednesday. I wasn’t expecting it, so didn’t have my zicam handy. I started taking it as soon as we landed in Osaka. I rested mostly Thursday, but was pretty miserable Friday. By Saturday I was much better and went out in the afternoon with Jim. Sunday I was over it and feel fine today. Although we have been out and I’ve carried my camera with me I didn’t take any pictures until we got to the castle yesterday.

Osaka castle has two moats—the outer one with water in it and the inner one is dry.

Here we are leaving the castle grounds and heading back into the city of Osaka. The castle is right in the middle of the city.

We walked along the river and then crossed to an island, which has the city hall and offices and some gardens on it.

Here is a side view of the City Hall. The sun was in the wrong place to get a photo of the front of the building.

These are real flowers—blooming in January. It is a bit warmer here than it was in Beijing, though it is still definitely winter.

Stone Forest, Yunnan, China

2012-01-16T02:22:00.000-08:00

Kathy took me to see a natural park with unusual stone formations, called the Stone Forest.

It was a fun outing. Kathy had been there before and knew there weren’t many places to eat there, so we packed a picnic. Another woman, Nancy, who was visiting from Texas, with us. Kathy hired a van to take us there. It took about 2 hours to get there from Kunming.

We started out in an area Kathy hadn’t been before. The trails took us through narrow gorges and up and down lots and lots of steps. Most of the time we didn’t know where we were.

It was raining a little, so when we found a picnic table with 3 dry seats we decided to stop and have our picnic. We had ham and cheese sandwiches, Mandarin oranges, and dried peas.

We put the tablecloth on the dry half of the table. After our lunch we walked around that area some more squeezing at times through narrow openings in the rock. When we came to a fork sometimes Kathy and I would go out in two directions to try to decide which one we should take. At one point I headed up some steps to explore and Kathy went down from the same point. I came to some more smaller steps and kept going.

In the photo above you see three round steps and then can just make out the next few going up. The whiter spots are the steps. At the top of those I came to this narrow “bridge” across to another rock. I’m not generally afraid of heights, but this bridge was a bit scary. It was a long way down on either side.

From the top I had a view in all directions over the stone forest.

Here’s the path I was standing on. It’s only about 8” wide in the narrow section.

I went back down to follow Kathy on the other trail. Here you see Kathy and Nancy in red and blue on the trail below me.

After this Nancy decided she’d had enough, so we took her back to the entrance and Kathy and I went back to a different area of the forest. On the way we saw this little guy posing for a photo, so I snapped one too.

In this area, there is a lake with trails and bridges zig-zagging through it.

The rain stopped and the sun came out.

This is called Elephant Rock.

Then we climbed to this pagoda overlooking this section of the park.

Here’s a view looking down on the tops of the stones.

And looking out across the “forest” of stones.

If you go visit Kathy in Kunming, she will probably take you to see this forest too. It’s well worth the trip.

Day 8-9 Dali - continued

2012-01-11T19:48:00.000-08:00

Kathy and Gregg have gone to work today. I decided to stay in their apartment and use their computer this morning. They'll be back for lunch and then we'll go out somewhere.
This is a continuation of the day I started in the previous post. We met up with the other ladies and all took a bus to the old part of Dali, where we walked around and then had delicious pizza made in a wood-fired oven, some of the best Pizza I've ever had.
You might notice that I've changed the template for this blog. I figured out I could use larger pictures, but needed to make the blog wider. It makes the previous entries look funny, but I hope it is an improvement.

This is not a market, but a restaurant. You chose the fresh ingredients you would like them to cook for you and in a very short time your meal is ready to eat. We didn't eat at this restaurant, but did eat at another one with a similar system, though in that one the fresh ingredients were in a refrigerator with glass doors. The meal was wonderful.

The women who are members of the ethnic minorities in this part of China still normally dress in their traditional costume. Here are two women in traditional costume and a third carrying traditional baskets on their backs. This was a fairly common sight.

The old town of Dali is characterized by buildings in the traditional style. It is a popular tourist destination, so there are lots of shops selling local crafts and many restaurants.The young women here are dressed the way most young women in China dress.

Here is a very narrow alley with tie-dyed tablecloths and hangings as well as embroidered items. The women here are helping one woman tie her baby onto her back, but it's hard to see.

A typical street in Dali Old Town.

Another street in the old town.

This is one of the tie-dyed and embroidered tablecloths.

At the top left here are 3 baby carriers in the traditional style. We saw many of these in use.

After our delicious Pizza supper we walked around the old town a bit more. It was a busy place after dark with lots of lights and restaurants.

The next day this woman who is a member of the Yi minority and who works for our host family in Dali, prepared a meal for us. She dresses this way every day.

Here we are sitting around the table about to start on lunch. Of course it was delicious.

This is a school we visited this day. These women are some of the women Kathy works with in Kunming or who work in Dali. The women here are from New Zealand, China, Singapore, USA and Canada.

A park we walked through on the way back to the bus stop.

The streets in the newer part of Dali are wide and lined with more modern buildings.

We had another meal about 5:00. We weren't particularly hungry so we just had fried rice with a couple other dishes. We wanted to eat with our hosts once more before going back to the bus station for the 4-hour ride back to Kunming.

I have some pictures of Kunming and will be taking more, but am not sure when I'll get those posted here.

Days 8 and 9 -- Dali, China

2012-01-11T18:40:00.000-08:00

I flew from Beijing to Kunming in the southern province of Yunnan, China. My sister, Kathy has been living and working in Kunming for a year. She and Gregg, her husband met me at the airport and took me to their apartment by taxi.

The next morning Kathy and I got up early, and met two other ladies at a bus stop. We took a local bus to the long distance bus station and then got on a big bus for the 4-hour ride to the town of Dali near the mountains.

Much of the countryside looked like this as we climbed up to Dali at 6000 ft and in the foothills of the mountains. While the other ladies were in a meeting, Kathy and I walked to a beautiful garden on top of a hill in Dali.

This big shiny ball is a landmark in the center of Dali.

We climbed quite a few steps to reach the garden at the top of the hill. This is looking back down towards Dali.

There was a lake in the center of the garden, with stones, trees, pagodas and walkways around it.

In this area the decorative painting on the buildings is often done in shades of black and grey. Here is a typical example of a decorated gable.

This colorful style is more typical of the parts of China that I have visited before. I see so much of this style of decorative painting that I forget to photograph it.

We were both surprised when we realized this was a poinsettia.

In case you didn't believe me, here is a close-up.

Dali is on a big lake, which you see here. You can tell by the brown grass that this in January, but I would forget that because the temperature was in the 60's F (15-20C)

I don't know if these trees grow this way or are trained, but I found them delightful.

I'm going to save the pictures I took that evening in the old town of Dali for the next post.

Around the world - Day 5–Beijing

2012-01-05T18:14:00.001-08:00

This is day 5 of our trip, but we left home Monday morning and arrived here Tuesday night about 11:00 pm, so days one and two were spent in airports and on airplanes. We flew from Duluth to Minneapolis, to Detroit and then Beijing. I got some sleep on the plane, but what a long flight that was—13 hours, I think.

We are in the same hotel we stayed in last time we were here in 2006, but it has been remodeled, so the lobby and restaurants are all different. It is nice. We’ve made a “friend” here already. He’s from Georgia (USA) and was hired by the hotel to help out English-speaking guests. His first day on the job coincided with our first day here. He has become our personal waiter at breakfast bringing me yogurt, which wasn’t out and bringing us fresh coffee, when Jim complained that the coffee was terrible, which it was. The breakfast buffet here is huge and includes Asian and western breakfast foods.

We are about a mile from Tiananmen Square, so we walked down there our first morning and then went into the Imperial Palace, which used to be called the forbidden City, because only the Emperor and his entourage were allowed in it.

Here’s one picture:

It’s winter here with temperatures in the 30’s (F). So there aren’t as many tourists as there are when it is warmer, and most of them are Chinese. If you keep walking through or past the many ceremonial buildings, which look like the ones here, you come to the gardens and smaller buildings where the court actually lived. Nothing is in bloom now, so it is a bit drab, but I did like this lion. I heard a guide saying it was a baby lion. I don’t know how one could tell.

We walked out the northern gate and turned east towards our hotel again. On the way we walked through a sort of long garden walkway that we remembered from last time. Actually we took a picture of me sitting on this bench next to this bronze sculpture last time, so I said we should take another one. Link to the other page from 2006.

Yesterday we walked to the National Palace Museum. which is an art museum on Tiananmen square. Here is the front of it. It was built in 1959 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Cultural revolution.

Here’s an interior shot. This museum has a lot of open space in it.

And here is a picture of a jade vase in the museum. We looked at an exhibit of jade, one of Chinese porcelain and one of European art in the age of enlightenment.

Here is a shot I took out our hotel window. Our window faces the back of the hotel. There are some small shacks just below us and many large buildings beyond. The shopping malls we have visited are in that direction and the very large building on the right with the semi-circular towers is a very large and fancy hotel called the Legendale.

And here is a picture of the shopping street near here where we have spent some time. There are at least two big malls on this street. The malls have all kinds of shops, department stores, restaurants, food courts, etc.

We bought Jim a scarf there and eventually found some Kleenex. We also walked through a very crowded food alley where they were selling anything and everything cooked on a stick. Most of it I didn’t recognize. I should have tried to take pictures, but I didn’t want to do anything to attract attention. The vendors can at times be a bit annoying. However, they probably don’t have much luck selling seahorses or insects on a stick to foreigners, so perhaps they would have left us alone. Jim is doing some reading today and preparing for a meeting this afternoon, so he’s letting me use his computer. We don’t have wifi here, just ethernet, so I have to use his computer to get online.

I think that is it for today. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to update again at my sister’s in Kunming next week.

Holidays in California

2011-12-31T18:21:00.001-08:00

We went out to California to spend Christmas and the next few days with our sons. I took so few pictures, and none of us, so I apologize for these few shots.

We played Frisbee golf in Santa Barbara one afternoon, drove up to Big Bear the day after Christmas and spent one day skiing at Snow Summit. The conditions were good, even though the temperature was in the 50's. I've never skied in such warm weather. I took off my hat in the first lift line and never put it on again. I took my mittens off at the bottom of the hill and put them back on at the top, just in case I fell. The snow was cold on my bare hands. I stopped one time and took a few shots of Big Bear lake below us.

I was bummed when I realized I had lost my goggles. Those things are expensive, but make skiing much more enjoyable for me. I took them off once when I was looking for Jim, because I was sweating, and somehow must have dropped them. Jim checked the lost and found when we stopped for lunch, but they weren't there. The guy told him to check back later. So at the end of the day I went back to the lost and found and asked again. This time they had them! I was so happy to get them back.

The next day we drove back down to Palm Springs, where the guys played golf and I walked along. The temperatures there were in the low 70's, but the sun was hot. It was really nice in the shade, though.

That snow-capped peak in the background is the south face of Big Bear Mountain, where we skied the day before on the north face.

Here's another shot from the golf course.

The next day we went to Laguna Beach to visit my mother's cousin, Rolf Engen and his wife Carol. I really should have taken pictures there, but didn't. Carol served us a delicious lunch before we had to leave for the airport and come back to Duluth.

Now we are packing for our trip around the world.

Warm Holiday Wishes to all!

2011-12-23T13:27:00.001-08:00

A photo of a park near my house. We got some snow today for the first time this year.

We are back home in Duluth, but just for one more day. We have made a brief stop of 12 days here, will be spending the holidays in California with our sons, then be back here for New Years and then start out on our next big adventure.

We are going around the world in 80 days! I will try to blog from each of the locations we stop at. We will be in Beijing and Kunming, China; Osaka, Japan; Delhi, India; Istanbul, Turkey; Rio and Recife, Brazil, and Normandy, France.

In the mean time,

I'd like to wish you all a very happy holiday season. Keep warm, enjoy your friends and family, eat well and stay healthy!

London

2011-12-02T06:39:00.001-08:00

I spent a lovely 6 days in London in mid-November. Jim was working most of the time, so I walked around by myself, rode the underground and buses, toured a palace and a couple museums, had lunch with a friend and met some knitters. It was a pretty full week.

The weather was not bad at all for London in November. We had some sunny days and some overcast, but very little rain. We always enjoy seeing Big Ben, because the year that we lived in London the tower was covered in scaffolding and we never saw it at all. I walked around the area near the houses of parliament and Westminster one sunny morning.

Here’s a bit of an old sign on a small street in Westminster.

I love the white painted houses in some areas of London.

I went out to Fulham to have lunch with a friend. After lunch I walked along the Thames walk to the Bishops palace in Fulham. This is a gate at the back of the palace.

This sign was on the Thames walk. Anyone want to try to translate?

There are more pictures of Westminster, Fulham and Greenwich on this page.

Our hotel was near Hyde Park and Kensington Palace Gardens. I walked through the park and took a tour of the palace one morning. This is part of the private gardens belonging to Kensington Palace. A wing of the palace is open to the public. The palace had fallen into disrepair during the reign of Queen Victoria, but she had it repaired and turned into an art museum. Other royals have lived in it since then and it has been renovated several times. Here is more about Kensington palace. Apparently they are working on new gardens and a tea house that will be open to the public.

They didn’t allow pictures inside, but I took this one looking out one of the windows of the palace. The tour was interesting. I commented on it on this web page.

A couple Châteaux

2011-11-09T07:15:00.001-08:00

I have a wonderful detailed map of the area we are living. It shows almost every building, the names of the individual farms, etc. I have discovered a few inaccuracies, but mostly the map is spot on.

I noticed it indicated a château not far out of town. During the middle ages, this part of France, and most of Europe was agricultural land owned by the king and managed by barons, counts, knights, etc who provided goods and services to the nobility. The kings had very large châteaux, the other nobles, smaller ones. Normandy is dotted with large and smaller estates, country houses, villas, châteaux, whatever they should be called. Though I've done some research I haven't found much information about these places. I don't know how old they are. I will continue to try to find out what I can.

I noticed a château indicated on my map just at the edge of town, so headed out one day to see if I could find it. It is in the middle of an apple orchard, where they were harvesting apples that day.

A couple weeks later, I was looking for someplace to walk again and discovered another château on the map, so I went in that direction and found a second one. Both of these had gates that were open, but were not sign-posted. Anyway I took the open gate as an invitation and walked in.

The gate at this place was a beautiful wooden one.

And here's a view of the garden inside the gate. For more pictures of both these châteaux, you need to go to my web page here.

I think these are some of the prettiest pictures I've posted of Normandy, so do check them out, then come back and let me know what you thought. :-)

A Couple Bike Rides in Normandy

2011-10-28T08:14:00.001-07:00

As promised last time I have now uploaded photos of the two bike rides we took when Ken and Marta were visiting.

It's all explained on this page on my website. I like to use this site, because I can control the size of the photos and you can see them all by scrolling up and down. Here's a teaser photo.

We are back in Duluth for a few weeks, but will return to London and Normandy in November.

As always, I love hearing from you, so do leave a comment if you enjoy this site.

Making a house a home

2011-10-19T06:52:00.001-07:00

We have been turning this new place into our own. It’s been a lot of fun. The house was furnished with the bare necessities when we took ownership, so fortunately we could move right in. But we have been adding lots of comforts, conveniences, doing some repairs, etc. and adding a few decorative touches.

Here is the living room today. I should do some kind of “hover over the objects to learn more about them,” but I’m not going to. The print over the mantel is one Jim and Marta, our sister-in-law bought in July in Utrecht. Marta managed to stash it there until last weekend, when we stopped to visit her and picked it up to bring it back here. We bought the Delft vase in an antique shop in Utrecht, possibly the same one where they bought the print in July. The Danish Christmas plate is one Marta brought when she came to visit in October. The lithograph on the left is one given us in Wrocław in September. It is of the old university building, one we’ve been in several times. The 3 watercolors on the right were in the house when we got here. The coffee table books are Asterix and TinTin that Ken and Marta brought over with them, a book about the University of Wrocław, another gift, and a book about beautiful villages in Normandy, a gift from some of Patrick’s friends who stayed with us in Duluth in August. So you see we are filling the house already with things that have meaning to us.

Here’s where we ate many lunches and several dinners when the weather was warmer. The table and chairs came with the house, but I bought the tablecloth in Wrocław. This is a typical lunch here.

Marta and I have worked on the garden. I think it deserves before and after pictures, because though the after is a huge improvement, it might not look that impressive if you don’t see the before.

I pulled all the weeds out of the gravel pathway. Marta and I removed the black plastic and stones, a number of weeds and pruned the shrubs. The plants that are left are forget-me-nots, daisies, strawberries and some miscellaneous weeds that we don’t recognize. There is room for more improvement next spring. We also planted two hydrangeas. The hydrangeas around this area are spectacular, so I wanted one or two of my own. I think they will do well without attention.

I also put some bulbs in the front corner, but you can’t see those yet.

When Ken and Marta were here we also bought 3 bicycles and went on two medium-long bike rides around here. That was fun.

We just have a few more days here—well two more. Then we head back to Duluth for 3 weeks, but will be back here for Thanksgiving. Our boys will be here then too. Ken and Marta, the boys and Jim’s sister, Alice are all partners in this venture with us. Alice is planning to be here in April. We hope the boys and Alice like the house. Ken and Marta gave it their two thumbs up when they were here.

I’ll try to post some photos of our bike rides if I get a little encouragement. It’s hard dong this when I don’t know if anyone is reading it.

Wrocław–a modern medieval city

2011-09-19T04:58:00.001-07:00

We are now in Wrocław, Poland. We’ve been coming here since 1991, so 20 years. I mentioned that to the fellow in the tourist office and he said he doesn’t hear that much from tourists. This city has changed so much since we first came here. It was heavily bombed at the very end of WWII and since then they have been working on rebuilding, modernizing and sprucing up the city, till now it is one of the loveliest cities in Europe, in my opinion. If you’ve never been here, try to fit it into your travel plans. Below is a photo of the eastern façade of the medieval town hall.

We’ve been here for 5 days and will be staying 4 more. We have an apartment, just a block off the main square, which is so convenient to almost everything. Last week I visited the botanical garden, which I just love. I think it is the best in the world, well at least the nicest one I’ve been in. The labeling of the plants is excellent, with labels in Latin and Polish on almost every plant. It is very nicely laid out, with walking paths in the woods and around the ponds. I think they much have every kind of plant that will grow in this climate. But I think I’ll do a blog post just about the garden, so won’t say more here.

This weekend we mostly walked around the city. The large town square is wonderful, so we spent much time there. We also climbed 307 steps to the top of a church tower that we hadn’t climbed before. Here is a picture I took from the top of the St. Elizabeth church tower. It shows the market square, which is the center of town. It is actually a very large area around a central group of buildings, that contains the medieval town hall and other buildings and is cut through by 2 small streets. There are many, many restaurants, cafes and shops here.

In the photo above the clock tower on the right is the town hall; the two towers near the top left corner are the Mary Magdalene church, which is the Polish National church, which started in Chicago, by Polish-American immigrants. The two streets I mentioned cut through the central square of buildings come out through those two archways you see on the façade facing us.

Here’s a modern fountain in the square. Straight ahead is the tourist office and to the right in the background is the smaller square called the salt square, because there was once a salt market here. I hope you can blow these pictures up, by clicking on them, if you want.

This photo (above) is taken from my seat in a café, where we had breakfast yesterday. It looks towards the St. Elizabeth church and the tower, from which the first picture was taken. There were not only no cafés on the square there were only 2 restaurants and one disco here the first time we came. Now there are more than I could count, on all sides of the square. This one is a Café de France and had a wonderful breakfast, so we had brunch here yesterday, skipped lunch and had a light supper back in our apartment.

Just a couple blocks away is this little alley of artists shops. The alley used to contain the butchers’ shops and is still called Butchers’ Alley. You can buy all kinds of art here and some shops also sell art supplies.

Our first 3 nights here we had dinner with 3 different groups of people. Since we have been coming here for 20 years, we do know quite a few people here. Our third dinner with good friends was in a newer restaurant that we had never been in before. It was decorated with cutwork and lace, with some faux lace painted on walls and ceilings. Each table had a khaki colored linen tablecloth topped with a cutwork tablecloth. And there were little pillows with cutwork covers all around the room. The traditional Polish food was delicious.

I have so many more pictures, but perhaps that’s enough for today. It is raining a bit outside today. I went out twice this morning, once to get laundry detergent and a second time to get groceries. I had to go to the Super Pharm(acy) to get the laundry detergent, but both that and the grocery store are only about 3 blocks from here.The weather has been wonderful since we’ve been here and is supposed to be nice again after tomorrow, so this afternoon seemed like a good day to stay in and work on the computer.

Settling in

2011-09-11T08:54:00.001-07:00

We are settling in. We’ve been shopping almost every day since we got here last Tuesday. There were no problems with the closing. Then we set up a bank account. Then we came straight to the house.

We love it here, but have been working on making it more convenient and comfortable day by day. The weather has been lovely. We’ve been going for short walks around the town and the lake.

There are no screens here. The French don’t use window screens. It’s not much of a problem, but there are a few flies. We have been needing a fly-swatter. We forgot to put it on our list, so didn’t get one on our first trip to the store. Then we did get it on the list, but forgot it the next time. On our next trip we looked but didn’t find one. Finally today Jim saw them and put one in our cart. We bought a number of small non-food items like paper, which we forgot to buy when we bought the printer, but mostly we bought groceries. We checked out and brought the groceries home, had lunch and worked on other things. Later we realized we never got the fly-swatter home. It must have fallen out of the cart. I think we’re just going to make friends with the flies.

We have internet, but no TV or telephone yet. That’s fine. All we really need is the internet. I managed to get a load of clothes washed today. We had bought a collapsible drying rack a few days ago. I set it up out in our little courtyard. We bought more groceries today and I made beef stew tonight in a baking dish in the oven. It turned out just right. We had green beans and a salad with it, and crème caramel for dessert. The ready-to-eat desserts available here are wonderful. Last week we had some delicious chocolate pudding. This time we decided to try the crème caramel. It was good.

Jim got the internet set up yesterday when the guy from Orange who was supposed to set it up for us, didn’t show up. We bought a wireless printer/scanner and Jim set that up today.

I have also been weeding the courtyard in back. It is partly concrete and partly gravel. The gravel has plastic under it, but some weeds had started growing up through the cracks in the plastic, so I pulled those up and it looks better now. We also put our name on the mailbox. It was hard getting the little plastic name plate out of the box and then getting it open and cleaned up, but we got it done. We’ve lost the key to the back gate. Just can’t figure out what happened to it.

My car is in Le Havre. We will drive up Tuesday to pick it up. That’s the earliest we can get it. There was a problem we thought might cause some delay, but it has been resolved. When Jim dropped the car off in Baltimore they didn’t give him back the original title. Later when he called about something else, he was asked if he had the title. They said he should have it. He said he didn’t have it. They looked apparently everywhere there, but couldn’t find it. The woman Jim was communicating with suggested it might be in the car--that Jim might have left it in the car. Since Jim knew he didn’t leave it in the car, he didn’t have much hope, but I thought maybe someone there had realized the title hadn’t gone with Jim and just put it in the car. Anyway we got a phone call yesterday morning saying they had found the title in the car. So yay, now we can pick up the car.

Here are some pictures of our little back garden.

Above is the gravel part between the garage and house. I’ve removed some of the weeds that show in this photo.

We’re not sure how long the garden has been untended. It looked pretty much like this when we saw it in May. Except then there was a rose bush in bloom. On the right wall are two pear trees. One seems to have dropped all its pears. The pears on the other don’t seem to be ripe. I am waiting to see if they will be any good.

I think I see strawberries here, among other things I don’t recognize.

That little shrub by the garage is a grape vine!

Which has grapes on it! I tasted a couple of these and they are delicious. There a 3 other smaller bunches. How do I know when to pick grapes?

And finally here is the outhouse. It has some old junk in it. The key in the lock still works, but I can’t get it out of the lock. It is on the outside. I guess I could lock stuff up in there.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Watching the Tropicana

2011-08-25T07:09:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned last time, we are shipping my car (a 2000 VW Jetta w/ 37,000 miles on it) to France, specifically Le Havre. We plan to pick it up there in September. It is supposed to be shipped on the Hoegh Tropicana, a Norwegian ship that transports automobiles.

We left the car in Baltimore a few weeks ago, because we were expecting company here and couldn't do it later. We have been watching the progress of the Tropicana through the ship tracking site http://www.marinetraffic.com.

We watched it go into and out of Jacksonville, Fl. Then it went out of range for a day on its way up to Baltimore. Wednesday morning as we were having our breakfast it reappeared on the tracking site. It was just outside the Chesapeake Bay headed in to Baltimore. We tracked it off and on all day. By supper time it was getting close. Then Jim discovered a traffic web cam on the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore. In the background we could see the bridge and make out ships going under it. By the ship tracking site we could tell that the Tropicana was close to the bridge. We watched both sites and sure enough there was our ship! We actually saw it in real time go under that bridge! Soon after that it was joined by the tug Donal G McAllister and docked very close to where Jim left my car.

Now we are frustrated that we can't track or watch it load my car, but we haven't found any port web cams.

Here's another picture of "our" ship. We will be able to track it leaving Baltimore, but then it will be out of range until it arrives in Bremerhaven, Germany, which is its first destination in Europe. We think it will be away from the east coast before the hurricane gets there.

Jim got e-mail at 2:00 am this morning from the "Notaire" asking for James' new passport information, because the one he sent before expired at the end of July. James had just received his new passport yesterday, so will scan and send the info to Jim today.

Preparation continues

2011-08-22T11:07:00.001-07:00

We have been busy providing all the documents required for the formation of a company and purchasing this house. We hope to close on the house on September 6th. We leave here on Saturday, arrive in Paris (Charles de Gaulle airport) on Sunday September 4th. We spend one night near Paris and a second in Domfront. Then we hope to be in the house on Tuesday.

We drove my car to Baltimore earlier this month. We left here August 5th, spent one night in Tomah, Wisconsin, the next night at my brother's in Oberlin, OH. He was the only one home. His wife and daughter were coincidently both in Minnesota. He and his wife are two of our partners in this adventure. We showed him more pictures of the house and left some Asterix books with him, that he is going to bring over to the house.

So here is the location we drove to in Baltimore.

That's it. Just a chain-link fence. They wouldn't let two of us go in, so Jim drove the car following a TWIC escort, who took him to all the offices he needed to go to to set the car up for it's overseas voyage. Then she dropped him back at our hotel, which was only a few blocks from here. We took our suitcase - we just had one- on the free shuttle into the inner harbor in Baltimore, had some lunch there at one of the food courts of the shopping area. Then took a train out to the airport, which cost us $1.65 each. From there we flew to Duluth and took a taxi home. We are sharing a car this month, which has been working out fine. If I need the car I drive Jim into work, but I can get along fine without a car most days.

We are now tracking the vessel that will be carrying the car to Le Havre, France. It is the Tropicana, owned by Norwegian company Hoegh. We have been able to track it's progress on this site. Today it is in Jacksonville, Florida. It is supposed to be in Baltimore tomorrow. We are hoping Irene (Hurricane) doesn't interfere with these plans. We want it to arrive in Le Havre as scheduled, so we can pick it up there on September 9th or 10th. We are scheduled to leave for Poland on the 13th, so we don't have too many extra days in our schedule.

Here is a photo of the ship.

So keep your fingers crossed for us that all goes as planned. :-)

Gardens

2011-07-14T07:10:00.001-07:00

In the U.S. we call it a yard, front yard or back yard, but in England they call it a garden. We wanted a little outdoor space of our own, so all the properties we looked at had some form of garden. Here are some photos of those outdoor spaces.

This was a lovely garden, which was slightly separated from the house.

Another part of the same garden.

And this is the pathway down to the front door of the house. The barn or storage space in the foreground was not part of the property.

This one had a similar situation. A lovely garden space surrounded by trees and a hedge,

And this is the pathway down to the house.

This empty field also went with the house. I believe it is the part on the right that has been mowed less often that went with the house we looked at. The other part went with the house next door.

This was a nice garden accessed from the house either by going through the garage or around the house next door and down the alley. the realtors suggested we might do some remodeling and add a deck and a door off the back of the house, which would have been very nice.

Another view of that garden. It had a lovely view out towards Mt-St-Michel in the far distance.

This one was a blank slate, again across the lane from the house.

We liked this one. No lawn to mow and close to the back door of the house.

The access from the street is either through the house (right) or through the neighbor's property straight ahead.

We liked this private space just outside the kitchen.

A private patio and a garden beyond.

But this one won us over. A private gravel patio outside the back door with space for planting and a garage accessed from the street behind the house. We think we'll enjoy this space very much.

Hallways and attic rooms

2011-07-08T08:37:00.001-07:00

(If you haven't read the previous post, you need to start there.)

These are some of the hallways that we saw in the 8 houses we visited. We just don't see things like this in the U.S.

We were told this house was remodeled in the 1930's and that these tiles date to that period.

And in the same house the 3-story glass block window apparently also dates from the '30's.

A more modern renovated hallway.

The owner of this cute little house was an artist and his studio was in the upstairs hallway.

Yes, that is a toilet in the hallway. There is no door. It obviously is never used and once the renovation is finished on the floor above would be removed.

My favorite hallway again. It has the old French foyer feel. This looks older to me, but we were told the house is post-war. (WWII, that is.)

This is the living room of the "gite" where we stayed.

This house had a huge attic room. The bathroom is behind the short wall.

This attic room had been painted red.

Another view of the red attic bedroom, showing a skylight.

And "our" unfinished attic bedroom.

The ceiling and top of the wall of the bathroom. We plan to have this room finished as a third bedroom.

Why Normandy? We've been asked that so I addressed that topic on this web page. Why Normandy? I did it on my web-site, because I wanted to include larger pictures without you having to click on the pictures to see the larger versions.

Why Normandy? (my web page)

Do leave a comment. Comments are the incentive to keep this up. Or email me. I'd love to hear from you.

We're buying a house in Normandy!

2011-06-27T09:27:00.001-07:00

Yes, after tossing the idea around for over 2 years, we are in the process of buying a house in a village in Normandy. We spent a week there last year (see the Normandy pages) and decided that we would like to return to vacation there on a regular basis.

This year we contacted some realtors and viewed 8 properties. We both liked one of them the best, though all of them had delightful features.

All of them had stairways and apparently I like to take pictures of stairways, so I have quite a few photos of the stairways in these houses. For completely arbitrary reasons I am going to feature those stairways in this post.

Here's the first one we saw. We saw several pink rooms and in this case it was the hallway that was painted pink.

This is the second floor landing of this house.

Many of the old stairways had been enclosed, or perhaps always were.

This house had been beautifully renovated downstairs, but they hadn't yet done the upstairs.

I think this is the only carpeted stairway we saw.

This is the front hall in the house with the stairway above. I don't know why really, but I love this hallway.

Here's a modern stairway. What was great about this one is that is was concealed behind a bookcase in the living room. The bookcase appears in the photo below.

The right half of this bookcase folds back to reveal the stairway shown above, also a door to a bathroom.

And here's the one in the house we are buying.

Another photo of 'our' stairway taken from the 3rd floor looking down.

Just a few notes on the buying process so far. I don't know if this is going to be interesting or not. After we got home and decided we did want to make an offer on this house, Jim e-mailed the agent and after about 2 days of wondering, she called. We made an offer , which she communicated to the buyer and which we heard two days later was accepted. We were sent a multi-page document by e-mail, which we printed at my sister-in-law's, because we were there for a wedding. We signed all pages of several documents, including an inspection of the house. We returned the signed documents by mail. This is called a "compromis de vente" or "promise to buy." We await instructions on the next step. Jim has done a lot of research on-line regarding purchasing property in France, and on the most economical way to transfer large funds. We expect to go over in September to close the deal and take possession of the house.

Poland, Prague and Kazakhstan

2010-10-31T14:24:00.001-07:00

In September we made a trip to Eastern Europe. Our first stop was Szklarka National Park in the southern Polish mountains near the border between Poland and the Czech republic. I went for a couple hikes there. Those pictures can be found on this web page.

From there we got a ride into Prague and spent two days there.

Prague pictures

And then we flew 8 more hours to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where we spent one day and then flew up to Ust Kamenogorsk, where we spent 3 more days.

In Kazakhstan I saw lots of beautiful textiles, embroidered wall hangings and cushions, felted carpets, woven braids and more. I saw two yurts in museums that were filled with beautifully decorated objects. You can find some of those pictures here.

This amazingly decorated, wooden cathedral is in Almaty.

More photos of Taiwan

2010-08-18T12:57:00.001-07:00

I did get my Taiwan photos organized finally. It was fun having my son show me around Taiwan. We went into Taipei on the high speed rail, which took 32 minutes and left exactly on time every time. We visited two national parks, several temples, lots of restaurants, which I mentioned in the previous post, one family home museum, a seaside historic town, and much more.

There are 3 pages of photos, which link to each other, but I'll give all 3 links here:

Taipei

Around Taipei

Taroko Gorge

I'm going to be lazy and not add any photos to this post. Go visit those pages for the photos.

I'm leaving in 2 weeks for Poland, Prague and Kazakhstan-yikes!

Food and Restaurants in Taiwan

2010-05-06T08:54:00.001-07:00

My son, Patrick is in Taiwan for nine weeks. So, of course I went to visit him there. This was my chance to sample Asian food, and I took a lot of pictures of our meals and other food and restaurants, so here goes:

We tried lots of things from street food to elegant restaurants.

This is our first course at a fancy Chinese Restaurant in Hsinchu. (for those of you who read Pinyin: Xinzhu) This place was quite elegant, but we were there after dark and the pictures I tried to take just don't show it very well.

Patrick getting started on the first course.

On our last day together we went to Danshui, a resort town on the coast. Here we tried some street food starting with these fried pork rolls on a stick. See the picture at the top of the stand.

That evening we ate at a dumpling restaurant. The dishes here came one at a time, so this is the first two. These dumplings were a bit tricky to eat, but delicious.

This was our first lunch in Taipei. Patrick ordered some fried noodles, I think and I ordered curried chicken with rice. Both meals came like this with a sizzling soup. There was a flame under the soup, which had fresh vegetables, tofu, seaweed and mushrooms in it. It cooked while we ate the other stuff, then we asked them to put out the flame. They took the tray away and we wondered if they thought we were done, but no they brought it back with the flame out, so I guess they couldn't just extinguish it at the table. It was all delicious.

Patrick had to work for three days, so I walked around Taipei on my own those days and ended up sampling some pastries for lunch. This was a pumpkin cheese cake that I had at a Big Tom near the Sun Yat Sen memorial park.

These cows are the symbol for Big Tom.

I love how this restaurant made sure to cover all the bases in its name.

And this was a very small English pub I passed.

And another combination I've never seen in the U.S.

There are lots of bakeries in Taiwan showing beautiful pastries like these in their window.

This was my meal at a Japanese restaurant in Hsinchu again.

We traveled by train to Hualien on the east coast, where we spent 3 days exploring a beautiful national park, Taroko Gorge. This was our lunch at a snack place in the park. We also bought this guide book in English there. My "cold milk" turned out to be flavored with chocolate and tea. It was good.

We ate on the terrace, but under a roof as it started to sprinkle while we were having lunch.

That night in Hualien it was pouring. You can see how wet my hat and Patrick's jacket are. We walked around a while before we found this seafood place. Don't see the food in this picture? Look behind Patrick. This place advertised fresh seafood.

This place was popular and quite large. It is all open to the outdoors. We had several seafood dishes, here, but apparently I didn't get photos of the food.

Breakfast in our hotel. We ordered what we wanted the day before and picked a time for the room service delivery. The breakfast came wrapped in plastic. Here I had ordered the fried dumplings and Patrick got the American breakfast. The dumplings were very good.

A snack we had the next afternoon back in the hotel. These pastries were delicious. Both cups here have iced milk tea in them. They seal the cup, shake it up and give you a straw to puncture the seal. Then they handed them to Patrick in a bag with one cup upside down.

That night we ate at the Saint Pink restaurant and stone museum. The local product here is the marble and granite from the area.

This is the outside of the restaurant.

And these are our meals. Patrick had Thai Chicken, I think and I had Japanese pork. The meal also included a first course soup and creme brulee for dessert.

Another room service breakfast. They offered tea or milk, and had a coffee machine down in the lobby if you wanted coffee. This morning we went down for coffee before the breakfast came up.

Our best picnic lunch. The bakery we had planned to buy lunch in wasn't open in the morning. We decided Asians don't consider bread or pastries to be breakfast food. So we stopped at a Carrefour and got this baguette, some ham and grapes for our lunch which we ate on a marble table after our morning hike.

I'll post picture of the spectacular scenery in this park later.

Ghana and Turkey

2010-01-07T13:38:00.001-08:00

This post is way overdue, but last year got busy.

So here are links to the pages I did last year with pictures of our trip to Ghana in October, 2009

And some pages for Ankara, Turkey. From this page you can link to the photos of Beypazari, a lovely town in the hills west of Ankara.

Happy New Year!!! and

Happy and safe Traveling in 2010!!

Cigarette Pie and other yummy things

2009-11-02T15:33:00.001-08:00

We ate at a restaurant/museum on top of one of the hills of Ankara. We were taken here by two wonderful Turkish women, sisters. You enter the restaurant and go through some rooms that are really a museum devoted to the traditional home in Turkey and food preparation in the traditional way.

The door to the restaurant is just below those flags.

Here are some dolls set in an interior.

Here we are crossing another room. We climbed two flights of stairs, I think to get to the dining room.

This is another display in one of the rooms we went through.

Here a woman is rolling out some dough into a flat pancake. We got to try this. It looked like a quesadilla with cheese between layers of phillo dough. Yummm.

Here's what one looked like just after being grilled.

This is taken looking out a window. That balcony is used for seating when it's nicer out.

And finally here we are at our table. We had a view overlooking Ankara. At times we saw cats crawling on the roof just outside the window.

This dish was called 'cigarette pie' on the menu. Needless to say Jim and I wouldn't have ordered it, but our hostesses thought we should try it. As you can see it is similar to a pizza with Turkish seasoning, and in a long cigar shape.

After he put the 'pie' on the table the waiter went away and returned in this costume with this big knife and threatened to chop Jim with it.

But he was just joking. He then cut the "pie" with the big knife very rapidly. Chop chop chop.

This was our dessert. I think this is one serving, but we split it 4 ways, which was just enough. It is pumpkin soaked overnight in sugar water, then baked and sprinkled with ground pistachios.

As we were leaving these women were making a different dish. These are like teeny-tiny meat filled dumplings or ravioli. They would be boiled and served with tomato sauce.

The dough was cut into tiny squares and a tiny bit of meat mixture put on each one. She is folding them up here.

More pictures from Rome

2009-07-01T08:37:00.001-07:00

I did get a page of pictures put together for our one-week trip to Rome. This is the trip I described in the previous post.

Looking back at the pictures I feel I'd like to go back, but then I remember when we were there we felt we didn't need to return to Rome. I would not go again in the summer. It was just too hot and crowded. I would guess Rome is usually crowded, but in winter might be less so. The other thing I didn't like was the traffic. There were vehicles everywhere!! They need to institute a city driving tax to try to reduce the number of vehicles. There isn't enough room for them to park, so they park in the pedestrian crosswalks and intersections. Crossing the streets was difficult. The motor cycles are more annoying than the cars--noisier and in the way of pedestrians more. Unfortunately their subway/underground system isn't that great either. We did ride the two lines that go under the city and that worked out for us some of the time. One line stopped about 6 blocks from our apartment. Walking in the smaller streets was fun, though.

We also enjoyed the museums and piazzas and food. We are on a hunt for paintings by Caravaggio. Rome was a good place to start. We saw 24 there, I think in 6 museums and 3 churches.

And we loved the apartment we rented for the week. The page of pictures includes some photos of the apartment and some description.

Here's a link to the page of pictures of Rome.

I'm off this afternoon to a family reunion, visit with my mother, High School Class reunion and then a visit with Jim's family. I won't be home again till the 19th. Jim left this morning. He has meetings in St. Paul. I'm driving down to meet him and we'll continue from there.

Spring 2009 Travel-Gnomes, Caravaggio, Roman ruins etc.

2009-06-19T13:17:00.001-07:00

I have been traveling again and have lots of photos, but have not had the time to sort them and put them together in any coherent way, so I thought I'd just do a quick update and hope to get to the photos still before another trip.

In May we flew to Frankfurt, Germany, spent a night then flew to Wrocław, Poland, where we spent 2 1/2 days, then back to Frankfurt and from there to Rome, for a week. It was our first trip to Rome and we tried to do it all. But our real mission there was to see as many paintings by Caravaggio as we could. We were pretty successful there. We did see 24, which is almost all that are on view to the public. One or two were on tour, so we missed those and there is a ceiling he painted, which is in a house that is only open one day a month. I couldn't find out this information before we left home. It turns out the house was open on the day we arrived, but we didn't know it then. When we got there the next day we found out we had missed it. We will try again some day. It is the only ceiling Caravaggio painted.

In Wrocław, I walked around the botanical garden one day, which was full of blooming flowers. It's a gorgeous garden. And then I picked up a brochure telling me approximately where some of the little bronze gnomes can be found and I walked around looking for those. Here's a picture of one of them. I photographed 20-some, but those photos aren't on-line yet.

I took lots of pictures in Rome. Rome was hot (upper 80's) and crowded with way too many vehicles for comfort or safety, but we had a great time walking around, occasionally riding the subway, eating Italian food, visiting churches, museums and trying to find parks. Rome has a dearth of parks, but we did find two to walk around in. (I got spoiled in Paris with all the gorgeous parks there.)

This page on my website has links to some of the walks we took and some of my pictures. I'll add more when I get a chance.

Here's a photo of Rome as a teaser.

I really need to find some time to organize these.

Venice

2009-01-14T13:47:00.001-08:00

We visited Venice in October 2008. It's now January 2009, but I didn't get around to posting about our trip here until now.

We got to see Venice while it was still dry, at least part of the time. When we arrived in the afternoon we took a vaporetto to get to St. Mark's Square (San Marco) which was close to our hotel. We had a very nice evening, but wondered what the funny-looking platforms we saw in the square were used for. The next morning we found out. The square was flooded that morning, but was dry again in the afternoon. So we got to see both aspects of the city.

This is the square with St. Mark's and the campanile tower.

Unfortunately the bridge of Sighs was undergoing renovation and was mostly boarded up. This is all we could see of it. In case it's not clear, the bridge is right in the middle of this photo with everything around it boarded up.

For more of my pictures and the rest of the story visit this web page.

Jim and Ceci's visit to Venice

Four days in South Korea

2008-04-24T12:35:00.001-07:00

Would you like to spend 55 sleepless hours traveling, most of them cramped in a crowded airplane and the rest in airports in order to spend 4 days in South Korea?

Why not?

Actually if that's how he had asked me I might have said "no thanks." But he didn't mention that we would only be there for 4 days.

I'm awfully glad I went though. It was a great trip. It was a little different from most of the traveling we've done in that we had a local guide most of the time. A south Korean (who has lived in Minneapolis for 25 years) arranged the trip and traveled with us for most of it. He arranged for his nephew to drive us around Seoul and also hired a guide to show us the sights of Seoul on the weekend.

The first thing we saw was the changing of the guard ceremony at the Royal Palace. It's a museum now, so this is a show just for tourists.

Near the palace we also visited the National Folk Museum of Korea, where we learned a lot about Korean traditional culture. There were displays showing how they make Kimchee, the fermented and seasoned cabbage dish that is uniquely Korean.

And we saw several temples. In front of all of them we saw these colorful paper lanterns hanging in honor of the Buddha's upcoming birthday. There were services going on in some of the temples we visited.

The rest of my pictures are on this site. South Korea Pictures. There are 3 pages--one of the weekend in Seoul, then one of the day we spent in Chuncheon and then one more with a few more pictures from our last afternoon in Seoul.

Rosemaling

2008-03-28T06:54:00.001-07:00

I have just finished an 8-week rosemaling course. It met on Thursdays for 8 weeks. I missed two weeks because I was traveling, but I did do some painting.

Here are the things I painted in this class. Rosemaling is Norwegian folk painting, that is normally done on wood. It can be done on other surfaces, but wood is the most common one. I, however don't feel I'm good enough to paint on a lot of wooden objects. I am still practicing and learning, so I do a lot of painting on paper. sometimes if the design turns out well I scan it and make cards from it. So during this class I painted many designs on paper and 3 wooden plates.

I paint free-hand and my designs are my own. Many rosemalers, especially at the level I paint trace designs or sketch out designs before they start, but I'm just too lazy to do it that way. This is a6-inch plate.

This is one I did on paper, scanned and added the outer color on my computer, to use as a card. This is the extent of my photo-enhancing skills.

This is a 7-inch wooden plate.

I did these three yesterday. The teacher had left a sketch on the board from the previous day's class and I used that as inspiration for this design, which I did three times with the same colors, but slight variations in the design. I cannot do 2 identical designs.

Finally, this is inspired by a painted sketch done by Norwegian rosemaler Nils Elingsgard.

Now for something completely different

2008-03-05T07:54:00.000-08:00

I'm not one for taking more artistic photos, or looking for unusual angles. I just try to get the best shot I can to show the sight I'm looking at. But sometimes I can't get far enough away from a tall building to get the whole thing in the shot, so I started taking some shots looking up at the building or monument from right up close to it. I've collected some of these and put them on a new page. Below is a house in Paris on, I think the Rue François Miron, in the 4th arrondissement.

And these two old half-timbered houses are on the same street. They may be the oldest houses in Paris.

So here is the link to more of these photos. Looking up.

Le parc de Belleville

2008-02-27T11:39:00.000-08:00

Slipping back to Paris for this post. Not me physically--just in the photos. I took so many photos while I was there that I didn't have time to get them all posted. Some I thought were worth posting later. These pictures of the park in the north east of Paris (20th arrondissement) were some I wanted to share with you.

The park is on a hillside. I entered at the bottom and climbed up a lot of steps before I started taking pictures. At the top I realized people were watching something happeneing below us, so I looked over the edge of the wall and saw that I was standing above a film crew getting ready for a shoot. I don't know who it was or what they were filming, but I stayed to watch for a while. It was some kind of children's program or film.

You can see the rest of my pictures of this park and the shoot on this page. Parc de Belleville.

The John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon

2008-02-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

I shouldn't complain about the weather here, as so many people have had really horrendous weather this week-killer-tornadoes, floods and heavy snow storms, that stopped traffic for hours. Here in Duluth we had the driest January on record with about 1 inch of snow total for the whole month. It was very cold-in the single digits and colder for many days, but it did warm up for the start of the John Beargrease sled dog Marathon, which starts close to our house. The warm-up was nice for the spectators, but not good for the dogs. Apparently they prefer temperatures around 0F.

Jim and I walked down to the start of the race and I took a few pictures, which you can see on this site. John Beargrease. There are links there to the official race site and that will explain more about the race, if you are interested. And here's preview photo. More like this on the page linked above.

This is one of the main streets in Duluth. They closed the street for this race and piled a lot of snow in the middle of it. The trail runs up the middle of the street for about 100 yards and then turns into a golf course and meets up later with a snow-mobile trail.

Enjoying the winter

2008-01-03T10:46:00.000-08:00

Happy New year to all! I hope you had a wonderful holiday break and are looking forward to the best year ever.

We don't get snow for the holidays every year in Duluth, so we were happy that it happened this year and our plans were to stay home. Our sons were both here for a week and we got out in the snow as much as we could. On the day after Patrick got in we had blizzard conditions, which left snow in funny patterns on our back window.

One of my Christmas presents was this 3-D puzzle of the Sears Tower. We all had fun putting it together.

We got out skiing 4 or 5 times while the guys were here. What are they looking at here? Check out this page of pictures to find out. Snow is not all fun. There is work involved in moving it around. Here Patrick is helping us move all the snow off the deck. We were afraid it was getting too heavy and might leak through the roof to the family room below, so we cleared off the deck.
See? It's all gone now. Ready to fire up the barbeque and have a picnic.

And one more shot looking out over a park in Duluth.

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-16T14:38:00.000-08:00

December is always a busy month for me. I like to decorate the house, so that gets done first, then we always host a party for my husband's colleagues, so that's next. We had the party last Friday and now I have some time to bake, shop, wrap gifts and write cards and notes. Because it's important to get things mailed early, I have some packages ready to mail first thing Monday morning.

This is the table in the family room set for 8. It's a narrow table, so with the chargers there wasn't room for a centerpiece.
This is the table in the dining room. I have used the gold chargers in here before, but decided to change things around this year. We had 10 in this room. The table expands to seat up to 14, but 10 was enough. I always use cloth napkins when I have company. I enjoy finding new ways to fold them. These are some that I believe belonged to my grandmother or great aunt. I don't think they were used much, though before I acquired them. I use them and wash and iron them. I don't do tablecloths, though. My tablecloths are mostly easy-care.

If you want to see pictures of my home decorated for the holidays, take a look here. I was in Norway in June and have had a collection of things Norwegian for a while now, which worked themselves into my decor this year. Growing up we always had Norwegian cookies, breads, flötegröt, sylte, and more during the holidays, so that's when we would remember our Norwegian heritage. So I guess displaying my Norwegian things at Christmas fits in with remembering my heritage and family at this time of year. (I'm 1/4 Norwegian and 1/4 Swedish.)

I wish you a most joyous holiday season, spent with the ones you love, full of laughter, good times all the things you like best!!

Back Home in Duluth

2007-12-03T06:12:00.000-08:00

We arrived home late Friday night Nov. 30th. I heard from the woman sitting next to me that they were predicting 6-12 inches of snow for Saturday. At this time of year we hardly ever get as much as they predict, but I thought some snow would be nice.

Sure enough, the next morning after we got one car started and got some groceries the snow started and continued all afternoon. On Sunday we shoveled ourselves out. We have a walkway to the front of the house and another one going back to the alley, where the cars are, so we really have to shovel both front and back, but a wonderful neighbor was having fun with a new snow-blower and did the sidewalk out by the street. That's a big part of the job, so we really appreciated that.

Now, I've been tagged. I appreciate the honor and am going to try to follow the rules, which say that I have to list random facts about myslef beginning with each letter of my middle name. My middle name is MARGARET, so this is a challenge for me.

I Married my college chemistry teacher in 1972. I like to say he’s much older than I, but we’re really only 3 years apart. He was a 2nd year grad student and I was a 3rd year undergrad when I landed in his Chemistry lab for Chem 101 or whatever the number was. Thirty-five years later, I know it was the right decision.

(This was taken last year at a Gala Christmas Party.)

I Am 56 years old. I was a kid in the ‘50’s, a teenager in the ‘60’s and a college student, newlywed and young mother in the ‘70’s. They were great decades.

I Read novels and memoirs in French. Last summer I enjoyed 4 novels by Claude Michelet about an agricultural town in central France, and then read his memoir of his childhood. I’m reading some Colette, now.

I Get to travel to all kinds of wonderful places with my husband. We even went around the world in 2006, stopping in Beijing, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Karachi, Quetta, Dubai, Pisa, Florence and Rome. If you want to see those pictures, they start here with Beijing.

I lived in Africa for a year. In 1969-70 I lived with my family in the Congo. That was before it became Zaire, which is now again the Congo.

(My mother painted this during our stay there.)

I’m a Rosemaler. I started trying to learn this interesting folk art in 2001 and have been working at it off and on ever since. I hope I am still improving and will continue for many years to learn and get better at it. Here is one of my painted plates.

I Enjoy working cryptic cross-word puzzles. A lot of people have never seen these, but they are the standard type of cross-word in England. I am doing some really challenging ones right now written by Frank Lewis for ‘The Nation.‘

I Try not to brag too much, but I’m really proud of our two sons. They both have PhD’s now. James just finished his in October. They live in Boston and Santa Barbara. They have great jobs and are fun to have around. And they’re both single, play the French horn, enjoy sports and outdoor activities, so if you know any sweet girls…. (Just kidding guys.)

My legal middle initial is S. which is the only way I could figure out how to get this one in.

I love Snow and skiing, snowshoeing, sledding or just walking in it. It makes me happy every time I see it, falling, on the ground, even in the form of slush.
(This was taken in our front yard after a big storm last March. We don't have this much snow now.)

Climbing in Paris with Patrick and James

2007-11-26T08:11:00.000-08:00

When the boys were little they loved to climb steps, so we climbed the tallest towers in all the cities we visited. We have climbed St. Paul's in London, the Dom tower in Utrecht, Sacre Coeur in Paris, and lesser known towers and hills in England and other parts of Europe.
I guess I thought we'd done all the towers, but Jim decided while the boys were here again that we should climb some towers, so we did.

First we climbed the 387 (or 402 if you believe a different web site) steps to the top of the south tower of Notre Dame cathedral. Here is a picture of some of the chimera up there. If they don't act as downspouts they are called chimera instead of gargoyles. Notre Dame has both.

The next day we climbed to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. (about 287 steps-I counted) This is the spiral stairway in the Arc de Triomphe. That's my boot in the bottom of the photo and some strangers climbing up behind us.
Here is a picture looking toward the Bois de Boulogne west of Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
The next day we climbed the steps some of which are outside and others inside to the base of the dome of Sacré Coeur. That was 200 to 300 steps, not counting all the steps that you have to climb to get to the church in the first place. Then for some reason to climb the tower you have to go down to the basement and climb from there. The photo of the church here was taken on the day I visited it with Alice, which was a nice sunny day. It wasn't that nice the day we climbed it, so I don't have pictures from below on that day.

This is the view from the base of the dome. You can see the row of openings around the dome in the photo above. That's where this is taken from, looking down at the steps below the basilica. There must be about 200 of them too.
Here we all are in front of the Eiffel Tower. It was a grey day and the line was long to go up it this day, so we didn't.
But we did return the next day when the weather was better. The line was still long so we climbed to the second level and then bought a ticket to ride the elevator to the top. That was about 700 steps, which really felt like a lot. They are numbered on the steps-668 to the second level then about 15 more to the elevators and another 15 to the lookout area at the very top.
This is actually taken from the second level. From the top the horizon is less interesting, because you are so high you are looking down on most of the easily recognized buildings. This is looking toward the Montparnasse tower, with the golden dome of Les Invalides church on the left.

Sadly, I expect this will be my last post from Paris. We are packing up to return to Duluth on Friday. But I still have lots more pictures of Paris, so I could continue to put together web pages and link them here. It's just that I would be doing it from Minnesota instead of Paris.

Walking in Paris with Alice

2007-11-17T03:07:00.000-08:00

My sister-in-law has been here for most of this week and we've done a lot of walking. We followed 3 different guided walks, which were interesting. I have enjoyed the walks by Paris Walks. But this week things have been made more difficult by the transport strike here. This is one of the old metro entrances that were designed and built in 1900 to entice people to use the underground system. This was quite innovative and different in those days. We were lucky enough to get a train on the first morning of the strike that took us to the Mont Martre area of Paris up on top of the hill. We walked around the area before the walk started because we arrived early.This is the basilica on top of the hill called Sacre Coeur or "Sacred Heart." It was built in 1875. We were there on a cold, sunny day.
There are lots and lots of fabric stores in the Mont Martre area. We went into this one and found all these cute little mannequins. They are about 3 feet tall dressed in tailored outfits of all kinds. I took several pictures here. I asked Alice to get behind the table for this one so you could see the size of the mannequins, but I'm not sure it works very well.

And yesterday we took a walking tour of Hemingway's Paris in the left bank area. This is the fountain in the center of the traffic circle where the walk ended. We had lunch in the restaurant with the red awning. We both had Steak, French fires and salad. It was very good. Their bread was also especially good.

Today we are expecting my older son to arrive. He should be at the ariport now and trying to find a way to get here in spite of the transport strike. We sent him suggestions for several options to check into. He's 33, and has done some traveling, so we think he'll figure out something. I'm not at all happy about this strike, but we are dong our best to get around in spite of it, and doing more walking than we would if the trains and busses were all running normally.

le Château Vaux-le-Vicomte

2007-11-07T08:36:00.000-08:00

As I promised yesterday here is the page of pictures from Vaux-le-Vicomte. It's a wonderful château in the style of Versailles, but in a more manageable size. I suppose Louis IX would have a fit if he heard anyone say they prefer this one to his. The other thing I liked about it was that it was not at all crowded--no lines anywhere. So it is a recommended spot to visit if you can get there. I think you need a car. Vaux-le-Vicomte

I took more pictures of educational street signs today, which I would like to add here. Maybe I'll get that done soon too. I have walked past some of these without noticing them until today.

Would we be smarter if our street signs were more educational?

2007-11-07T02:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a street sign that I passed yesterday in the Marais. The sign tells me that I am in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. (Paris is divided up into 20 smaller districts, each of which has it's own mayor.) It tells me the name of this street (King of Sicily) and that this king lived from 1220 to 1297, was the brother of King Lois IX and was proclaimed king of Sicily in 1266. Do your street signs give that much information? I'm starting a collection of photos of Paris street signs.

I have a page of pictures of the castle we visited called Vaux-le-Vicomte almost ready to link. I just need about half an hour to finish it up. Maybe tomorrow. I have to go out now to get some bread for lunch, then walk to an area near here that I want to visit today, then get back here because I have an apointment to get my hair cut this afternoon at 3:00. So you see I can't do it today. I will try to get to it tonight.

Walking the streets of Paris - It's all good

2007-10-26T01:56:00.000-07:00

My favorite activity here is just walking the streets. :-)

I overheard an American ask a guard for directions. The place he asked for was far enough away that the guard couldn't give him complete directions, just pointed in the general direction he should go. The man was pulling a suitcase, but the woman with him wasn't. I wondered where they were going with just one suitcase. No one travels that light these days. I asked him if he wanted to look at a map. I always have a map with me. But he responded "Oh we have a map. We're just too lazy to look at it." Then he added "It really doesn't matter. It's all good." I thought that was a good observation, but he was pulling a suitcase. If I were pulling a suitcase I would want to get rid of it and get out walking without it as soon as possible.

But it's true that here in Paris It's all good. I haven't found an area yet that I didn't feel comfortable in. Sometimes I choose not to go down a certain street because there is a lot of construction on it, which blocks the sidewalk, or because the architecture is mostly post war or between the wars-boring concrete. Those streets are rare, however and I find almost any street I choose has some hidden surprise or interesting shop to recommend it.

So, I have put together some photos of some of the streets I've walked the past few weeks
on this page--Streets of Paris.

Antiques market

2007-10-22T03:48:00.000-07:00

We arrived home from our trip back to Philadelphia in the middle (literally) of this antiques fair. We had no idea this would be going on. We came up out of the metro and here we were. We took our luggage home and rested a bit then came back out to explore some more.

There were many booths on both sides of the street for two blocks. This is right in the main street nearest us. Many vendors were selling antiques, and I think nice ones, though I'm no expert.

There were also things like glass,

books,

Items from Africa,

and the Orient,

But mostly from Europe. Look at this huge crystal egg! Porcelaine, china, silver, linens and lots and lots of other materials. I wish I'd had more time and free shipping.

By the way, I didn't shrink these pictures, so if you click on them you can see all the tiny little details.

A brief note explaining my absence

2007-10-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

I just want to let my loyal visitors know that I will be away for a few more days. We've had company here, which kept me busy for a few days and now we are heading back to Philadelphia for Jim's mother's funeral on Thursday. We will be back here on Saturday. So I haven't given up on this blog, just am taking a break from it. I'll get back when I can.

Ile de la Cité

2007-10-08T02:12:00.000-07:00

The very center of Paris is on an island in the Seine. If you've been to Paris, you no doubt have been on this island. Notre Dame is on the island as well as La Sainte Chapelle, two of Paris' most well-known and well-loved landmarks. My mother wanted to see la Sainte Chapelle again, so I waited until she got here to go there this time. You have to wait in line to go through security to get in. We rode the metro to the island and began our visit with the old prison called the Conciergerie. My pictures of this part of the island are here.

After visiting the Conciergerie and La Sainte Chapellle, we walked the short distance to Notre Dame Cathedral. Notre Dame was completed 80 years earlier than La Sainte Chapelle in the mid-1200's.

My mother is back home in Indiana now. It was great having her here and being able to show her a little bit of my life here in Paris this fall. I doubt that she misses all the steps she climbed in Paris.

We tried again to do the canal boat trip

2007-10-01T01:41:00.000-07:00

And this time we were sucessful. We got seats right in front of the boat and enjoyed the trip.
The rest of the pictures are here. Canauxrama boat trip on Canal St. Martin.

What's this wet stuff?

2007-09-30T01:31:00.000-07:00

Rain you say? Rain in Paris? Oh well I guess it was bound to happen. I've been in Paris for 26 days and one of them was rainy. Here are some pictures of the rainy day we had last week. We took my mother into the city and then into the Jardins des Tuileries. Naturally I took some pictures of the gardens and flowers and trees. And I know you were dying for a better picture of Jim and my mom, so there it is. How's that?

The Carnavalet Museum

2007-09-28T02:49:00.000-07:00

I'd heard of The Carnavalet Museum, which sounded interesting, so on the first day of my mother's visit here that's where I decided to go. It was chilly yesterday, so it seemed a good day to do a museum. We rode the 76 bus to the rue du faubourg St. Antoine just past the Place de la Bastille and walked from there the 3 blocks to the museum. This museum tells the history of Paris in paintings, interiors, and sculpture. After spending a couple hours in the museum, we walked a couple blocks from there to the Place des Vosges, where we had lunch before heading back here in the afternoon. This photo is taken from the courtyard inside the museum. The museum is in two old houses in Paris. This one was lived in by Mme de Sévigné in the 18th century I think. She is best known for her many letters written to her daughter and others. I just ordered a book containing some of her letters, which I think will be interesting to read.

You can see more of my pictures here.

Les Jardins du Luxembourg

2007-09-24T13:31:00.001-07:00

I finally got to visit the Luxembourg gardens this weekend. Actually I spent time there on both Saturday and Sunday. The weather was wonderful and the gardens were full of people, but they are so big that there was still plenty of open space. I put some more pictures here.

We did have a little rain today around noon, but it really didn't last long. I was out shopping and got caught in it, but I had a rain hat and rain coat, so I was fine and I only had two blocks to walk anyway. I was almost home before the rain started.

I'm looking forward to Jim getting home Wednesday.

Journées Européennes du patrimoine II

2007-09-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

Day two- Sunday.

As I mentioned before, I went to see a few of the ministry buildings in Paris 7th arrondissement. This photo is of the "salle de bains du roi." The king in question is actually the King of England--George VI. Check this page for the rest of these pictures. Paris Ministries

Journées Européennes du patrimoine

2007-09-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

Many European countries celebrated their heritage on September 15th and 16th. Here in Paris many museums were free and other public buildings that are not normally open to the public were open for part of all of the weekend. At the chateau de Vincennes they were having a special two-day medieval festival. There was to be a dinner and ball in the evening at which medieval costumes were required. They gave a phone number to call to rent costumes. Since Jim is out of town, I didn't think I wanted to go to a dinner or ball without him, so passed on the costume. But I did want to go and see the costumes, so I went for the parade Saturday.

My pictures are here.

On Sunday I went into Paris and got inside the prime minister's residence, the ministry of agriculture, the ministy of education, the town hall of the VIIème (each of Paris's 20 arrondissements has its own mayor and town hall) and the ministry of foreign affairs. That last one was spectacular. Again I took lots of pictures, except not at the prime minister's residence, where it was strictly forbidden. I will try to get those pictures organized on a web page, and let you know when it's ready.

Le Canal St. Martin

2007-09-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

On Friday I decided to go visit the Canal St. Martin. I knew of it first from the movie Amelie, then from Google maps, then I found these boat tours on the canal and thought that sounded like fun, so I decided to take one. I wrote about it on this page.

Le Marché

2007-09-14T00:26:00.000-07:00

There are still public markets all over France. There is one 2 blocks from here on Wednesdays and Fridays. We arrived here on a Tuesday and I visited the market Wednesday, Saturday and again on Wednesday, so 3 times in the first 8 days here. I took the picture above on my first visit. Then I took some more pictures this week, which I have put on another page. Market photos.

I can buy most types of food at the market - produce, meat, prepared foods, cheese, but not canned or frozen or packaged foods. Also you can buy clothes, underwear, lingerie, toys, scarves, trinkets, and other things there. I need to go to a store today for kleenex, paper towels, plastic bags and milk, but I've got food in the house to last me for a while.

Famous Monuments in Paris

2007-09-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

It has occurred to me that my readers may be expecting pictures of the Eifel Tower, Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame, etc. Well, this isn't my first visit to Paris and I've seen all those things on previous visits. I have been visiting areas of the city that are new to me and doing things I have not done before, so no photos yet of the big monuments. I will visit those and take pictures some time.

I have been to the Place de la Bastille and photographed the tower there. We haven't felt any rain since we have been here, but some days are sunnier than others. The temperatures have been in the 60's to low 70's every day, so just about perfect. Most days I've gone out without a sweater or jacket and usually with short or 3/4 length sleeves.

Here is the Tour Eiffel taken from the top of the Montparnasse tower. It was a little hazy the day we were there. I set my camera to take high resolution pictures and then cropped the photo when I got home.

And here is a photo of Sacre Coeur taken from the parc des Buttes-Chaumont, which I visited yesterday.

And finally another photo from the top of Montparnasse--Les Invalides.

So I hope this will satisfy those of you who were looking for more famous monuments. :-)

I did put some pictures from my walk at Place des Vosges on this web site.

A visit to Louis Pasteur Museum

2007-09-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

We decided to try to visit the Louis Pasteur museum, which we thought was on the campus of the Louis Pasteur Institute, a bio-medical research institution in Paris.

We passed this church, which was called St. John the Baptist de la Salle. I hadn't heard of this saint before, but I liked the statue of him with the children.

Then we passed a building on our right with lots of people walking around it carrying notebooks. They looked like students. We still weren't sure where the museum was, but through a gate on our left we saw this statue, which Jim recognised from some papers he'd read.

We went into the reception area at the guard house and asked for the museum and were told it was here. The girl asked us for ID's and made us name badges right on the spot. We clipped them onto our clothes and walked into the museum. Inside we saw signs directing us upstairs. The desk for the museum was empty, but a sign said it would be open at 2:00. It was 1:55, so we waited. Pretty soon a woman came along to take our admission (3 Eu. each) and then guided us on a private tour of the museum. It started in the laboratory where Pasteur had worked. There were quite a number of instruments he had used and vials, flasks, wooden models, etc. that he had used or made. There was a recorded description in English. When the woman returned Jim asked permission to photogragh one of the instruments that he was interested in. Pasteur was the first person to recognize dissymmetry in molecules, which is what Jim's work is about. She allowed me to take a picture for his book, but I don't feel it would be right to publish it here. We then toured the rest of the museum, which was his home--bedrooms, sitting rooms, a bathroom, stairway, etc. It was all elaborately furnished in Victorian style, but they didn't allow photographs. Finally she took us to his crypt. That was incredible! She did tell me I could take a picture there. If you look at the larger version of this picture you can see the mosaic depiction of rabbits on the right, which he used in his research and dogs on the left, the source of the rabies disease and it's hard to make out but the boy on the arch is the first boy that was cured of rabies by Pasteur, who later grew up to work for Pasteur. You can see two sets of feet, two of the 4 angels who represent Love, Hope, Charity and Science. Jim liked that Science got equal billing with the other virtues.

Pasteur lies in the black marble casket and his wife who out-lived him by 15 years is buried behind the gold gate closer to the altar. She didn't think she was important enough to be buried in the same space as her husband, but she asked to be close to him and to the altar. This crypt was built after Pasteur's death and his body was moved here. There was a huge funeral for him at Notre Dame de Paris.

This is the institute that we passed across the street from Pasteur's home and the musem. I would move the picture up above, but I don't know how to do that. I've tried. I just can't rearrange the photos once I put them on the site.

Pasteur received many honors during his life-time. You should look up all the things he did. He was the first to discover vaccination and found a vaccine for rabies. He also worked with silk worms to prevent a disease that was wiping them out. And he discovered that germs could be killed by heating and that beer could be sterilized without changing the taste by heating it to a certain point. This is the process we call pasteurization, which we know better for treatment of milk. In Paris they have even named a street after him.

This is another street that we passed as we left the area, walking toward Montparnasse. We rode to the top of the Tour Montparnasse, which might be the topic of my next post.

Paris Apartment

2007-09-06T00:39:00.001-07:00

Here are some pictures of our apartment here. We've been here about 48 hours and have already gotten to know the neighborhood a bit, but these pictures are ones I took within the first few minutes of our arrival. Here you see our 4 suitcases in the bedroom. The apartment has 4 rooms and a bath in a row all facing the street. The master bedroom is at one end, then the bathroom. This is a compact room, with a shower at the far end and a washer/dryer just inside the door under a cupboard.

I'm standing in front of the shower taking a picture toward the corner, where two mirrors come together. I don't know if I always hold my left pinkie in the air when I take a picture. Everything in the bathroom is new.

The next room is the kitchen. This is directly across from the entrance to the apartment. There was some mail here when we arrived, so the marble table is covered with mail. I'll have to get a better picture some other time. The kitchen is also compact. You can see everything in this picture. Fridge/freezer at the back on the left; sink, stove, oven on the right. It is unusual to find a kitchen inParis with enough room in it to eat. The little marble table is just big enough for the two of us and that is where we have eaten the 6 meals we've had here since we arrived.

This is the dining room. It has a very small table, which doesn't show here much. The table is 24" wide by 63" long. It sits against the wall normally, but can be pulled out into the room.

The last room at the far end is the den and my study. That's the desk where I am sitting now.

If you turn and look back down the hallway to the bedroom this is what you see. I think my wide-angle lens makes everything look a bit bigger than it is. I don't have dimensions. The rooms are small, but comfortable. I think we'll be fine here. The apartment belongs to some Americans, who are in the U.S. right now. They have completely remodeled the place, leaving as far as I can tell only the walls, floors, ceilings and crown moldings from the old place.

And finally, looking out the window to the street below. We are on the 6th (5eme) floor. Those buildings across the street are about 100 years old. I'll have to look for dates on the ones on this side. They look to be about the same though.

So that's our home away from home for the next 3 months.

P.S. After reviewing this post, I realize I forgot to resize the photos, so if you click on them you will see the very large original versions. I'll try to remember next time to resize them to a more reasonable size.

22 hours and counting....

2007-09-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

I'm all packed. Still have stuff to do, but wanted to finish the packing. This is a lot of stuff to get to the airport, but we can manage and we're traveling together, so I don't have to manage it all myself. I ususally pack in just the red one, so this is way more than I am used to handling. When we get to Paris there will be trolleys we can use.

Since I am taking a laptop for the first time, I decided to use the black overnight bag for my carry on. It has a handle and wheels, so though it's heavy it will be easy to manage in the airports. I put my knitting, books, computer, camera, MP3-player and other stuff in it. There's no way I could get bored on this trip with all the stuff I have with me to do.

I didn't buy any new clothes for this trip--oh wait yes I did--some underwear, a shirt and some black jeans. The French women wear so much black that I thought I'd blend in better with some black jeans. They are stretch and are comfortable too. What we did buy are electronics--a laptop and an MP3 player and guide books, maps, etc. I have been spending time this week figuring out how to use the MP3 player and downloading stuff from the web and from some CD's to the device.

We leave tomorrow about noon. I'm not even sure what time we arrive or what airports we are going through. That doesn't really matter. We just want to be able to get into our apartment and take a nap when we get there. Then we'll go out walking and shopping for food after a short rest. I can hardly wait.

See you from the other side!

P.S. Sorry for the poor quality of this photo. I would like to say I blurred it so as not to advertise the luggage company, but really I just took it in a hurry; uploaded it, put the camera back in it's case and back in the bag and then noticed that it was blurry. I promise this will be the last blurry picture I post on this blog. I can do better. I'm not a photographer, but I do know how to sort out the bad pictures and I won't post any more blurry ones.

Clearing out and packing

2007-08-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

Here is the closet in the guest room that I cleared out yesterday for our house-sitter. I thought she deserved some space for her things. I hope this will be adequate. I moved stuff from this closet into the other two closets in the other two bedrooms on this floor, and also moved a few things to the basement.

I threw out a bunch of old magazines that were taking up space in my closet. I was ruthless and just tossed them all--well almost all--into the recycling bin. I did save the old needlework magazines. Old needlework patterns and ideas last longer than old decorating ideas, though when I saw the magazine cover showing ideas for blue and white decorating I almost set it aside to hang on to--before tossing it in with the rest. I was ruthless, as I said.

And here are the books, maps CD's etc. that I have chosen to take. For now. That could change when I find out how much will fit in my suitcase.

There is so much information available on-line these days, that you don't need that many guide books. I have two compact maps of Paris that I like, so am taking both. The Paris Walks book has detailed descriptions of some walks and the Rick Steve's Paris has lots of good current information about making the most of your time in Paris. We like his books a lot. And of course my Bescherelle for verbs. And my language book and 4 CD's. I'm up to lesson 68 out of 70, so will have completed the whole course by the time I leave, but I think I want to take them anyway to review.

Thanks to all of you who posted comments so far. I appreciate the interest and hope to be able to show you more inteseting pictures starting next week.

One week and counting down....

2007-08-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

In one week I'll be leaving for Paris.

So why am I spending time at this computer now? Well, I've been planning this trip for about 9 months already, so I have some stuff done. I need to organize my last days so I don't forget anything important so I made a list this morning.

Here it is:

THINGS TO DO BEFORE NEXT MONDAY

_Get the house ready to leave; Clean and put away most of our stuff; clear out the drawers and closet in one guest room for Sarah, our house-sitter. Make a list of things I think Sarah will need to know. Have Sarah over for a house orientation tour.

_Start packing a suitcase with fall clothes. I made a list a while back, but may have to revise it, when I see how much will fit in the suitcase. One good thing we will be there for only one season—the fall. So that makes packing a bit easier. Mostly sweaters, jeans, pants, a couple skirts, a dress, raincoat and jacket, scarves. The French wear scarves all the time, so I need more than one.

_Start piling up books, maps, CDs, etc, that we want to take.

_Shop for a few items that I still need.

_Stock up on some toiletries and over the counter medicines. I’ve decided it will be easier to take some of those things with me, than to try to find equivalents over there. Some things we will just buy when we get there, of course.

_Do two tours at Glensheen (Monday and Thursday mornings). Since I am going to be gone for three months, I decided not to take an extra week off, so will do my tours this week. There is also an end of the summer party Thursday for volunteers that I hope to attend.

_Decide which purse(s) to take and get them ready. I’m carrying on an overnight bag on wheels in which I’ll put my laptop, my knitting bag, books, puzzles, etc. for the journey.

_Get my hair cut. Thursday 1:00.

_Try to get to Yarn Harbor Tuesday. Decide whether or not to bring some yarn with me. Pack knitting needles. A few paint brushes, just in case.

_Transfer data from this computer to my laptop. Make sure I can access the password sites that I want to from the laptop. I’ve already done a soft-ware check and I think I have what I need on it.

Well that's my list so far. I can add to it if I think of more things.

I've already gotten started on some of it.

I did my first tour at Glensheen-so just have one more to go. I am a volunteer tour guide at Glensheen a historic housee/museum near where I live in Duluth, MN.

And I have a suitcase packed. See....

For someone who likes pictures a lot, this post is remakably free of them. If you want pictures see the links at right. I will post more pictures in the future. Check back soon.