Friday:
I went out to Cheverny with Camille and some of her friends. Cheverny is the chateau that the chateau in the Tintin comics is based off of, which is one of its claims to fame in the modern age. It's a beautiful chateau, and the grounds are outstanding (as well as huge). The inside was stuffed with artifacts spanning half a millenium; there was even a document signed by George Washington (which I tried to take a picture of, but there's a glare right over his signature). After we visited the chateau we stayed out on the grounds for a while stealing cherries and playing JungleSpeed (which is like Uno only weird). At around four thirty we left so that I could get to my train in time and drop off Camille's friends at another friend's house.
It turned out that we got to the station an hour and a half before my train left, so I wasted time in the cafe by reading and getting myself a coffee. I happened to notice, however, that my train did not seem to be on the charts, so I checked my ticket and found that it was actually a ticket for the day before. Originally I had bought a ticket for Saturday, but it worked better for my family in Paris that I come on Friday night. I had a ticket for a train that got into Montparnasse at 9:30, but again it worked better that I come earlier, so I changed the ticket on the Thursday to get in at 8:30 instead. However, the woman at the counter had changed it to the same day that I was changing the ticket and not the day after...hence the problem. Luckily they gave me a ticket to the next train without paying any more for it, but I still had to waste another couple of hours in the station, including the twenty minutes the train was late by. By the time I got into Paris, I was thoroughly sick of the TGV and any and all train stations. But all was well that ended well; we got out to the country house without a problem, and I fell asleep sometime around two in the morning because Mat and his friends were listening to music and talking downstairs directly above my room. In response I turned up the quiet, calming music on my Ipod, which I've since found is not the best solution.
Saturday:
I spent most of the morning pacing and asking people what time it was until John and Sophie got so fed up with it that they decided to just take me to the airport already (well, that and it was about time to go, anyway). And then it turned out that Dad's flight was in about twenty minutes late, and his bag was one of the last to come off the carousel...but finally, he came out of the terminal, and I think I nearly took him down with my tackle-hug (ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but I was really really happy to see him). After that, I just sort of stared for a second, unable to compute, and finally said, "wow. You're in France!"
You all know I'm that perceptive.
But in any case, the rest of the day was fairly quiet-- Dad delivered his packages of Poptarts and jerky and bacon bits to my cousins, I received some essential NM items (green chile, biscochitos, a cd of my uncle's band), and we took a long walk on the "ditch" by John's house, which is really a canal but it's still a ditch to me. They're just lucky I don't call it an arroyo.
In the evening we went to the village party, where we watched a bonfire and that was more or less it. There was some dancing and some more drinking but overall it was pretty tame. We went to bed around midnight, which I'm sure was good for Dad's jetlag, and that was day one of his stay.
Sunday:
We spent another quiet day out at the country house and headed back into Paris around six for the Fete de la musique. John and Sophie led us on a tour that lasted nearly three hours, and we heard everything from techno to bluegrass to metal to god-knows-what. Sometimes there were elaborate setups by huge bands, other times it was just a lady and a guitar standing on the street corner. It was absolutely amazing; I've never seen anything quite like it and I don't think I ever will outside of it. I think this is my favorite French holiday.
Monday:
We started the morning with one of my favorite walks, from the Champs-Elysees all the way to the Louvre, where we stopped for a visit. After seeing the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo at the Louvre, we spent most of the time in the quieter galleries (Oceania/Africa/the Americas, Egypt, and Mesopotamia), which also happen to be some of my favorites in any case. I will say, though, that I never appreciated how empty the Louvre was in February until I came again in June. The statement is true of Paris in general, to be honest.
We had lunch in Tuilieries, where the sparrows attacked our plates more ore less as soon as we put down our forks, and then continued on to the Picasso museum, walking all the way. For some reason or another the Picasso museum was free that day (there was just a sign saying "the museum is free for all visitors. Good day."), which was lucky, and we spent a good hour or so there. Dad described it as being like a Van Gogh museum he went to in Amsterdam, except for less Van Gogh and more Picasso, and I found this to be a very apt statement (despite the fact that I've never been to Amsterdam, much less the Van Gogh museum there).
We walked from there to Centre Pompidou, where we had banana and Nutella crepes in a little cafe, and then took the metro back to John and Sophie's apartment. We ate dinner together (and if I remember correctly, there were crepes for dessert, too), and that was it.
Tuesday:
Breakfast was at an American patisserie that I've been curious about ever since I saw it back in April. Evidently it's a Parisian chain, since I saw one at the train station when we left for Tours the next day, but in any case the cafe was without a doubt the most Americanized French-owned cafe that I've seen thus far in France. They pulled off the American pastries really well, and the coffee was excellent. I went back there another couple of times before I left Paris for the last time on Monday.
We headed out to the Musee d'Orsay, but it was fairly crowded, so we went up to Montmartre instead. After meandering up the hill and looking at the shops, we finally ended up at the Espace Dali, which I was happy to go back to. We had lunch at a lovely little cafe next to the museum and spent a little more time walking around Montmartre before heading back down the hill. We took the metro out to Orsay again, and finding that it was still crowded, walked along the Seine for a while and then took the Boulevard St. Michel down to the Sorbonne, where we looked around for a while and stopped for drinks. After that, we headed back to the apartment and went out to dinner with John, Sophie, Elisabeth and Julie to the restaurant we went to with Mom last summer. All in all, a nice ending to the Paris stay.
I'll pick up with Tours and the rest later; it seems we're going out biking soon, and I should probably get off the computer anyway.
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