Local gossip…

Three guys are standing in a pub…a cricket player, a solicitor and a vicar…

This is not the start of a bad joke – it was the actually scene at our favorite pub tonight.  We heard that the pub is being bought by a couple of local guys (the cricket player and the solicitor).  Seems that the pub was sold a few years ago and “gentrified”  (see my earlier post on local pub politics).  Two long-time locals decided to buy it themselves to turn it back into a regular country pub.  They longed for the more casual place it used to be.  We have found the pub to be, despite its fancy menu, a very friendly place with a good set of regular customers and very good food.  I hope that only gets better with a new, more low-key ownership.

We were chatting with the bar-maid and said that as long as they kept their roast potatoes and sticky toffee pudding on the menu and Scrumpy Jack and a good Bitter on tap that any changes were OK with us:-)

We also had a funny conversation about being American in this neck of the woods, but that will have to wait for a later post;-)

Monday in Paris

My birthday – the day where I get to call all the shots.  I wanted to just chill – so another day with no big sightseeing agenda (actually no agenda at all).   More pictures up at Flickr.

Sunday in Paris

Sunday morning we got up and headed straight to the Lourve. First thing we headed up to see the Mona Lisa and Venus del Milo. The whole Mona Lisa thing is a riot! When you enter the museum gallery there are signs with the Mona Lisa and an arrow so you can navigate your way there (not an easy thing to do as the Lourve is HUGE). When you get to the room housing the Mona Lisa there is a huge crowd – with velvet ropes to funnel everyone in. We had gotten there shortly after opening time and the rest of the museum was deserted – but there were already several hundred folks in there staring at the silly thing. The painting itself is quite small (poster board size), behind an enormous piece of plexi glass and roped off so that you can’t get within 15 feet of it. I don’t get the big deal with it. Opposite the Mona Lisa is an ENORMOUS painting of the Cannan wedding feast miracle (it on the other hand is quite impressive and not behind plexiglass). The rest of the pictures in the room, I surmised, don’t think get looked at very much.

The Lourve totally exceeded my expectations. I didn’t think there was anyway for it to live up to the hype, but it is a truly incredible place. The scale is immense. Every room is filled with beautiful and important things. Incredible. Some of my Flickr pictures show our favourites. If we ever return to Paris we’ll go again – you could go once a month for the rest of your life and not run out of things to see.

In the afternoon we left the Museum and walked down the Right Bank to Notre Dame – planning to go in – but I was so overwhelmed and mentally exhausted that I didn’t want to go in. We made plans to return later in our trip and just walked around the Latin Quarter and the Left Bank. We had a yummy crepe with Nutella (I am mildly obsessed with the stuff) – mine with banana and Steve’s with Grand Marnier. We hung out at a cafe – watching people go by – and then had a so-so dinner before taking the Metro home.

More pictures up at Flickr.

Saturday in Paris

Our first day in Paris was a beautiful warm for February day.  We slept in (I was exhausted from my week at work and Steve was getting over a cold).   Neither of us were in high-power sightseeing moods so we just headed off towards the Champs Elysees without a plan.  We stopped at a food stand between Place de la Concorde and the rond for some sandwiches and watched people walk by.

We then walked up the Champs Elysees (on the sunny side of the street) to the Arc de Triomphe then back down along the posh side.  We kept waking down, all the way to the Louvre.  It seemed everyone in Paris was out enjoying the beautiful day – the parks near the Louvre were full of people walking or sitting, enjoying each other’s company. 

We walked over to the Eiffel Tower, but decided we’d rather go up at night, so we ate dinner, stopped by our hotel room to load up on our scarves, hats and gloves.  Good thing, because up high on the tower it was quite chilly.

Click here to see all the photos from the trip.

Trains

The trains in and to Paris are great! We took Eurostar from London to Paris. It was a very pleasant journey. The chunnel itself, is a 20 minute non-event (just a tunnel). The train is smooth and FAST. While running parallel to a motorway in France it was clear we were going much, much faster than them.

In Paris the subway, the Metro, is the best subway I have been on. The most we ever had to wait for a train was 6min. And it only cost €1.11 per ride.

The Metro is many times better than the London tube. 5 full days riding the Metro all about town, and not a single “signal failure.” (I’ll have to save most of my gripes about the tube for another post)

Back from Paris

We’re back from Paris.  Had a great time and one of us came back a year older;-)

Paris was not that high on my list of places to visit while we’re here in Europe, but it is just so darn easy to get over there on the Eurostar that we decided to go anyway.  I have to admit that I liked it more than I thought I would.  I’ll post more details later – but the 2-cent version.

Key:
4.0 = exceeded expectations
3.0 = met expectations
2.5 = did not meet expectations

Paris city center = 4.0 (amazing weather helped)
The Metro = 4.0
Eiffel tower = 3.0
The Louve = 4.0
French food = 4.0
Versailles = 2.5
Eurostar = 3.5
Mindless mobs of tour groups = 2.5 (Every trip I take I am amazed at how dumb 50 intellegent people can be if you pack them on a tour bus. When will I learn?)

Which one is Steve?

This picture contains at least two, and maybe three young Steve doppelgangers. Which one do you think is most uncanny? Can you figure out who is actually pictured in the photo?

The complete Sherlock Holmes

Last Thursday night I finished my reading of the complete Sherlock Holmes.  ~1200 pages over two volumes.  It took several months, but the last half went considerably faster after moving into our country house.  I spent many an evening curled up by the fire reading.  I prefer the short story format as opposed to the novels.  I have more of a short story attention span and I didn’t like how most of the novels were first half mystery and then the second half went back and set up the back story.  I guess I enjoyed the first half of most of the novels.

I have only seen a couple of the stories from the Jeremy Brett TV shows, so almost all of the stories were new to me and were pictured in my imagination.  It really comes alive when you spend the day in London, riding the Underground and then come home and read about Holmes and Watson travelling some of the same lines.  He and Watson often took the train west, passing through Reading.  I picture Holmes in my imagination much as my father-in-law since they share many traits, tall and lanky, observant and crazy smart.  All he is missing is the pipe.

Old friends in England

This weekend Steve and I traveled north to spend the weekend with my university roommate, Holli, and her family. They have been transferred over here with Andy’s job and have been here for a year already.

It was soooo good to…
1.) visit with friends from university and reminisce and catch up on all of our mutual friends
2.) visit with fellow ex-pats and compare notes on the wacky British ways of doing things
3.) have fellowship with fellow believers and share about those experiences
4.) get to visit their great church
5.) sleep in their super comfy guest bed
6.) meet their fun (and funny) kids
7.) play Halo

Thanks Holli and Andy for your hospitality!!! 

(you can read Holli’s report on the weekend here)