Many apologies for not blogging of late. Mer and I have been in the midst of moving, which takes a surprising amount of time to do. Additionally, I did not have internet access at the new house until yesterday.

The moving process went smoothly. I took a load of stuff in my hatchback everyday that I went to work. That took care of most of the smaller stuff (but still took many loads!). A week ago Saturday (the 14th), we rented the CVCA box truck and moved all of the big furniture. Sonotmu and OrangeJoJo drove all the way from Chicago to help (which was kind of them). Sonotmu and I started moving heavier stuff early (about 7:00), and we kept moving stuff until about 3:30. We got everything up in two trips, and we had help from several CVCA folk, for which Mer and I are very grateful. OrangeJoJo, Mer, and a CVCA friend dusted everything before it came in to the new house.

After the move-fest was done, we headed up to Aladdin’s restaurant in Hudson, where Sonotmu and I had all three meals in one sitting. We were all dirty and nasty, so we sat outside. I was particularly resplendent in a “shirt” that was more holes than fabric.

So, we have been at the new house for a little over a week. We are still making frequent trips to the old house, which we listed for sale on Saturday. We still have some minor cleaning to finish up, and we still have one storage area and the garage to clean up. It should be done by the end of the week.

I love living within walking distance of CVCA. I have been able to run home to see Mer at lunch twice, and walking home from work instead of a 45-minute commute is really great.

Our staging area for moving things in the new house was the basement. We decided to put our library on the top level of the house, which is three small stairways away from the basement. Not a big deal, but it is surprising how far away the library is when you have to haul THIRTY boxes of books up the stairs. Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be English teachers….

Oh – I’ll continue the France travel narrative as soon as I unearth my notes.

-or- Gettin’ there, gettin’ round, gettin’ home

We really did have the experience of planes, trains, and automobiles on our France trip. To start the journey, we were meeting Mer’s parents in Orlando (where they live). We flew from Sonotmu’s favorite airport, CAK (Akron-Canton), to Atlanta via Airtran airlines. We then had about a four-hour layover, and then we took the fairly short flight to Orlando, also on Airtran.

The Airtran flights had something new to me – all of their planes now offer XM radio. XM radio is satellite radio, meaning you can pick any of (for Airtran) 30 or 40 stations to listen to, including stations specializing in folk, broadway tunes, 60s, 70s, etc. The Rev will have to make this his official airline, since they were also broadcasting ML Baseball games. Since I was trying to read, I chose to listen to the 80s station. For some reason, folk music (my first choice) demanded too much of my brain for me to read, something that 80s music does not need to do. I could happily listen to cheesy music from my high school years and still make progress on my books. So the flights passed very agreeably.

Fun fact I learned from the 80s station: they played the B-52s’ “Love Shack.” This is not surprising, since the B-52s were fairly big (hair) in the 80s. What WAS surprising was my learning from Meredith that the song was “Love Shack.” Since I was a teenager in Maine,and I had an accent, and everyone around me had an accent, I was sure (and still think of it this way) that the song was “Love Shark.” Those of you familiar with the Maine accent, try saying “Love Shark” a few times, and see if it does not come out as “Love Shack.” In as much as the lyrics make sense at all, Love Shack makes more sense than Love Shark, but I still think of it fondly as Love Shark. “Love shark, love-love-love shark! Love shark, love-love-love shark! Love shark, bayyy-aaa-beeee!”

We met up with Meredith’s parents with no trouble, and went back to their house, where we had a very nice dinner of sloppy joes. I was so hungry, I had three. After supper, I was very delighted to discover that Dale had upgraded his modem to a DSL line. I took advantage of this by checking e-mail, blogs, and Facebook. It was a great relief to have high-speed internet. I also took advantage of it the next morning to find a store (Kohl’s) that Mer wanted to go to to get some last-minute supplies. Since our flight was taking off in the early afternoon, we had time. We borrowed the car, and ran the errands. While we were out, Mer let me go to Target and pick up a new 8-megapixel camera for the trip. My old camera had broken a few weeks ago, and we figured taking pictures of France was worth getting a new camera. I picked up a Canon PowerShot A630, and I am very pleased with it.

We were picked up by a limo service and taken to Orlando’s airport, again with no problems. We got on a US Air flight to Philadelphia, but we only had a 90-minute layover, so I could not dash into the city to get whoopie pies at the market. We actually made our connecting flight in a different terminal with no difficulty (Mer and I were not sure that 90 minutes was going to be sufficient to get another flight). We did board a little late (the flight was overbooked, so the boarding process took about an hour). Then, we had to sit for about an hour while mechanics tried to fix the toilets on the right side of the plane. They got them to work as long as the pane was above 16,000 feet, so that was okay. Then we waited another 30-45 minutes while they unloaded some cargo off of the plane because now we were over weight. The passengers took this with welcome good humor, and we took off about two hours late.

Because the plane was full, none of our traveling party were able to sit together. While that was less than ideal, it was okay. This fight also had something new for me on a plane – individual 7-inch LCD TVs in the seat in front of you, in coach! I was able to pick from a number of movies to watch. While I did read quite a bit, I also managed to watch a movie I had been meaning to see, Stranger Than Fiction, a movie about a real man’s life being controlled by a fiction writer. It was not a great movie, but it was well done, and I enjoyed it, especially for “free” on a plane. I read some more, and finished the last part of the flight up with The Lion King. The food on the plane was fine – I had a nice pasta-and-cheese dish; breakfast was a donut-like thing that must have horrified any French on the plane. The flight was smooth – only about 5 minutes of turbulence at one point. I did not get any sleep on the plane (I can rarely sleep on a plane), and I could always see a thin line of sunlight on the northern horizon when I looked out the window on occasion.

In the actual airport, customs was a breeze (we actually never even saw a customs agent for some strange reason), although since we were being picked up by a limo service, we did not have time to change money. This turned out to be fine, since ATMs turned out to be plentiful and as cheap or cheaper than currency exchanges. We never did change any money at all.

The limo driver spoke almost no English, so Mer and her mom did most of the talking. The drive through Paris would have been more interesting and memorable if I had not been up for 22 or 23 hours. We got to our hotel just fine, only to discover the rooms would not be ready until 1:00 (it was currently 11:30). So began the process of exploring France; more soon….

Here is the map of our vacation. Each different color is what we traveled each day (we started and ended in Paris, and traveled counter-clockwise). I’m guessing we logged about 1,700 miles in 11 days, but that is just an estimate.

(The map is from Lonely Planet – I could not find a good open-source map).

-Or- How to survive on 20 different variations of ham and cheese.

We were in France 15 days (including travel days). That gives a decent amount of opportunities to see what the fuss is about French foods.

The quick and dirty: bakeries, really good; restaurants, okay.

French evening meals (and I think this is true for much of Europe) in restaurants are based on menus. I know this sounds “no, duh,” but the menu is a one-price for three (or more) courses. The menus are fairly limited in what they offer. The carte (what we would call a menu) is a la carte. Any way you look at it, French restaurants were fairly expensive: typically 8-20 euros, which is currently 12-30 dollars per person. You do NOT want to order a drink at a French restaurant – sodas cost 3-6 euros, and these were always just a normal can or bottle of Coke. $5-9 for a bottle of Coke? Ouch!

Back to the food: Most restaurants would have omelettes available – these were good and cheap. Many restaurants also had very thin crust pizza (most European pizza is about cardboard-thick or less). In some restaurants, you could get frites (french fries or “chips”). I almost always could fall back on these when I did not want fancy sauces and meats I don’t think of (and the occational  offering of snail). So, most French restaurants allowed me to have nice simple fare, but I never did eat any “real” French food as the main evening meal. I did eat and enjoy dessert crepes (chocolate crepes are nice).

We also found a Chinese restaurant toward the end of the trip, which was very welcome. It appears that the French do very little with chicken in their restaurants. The chicken and rice I had were very very good. We also ate at two Italian restaurants. The meal we had near Notre Dame in Paris was exceptional Italian.

The French excel in their bakeries and baked goods. The breads at every meal (including breakfast) were excellent. We rarely ate lunch, but when we did, we always got it at a bakery; most bakeries offered sandwiches on baguettes, or made of flaky pastry crust. it was half a game to see how many different ways I could eat ham and cheese (at least six different ways – maybe more).

French breakfasts were simple – breads and croissants with spreads, and sometimes cheese. But where the French displayed their cultural superiority was the fact that at EVERY breakfast, and in most restaurants, I could get hot chocolate. It was considered as normal as coffee and tea. Many times, the hot chocolate was so dark they served it with sugar on the side. It was always made of warm whole milk. Ahhhhh.

French pastries were exceptional as well. Mer and I had dark chocolate tarts several times, and these were drool-worthy. The French also decided it was worthwhile to fill their éclairs with chocolate filling. They were right to do so.

So, all in all, we ate well in France. If the supper choices were a tad limited for my fussy palate, this was more than made up for by a country where pastry shops easily outnumber gas stations. Well done, France!

Mer and I are getting ready to move into our new home near CVCA – we hope to be fully moved in within the next 10 days or so. It is a little small, but I’m pretty sure I can squeeze my brother Sonotmu into the basement when he comes to visit.

I saw many cool and wonderful things in France, including French KITTIES!

The first kitty I encountered was pacing itself for a busy day, in Honfleur.

Then, this kitty felt at ease in the protection of the walled city of Carcassonne.

The best kitty-fest was in Orches, where our B and B had a momma kitty and two adorable kittens. The used a small pipe in the wall of the house as a kitty door. It was so cute!

The last kitty we saw on the trip was from the very German-looking town of Eguisheim, which had more flowers per square foot (meter?) than any town I had ever seen, PLUS one kitty!

It will be sad to see Sonotmu and Jolene move to France, but where else can Jo live?