Bonjour, mes amis

Bonjour from Paris. I have a brief moment here before heading off to Versailles.

Our day of travelling did not go too badly, although there was a barfing incident, which we will gloss over. The olympic knitting has been worked on, and has been carried around town, but has not been photographed at all! Must remedy that, and here's a picture to show that I am still thinking of knitting stuff -- a wine shop with cut-out pictures of balls of yarn as their price tags, and it says above the big knitted bottle "Collection Hiver 2006." I don't quite understand, but I like it anyways. I'll put in my other wool-related stories here, too. I did find a Phildar shop, but it was closed one evening when everything else was open, around 7 pm, and it was also closed the next morning at 10, so I'm thinkin' there's something fishy with that shop. Will try again, but I'm not hopeful. I also went to La Drogerie, which was beautiful and crowded and I wanted everything but got nothing. I did get chastised for taking a picture.... and I wish I'd seen that page before going, as the "how to buy yarn" thing was a bit confusing.

Tuesday we went to Notre Dame. Big old church, subtly different from English big old churches. We went up the tower, 422 steps or some such, and got a good view, but the day was a bit grey and so our pictures are no more spectacular than anyone else's! Being a tourist at almost-46 is different than being a tourist at 24! Ho hum, the skyline of Paris in the grey.... I was pleased that Elaine consented to
make the trek to the top, and she liked seeing the gargoyles and all that.

Here the kids are being saints in niches. Saint Arthur of the Green Guide and Saint Elaine of the bread. Just above them was some poor fellow holding his head!

After Notre Dame, we went to the Centre Pompidou, which was closed for the day. There was a slight incident in which some tourist had all the cash removed from his wallet, but we will gloss over the fact that it was my husband.... (It was mainly in pounds, and we think it was not a huge amount, but still it's a big nuisance and makes one feel a tad stupid.)

Wednesday Stephen gave a talk to some physicists, so the kids and I went back to Pompidou and it was really quite fun. We went up the giant escalator and Arthur got out his sketch book and drew the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur. There was a cool display for kids about heads (Tete a Tete), and an expensive cafe. The kids are pretty good about traipsing around, and it helps that we all know about using subways and so on, but they do get tired out and grumpy after a while. We'll see how today goes, since the guidebook say that a proper tour of Versailles takes 2 days, and it's almost 10 am and we're still eating croissants....