The person from whom we are renting our place in Chenonceau suggested that we visit the nearby city of Loches, which he described as being “the most important city in the world for a very short period of time.” During the period from the 13th to the 15th centuries, Loches was a walled “royal city” where the Valois kings were frequent residents. Constructed on a high outcropping of rock, the […]
Three days without a post, primarily because those three days were filled with goings-on. If I remember correctly … On Tuesday morning, the weather had turned cold, but the rain stayed away. Suzie and I walked to the Palais de Justice, hoping to sit on on an argument at the Cour d’appel de Paris. Unfortunately, we never found a courtroom that had anything going on in it, even though there […]
The concert at St. Chapelle was remarkable. It was just getting to be dusk when I arrived, and as the sun set the amazing stained glass windows became less and less luminous. Fantastic to be able to sit and watch the day end in such a place. After the concert we walked back to our apartment. The evening was warm and soft, the last temps doux we’re likely to see […]
“Tableau cassé” (I think), thanks to Sparty, who ruined the last bracket that could possibly have prevailed in the SCP Tournament Challenge. But as I wrote to my co-workers, “If my bracket is going to get busted, no better way to do it than Sparty taking out the evil Dookies.” Bye-bye Zion and Krzyzewski, not sorry to see you go. Go Big Ten in the Final Four. Today for us […]
We begin by returning to Friday night, Suzie and I at the Paris FC v. Auxerre soccer match. Google put a highlight video from that match in my news feed, and when watching it discovered that Suzie and I were in the upper-right hand corner of two “crowd reaction” shots, at 0:40 and 1:27 of the video at the link above. Cool. I omitted to mention that even though the […]
Today was another gorgeous day weather-wise (69 and sunny, with two more days of the same on the way, according to the forecasts), but an odd day other-wise. We’d decided to go and see the gardens and home of Claude Monet in Giverny, which is an hour-and-fifteen-minute train ride west of Paris. We’d never been, and our thought was that a day in the countryside would be a good change […]
A quick post before we head off to a Ligue 2 soccer match (Paris FC vs Auxerre) at 8. Today started on an odd note; after the second flush of the day, our toilet would not stop running, and despite my and Suzie’s attempts to futz with an entirely alien mechanism (where’s the floating ball? where’s the chain? for that matter, where does the water come out?), we finally had […]
After a long trip that got better as it went along (amazing flight from LAX to Paris, no lines at passport control, and our bags were the second and third off the plane), we arrived at our apartment at about 1 pm and after having some coffee, grabbing a quick lunch at a nearby creperie (the Creperie Little Breizh, outstanding for the price), and doing some grocery shopping at the […]
Suzie and I walked down to the Solano Avenue area for lunch (at Bangkok Jam Thai, which I hadn’t remembered being so good), then walked back, 1.7 miles and 640 feet, up several of the small public paths that run throughout the Berkeley Hills. We were huffing and puffing; some of the paths were steep, especially on a full stomach. The walk afforded us some excellent views on a relatively […]
Packing up to head back to Kensington after a short trip to Santa Rosa. Suzie was honored at the PDI Make Kids Smile Awards Dinner on Friday evening, and the boys came over from Davis to attend and stayed the night. On Saturday we went up Wikiup Drive and trespassed on our old property. I wonder a quoi ça sert, I found it odd to be back there but Suzie and the kids […]