The Pigeon Slayer Conquers Paris - Sat. 7/24

Hi!!! This is Heather and I am writing about our terrific day involving Notre Dame, Scare Course, Crepes and pigeons! The day started off with us getting up pretty earlier because none of us were used to the time difference. So we headed to the Metro were we would be catching a ride to a market Andrew had told us about. We got on the metro and we took off. But on the next stop there was a massive group off people waiting to get on! And i'm thinking, “Its ok we will all fit no big deal!” So the get on. We ride to the next stop. And by the way the temperature is rising. This stop has an even bigger group of people and i'm thinking! “This is impossible” the doors open people rush in they push the y shove and if dad weren’t holding on to me I problem would’ve been pinned to the wall! Finally the doors open and we get out! Sweet Sweet air! Never have I seen so many people compacted into a small space! So we keep walking in pursuit of the market! But all we find is a few stores that aren’t great. so we stop for lunch and got yummy pita sandwiches! Next we decided to climb up to Sacre Coeur maybe climb is a underestimate! Perhaps scale hustle up journey ! what I mean is there are stairs that lead up to a gaint beautiful church. And these staris are some long serious steep stairs! So we climbed up the stairs and the view that awaited us was more then worth it! You could see all off paris even the eifle tower! Then we went inside Sacre Coeur and saw the beautiful mosaics on the ceiling off Christ and we saw all the candles and It was very cool to see all the statues and paintings. After the Sacre Coeur we wandered around in a cute little town of Monmartre full of Artist, crepes and plenty of old houses. We walked around a little market with pretty art. And Kara found a picture of the Eifle Tower she wanted to buy! Then we strolled along the cobblestone streets and browsed the shops. Soon our feet started to hurt so we got on the metro and headed to notre Dame. The one thing all 5 off us said when we saw notredame was “WOW” when you stand farth enough back you can take it all in and itss beautiful! We sat outside some and their were pigeons EVERYEHERE!People would put bread in their hands and the birds would fly in and sit on their han eat bread then fly off! Let me tell you it was Bird Central! Kara and me walked around and looked at Charlemine a big statue in the courtyard of Notre Dame. Kara and I were joking don’t hit the pigeons! Because I had a rubber band I was flinging into the air! When Kara turned around to study the statue I jokingly (not on purpose no matter what my family tells you) lifted my rubber band as if to hit one of the pigeons. Suddenly my rubber band slipped it flew throe the air and hit that bird squarely on the back! It looked around stunned then flew away in a flurry!!! Just then Kara turned around and saw me standing there dumbfounded that I actually hit the pigeon. With my rubber band on the floor! All this only happened in the course of 3 seconds! I told all this too my family who have now kindly dubbed me pigeon slayer! So with that we went in to Notre Dame and saw the beautiful statues the amazing arches and breathtaking treasury! We were all tired so we rode the metro to pizza Pinos a restaurant by our apartment! Which was really yummy then we went home and fell asleep! Over all it was an amazing day full of adventure and apparently pigeon slaying!

As close as we'll ever get to Lance Armstrong...

July 25, 2010 – Sunday

We are still adjusting to the time change which means most of us are waking up about 2 or 3 in the morning and finding it difficult to go back to sleep. It makes it easier to get up in the morning for now. Given our penchant for sleeping in however, I am sure we will adjust and I’ll have to drag people out of bed fairly soon!

We were able to find the church this morning only because there were a group of other toursists outside the building that looked like they were also looking for the Mormon church. We all had a nice chat – there were members of the church there from the Netherlands (I didn’t bring up recent World Cup games), Texas, and Thailand. Everyone spoke at least a bit of English however so we had fun talking with them. The church is an unmarked building on a side street which you would not know existed unless you knew it was there. Eventually some missionaries opened the door and we all filed into an open courtyard with the chapel and classrooms along the sides. We joined a Sunday School class (in English) that was already in progress and enjoyed the lesson given by an American living here who works for a security company. There was also a Sunday School class being given in French and one in Chinese. After Sunday School we moved into the chapel, which is actually divided into two separate rooms. We sat in the main chapel where everything was done in French. There was a simultaneous English translation that you could listen to in person in the other room, or sit in the main chapel with earphones to hear the English translation. Steve and the girls used the earphones and I was able to follow almost everything in French. One of the missionaries gave the first talk, and the missionary was Elizabeth Smart. Let that one sink in for a moment… It was rather sobering for me to listen to her give a fairly simple talk in OK French (not that my French is any better, but I don’t think she has been in Paris very long and here she was giving a talk to about 180 people). Of course we don’t know her personally, but do know more about her life than we probably should because of her kidnap and return to her family. It struck me that if you did not know anything about her, you would just see a pretty young woman working to speak French and giving a simple talk about keeping the Sabbath Day holy. But then you realize, that she probably has a greater strength and a greater knowledge of knowing what it is like to depend on God than almost anyone that might have been in attendance at that meeting. But then again, it brought home the lesson that you can’t judge people because you do not know what they have endured in life or the strength that they possess.

The second talk was given by a French member of the church who spoke quickly and was wonderful to listen to. The third talk was given by an American working for the US Embassy who spoke beautiful French. We talked with him after the meeting and he is living there with his young family (3 very cute and active little boys). He grew up all around the world and learned French early in his life. He reminded me of my brother Doug, both in appearance and his ability to speak French (that is a compliment Doug!). We had a good time talking with a few of the members after church – they were from all over the world. There were a lot of black Africans probably from many different French-speaking countries, Americans, Dutch, Peruvian, etc. We also found out that visitors outnumbered members that day. A lot of the members are away on their vacations and it is certainly the high tourist season now.

After church we found our way down to the Tuileries Garden for… the finish of the Tour de France. We found a place along the inside wall of the Tuilieries where we perched on the wall for about 2 ½ hours waiting for the Tour to come by. The wait was not too awful because we found some candy to buy, we had water, we took turns sitting and met a very nice family from Sasketchuwan, Canada (no idea how to spell that – sorry my Canadian friends!). They knew a lot about the tour and took great pictures that they shared with us. We decided in the end that the long wait was worth the experience of watching the best riders in the world pass by us 8 times as they finished the most difficult bike race in the world. It was amazing at how quickly they rode by. It was also amazing to me that the group of riders looks much smaller in person than they do on TV. They probably zipped by us at 30 miles an hour. There were lots of cars – team cars, press cars, police cars, camera cars, etc. that would fly by before the riders, and then came the riders at an equal speed. The first time around they were closely bunched, and then after that there was a front break away pack of about 7 or 8 riders followed by the peleton (is it still a peleton at that point?). We were able to spot Contador (in the yellow jersey) and Lance Armstrong. It was really quite exciting and probably an experience that we will never repeat. We made our way home on the Metro after the finish and pretty much collapsed on our beds.

Another beautiful day in Paris!

How's the weather?

The weather has been GREAT! It has been slightly overcast with only a few occasional raindrops. This helps keep the temperature down which is wonderful for us. It has been in the mid-70's the whole time we have been here. There are fans in the apartment which will be a real plus if the temp does get any warmer, but opening the windows lets in a lot of fresh air. It also lets in a lot of street noise which is always on "high volume" but shutting the windows shuts out most of the city life. We are very happy, cool and content. Time to go buy some more pain au chocolat.

Au revoir,

Terri

Versailles with Bikes and Jet Lag

Part of the king's bedroom inside the chateau of Versailles.

Heather and Terri on their bikes.

Picnic by the grand canal with our lovely "rain bags."

The girls in front of Versailles. Our apartment doesn't quite look like this, but we are still happy here!

The historic Hall of Mirrors inside the chateau. (Steve has more pictures on his camera. We'll try to download those tonight).

I have been thoroughly chastised by Morgan for making my last entry soooo long. I think we have different impressions of who may actually be reading this blog. I am under the impression that the two or three interested family members may skim through some of the info just to assure that we are alive and well. I also view it as a way to journal our experiences in some detail so that we can look back at it some time and relive some of our experiences again. Because my girls are so much better connected on Facebook, some of their friends may actually be checking the blog out from time to time as well. For the benefit of those who do not like my long –winded explanations for my future self, I will do a bullet point list of the things that we actually did, and then you can skip down (or up) to the pictures. I must motivate someone else in my family to do the actual downloading and posting of the pictures because if any of you know me and my photographic ability, you know you will not see the pictures unless they are done by someone else!

Friday , July 23 – it was a perfect day for a trip to Versailles. This is one of the few activities I had planned out and reserved before we left the United States. We did a bike tour of Versailles with Fat Tire Bike Tour. So here are the bullet points:

· Left the apartment at 8 AM for a 9 AM arrival to the other side of Paris. This included our first Metro ride (went without a hitch) and trying to find a side street not listed on any of the maps I have. We did it with 5 minutes to spare. Always a great sense of accomplishment in navigating a new (and foreign) city.

· Meet the bike tour office and realize that this will be a totally American day. Everyone working in the office was somewhere between the ages of 18 and 30 and all appeared to be American college students working for the summer in Paris. There were no attempts to even try anything in French and everything was done in English in a very American manner – we were already having fun because as loud (and sometimes obnoxious) as Americans can be, we know how to have fun and get things done.

· Ride bikes to the RER train station (through the BUSY streets of Paris) with a group of 20 riders who were not quite up to Tour de France peleton riding. Manhandle bikes up, over and onto a train.

· Ride train to Versailles and once again made our way as a mediocre peleton through the streets of Versailles to the town market.

· The town market was AWESOME and we shopped for food to make a picnic lunch. We bought beautiful baguettes and some quiche, cherries (almost as good as Washington fruit), a hunk of Comte cheese, 2 bottles of fresh apple juice, 2 lovely meringues and even some mousse de canard (duck mousse). There was a crepe stand near the bike staging area of the market and everyone got their first crepe as well. We have been delighted to find that Nutella is a staple at every creperie and you can mix it with many other yummy ingredients – like bananas and whipped cream in this instance.

· Ride bikes on the public grounds of Versailles. We circled the outside of the grounds viewing the Domaine de Marie Antoinette from the outside as well as the Petite and Grande Trianaon. Our guide proved proficient at not only handling amateurs on bikes but gave short but informative information about the chateau, the grounds and the town of Versailles.

· The weather began to look very threatening and we even heard a lot of thunder. Most of our group broke out the cheap plastic rain ponchos we had purchased for a Euro and put them on to keep off the few raindrops that were falling and keep us a bit warmer from the wind.

· We rode around the Grand Canal and got to sit under some of the perfectly groomed (and large) trees that line the canal. We ate our picnic lunch without getting at all wet. Heather had an experience with a swan who thought after being offered a bit of bread would just grab it out of her hand along with her thumb the next time. Kara watched the whole encounter and thought it was very funny. There is more to come on Heather and her bird experiences. We have decided she has a special affinity for the birds of our vacation areas – just ask her about the close encounter she had in Africa.

· The lunch was YUMMY and then we rode to the entrance of the chateau and left the bikes with Andrew (our guide) while we spent about 1 ½ hours inside the palace.

· I have been to Versailles 3 or 4 times, but realized that I had never been there during the summer with all the other tourists. I very much recommend the off season! The palace was very crowded. Normally that is not too much of an issue but at this point Heather was feeling very badly. As a side note, our original travel plans included a couple of nights in our apartment before our bike adventure as well as a day to unpack, relax, sleep some more, etc. As it turned out because of delays, we spent 2 nights on a plane, got here on Thursday afternoon and had to show up for the bike tour the next morning. Heather did not sleep at all on Thursday night – her body was not willing to make the change in time regardless of how tired she was. We entered the chateau about 3 in the afternoon and Heather was really fading at this point, then with the heat and crowds in the building, she was feeling very badly. She managed to make it through and even ooh and aah at the kings and queens apartments, the hall of mirrors and the beauty of the gardens outside but she didn’t enjoy it too much.

· The palace is impressive even with no sleep, a chic plastic rain coat and jet lag. More pictures to come (sometime anyway!).

· We rode the bikes back to the train station and once again, rode, carried and pushed the bikes onto the train. There was a bit of panic at this point because we (as a family) had gotten separated within the group and my attention was focused on making sure Heather at least stayed upright on the bike. Morgan, Steve, Heather and I ended up being together but we didn’t know where Kara was. We asked Andrew, our guide, where she was assuming he had organized her into one of the small groups necessarily spread throughout the train. He said that he had not seen her. Thus began a frantic search up and down the train by Andrew, Steve and I. Everyone thought (including Andrew) that the very first train car had been checked. So Steve and I started checking all the other cars without a sign of her. Panic was now starting to set in and Andrew was trying to get everyone off the train at this point when I ran up to the first car in desperation and of course there she was chatting with other group members having done what she had been told. Mad dash down the length of the train getting al the bikes back on before the train pulled out. That was another huge “whew!!!”

· We all made it back to Paris, more riding through the Paris streets and back to the starting point.

· It was a very fun day and we got to see a lot of Versailles that I had never seen. The guides were fun and we even had to buy a t-shirt of two of “Fat Tire Bike Paris.” Et voila.

· We managed to make it home and eat a few tuna fish sandwhiches before bed (we’ll be here for a month – not every night can be boeuf bourguignon!). The girls finally fell into bed but were afraid of not sleeping so being the caring parents we are, we gave each of them a half sleeping pill to try and help them make the shift to our new time reality.

· Onto another day…

I have totally failed even at the bullet points. My apologies, but just know that I am getting my journal done while you are slogging through the details! (Morgan is continuing to chastise me as we speak, Kara says she is just tired!)

A second night in the airport! This is Keflavik at 1 AM before we caught our flight to Copenhagen, then finally on to Paris.

In front of a bus stop in Keflavik, Iceland.

Looking out at the sea and mountains - Keflavik.

A maritime monument in Keflavik.

Whew! We finally made it to Paris and have already enjoyed our first Metro rides, a bike trip to Versailles, food shopping, baguettes, butter and the joys of jet lag. Our trip to Paris took much longer than expected because our flight out of Seattle was delayed by 4 hours. We knew taking off that we might not make our connection in Iceland, but there was still hope the plane from Iceland to Paris might wait for us because so many of our passengers were continuing on. That was not to be however and when we landed in Iceland we waited in a couple of long lines to determine our fate. Iceland Air did a great job taking care of us and gave us a new plan for reaching Paris. We had to spend the day in Iceland so they gave us transportation to and from the airport to a hotel, vouchers for a couple of meals and a day room at a small hotel in Keflavik, Iceland. We arrived there about noon and had a nice lunch in the dining room of the hotel. We had two hotel rooms for the day so we got to nap a bit and even shower before returning to the airport at 11 PM to catch a 1 AM flight to Copenhagen and then from there on to Paris. Our 1 AM flight was also delayed (seemed to be a repeating theme!), but only by 1 hour and we were able to make our connection to Paris. We arrived in Paris about 11 AM and after a bit of waiting for our reserved van and driver to pick us up, made our way to our new home for the month. More on that a bit later…

Because we have a whole month to enjoy Paris, we counted our day trip to Iceland as a bonus. We got to enjoy the day in the small city of Keflavik and truly enjoyed walking around. I was able to contact our apartment owner and the van service in Paris that we would not be arriving at the predicted time. I got e-mail replies back that they had our new times, se we were really able to just relax and enjoy our unexpected time. We walked around all of downtown Keflavik in an hour or two, got to hear a lot of Icelandic being spoken by kids in the street and we also enjoyed a walk along the sea wall. The landscape looks like country that is used to cold weather. The sea shore was mostly big, dark walls of volcanic rock, the soil looked quite thin with lots of volcanic rock sticking up in places and there were very few (if any!) big trees or scrub bushes. The houses and buildings had steeply pitched roofs and we were glad we had our jackets with us. Our thin jackets were almost adequate for our walk but the wind made it a little chilly. We visited a grocery store and saw lots of different kinds of dried fish, canned fish, fresh fish, frozen fish and of course managed to find a very yummy chocolate dessert ( we did NOT try the fish in any of its forms!). The few interactions we had with the people were very pleasant and almost everyone we ran in to spoke some level of English. We even got an Icelandic stamp in our passport, so once again, we considered ourselves rather lucky for the unexpected and all expenses-paid day trip to Iceland.

It was difficult spending a second full night on the plane however. We were some of the lucky few who got bumped into business class for the 3 hour flight from Iceland to Copenhagen and we all managed to get a bit of sleep on that flight. We spent a couple of uneventful hours in the Copenhagen airport and then boarded our final flight to Paris – it was a relief to know our journey would finally be ending. Our bags (all 8 of them!) were some of the first off the plane but our driver was not waiting for us when we got off the plane. I was a bit daunted at the prospect of having to try and find a phone, use an international card, etc. to contact the van service. I was considering just asking someone to borrow a cell phone because EVERYONE seemed to be very well connected. I found an information desk however, and they made the call for me and told us our driver would be there in 10 minutes – which he was! The trip into the city was uneventful other than the driver told me my French was good (wow, that was a switch from when I was here 27 years ago when my French was good but no one else seemed to think so!). The climb up the 4 (make that 5) narrow flights of stairs by 5 very tired people with 8 very heavy suitcases was not very fun. We did make it though, found the friend of the owner waiting for us, received a quick overview of the apartment and now here we are, a day later than planned but with an Icelandic passport stamp and experience to add to our travels!

Our first mission was to find some food – which we did – buy some metro tickets – which we did – and of course eat some baguettes and butter – which we also did! I think all of those experiences will be repeated many times over in the next month.

Our next post will be about our day trip (on bikes!) to Versailles. A bientot.

Terri

From Rain City to the City of Lights

The view of Mt. Rainier from our front yard.

Riding the Ducks in Seattle.

Our dream trip to Paris is about to begin! The Phipps family is heading to France on Tuesday to begin a month long adventure in Paris. We are all very excited as you can see by the doodle created by Morgan and Heather during church today (at least Kara was listening!) Morgan, Kara and Heather are already picturing themselves on the Eiffel Tower. We have a small apartment rented in the Oberkampf area which will be our base of activities during our stay. It is our plan to post pictures and thoughts about our adventures while there. We will probably not post everyday, but hope to do it 3 or 4 times per week. We have several activities already planned - a bike tour of Versailles, a week of museums with a museum pass, and an overnight to London. It is our goal to get to know our neighborhood, shop at the local stores, cafes and of course the patisserie. Because we will be there for a month, we'll have a bit more time to go at a relaxed pace and explore the whole city. We hope to find some places to go jogging and work out as well as see the end of the Tour de France the first Sunday we are in town. We will attend church at one of the Paris wards and experience life in the city. Our next post will be from France so... bon voyage et a bientot (good travels and see ya' later!).