Paris, The Not-Vacation Part

What's the opposite of vacation? The best the internet is giving me is "occupation," "work," or "continuation." I see what they're going for, but none of those really have the right feel to them. I'm voting for nightmare.

Our Paris vacation party consisted of me and Shannon as well as Shannon's sister and mother. About half way through the trip, while visiting the lovely Chateau Chenonceaux (such a perfect French word), Shannon's mom didn't see a step that was lurking in the middle of a little hallway. The resultant fall ended with a fractured elbow and two hairline fractures in her pelvis. And there, in the hallway at Chenonceaux, is where our vacation ended. The helpful and kind staff at the Chateau kept us company while we waited for the ambulance to come take her to the hospital in the bustling metropolis of Amboise (note: not a metropolis) to see the extent of the damage. After the x-rays confirmed the damage, and that she needed surgery to put her elbow back together, we got to start facing the first of many questions that we had not previous considered when planning our trip.

1. Where is the best place for 3 people to get a room on short notice in Amboise, France?
2. How do you say "elbow," "surgery," "screws," and a whole host of other similar words in French?
2a. If you're me, how do you say anything in French?
3. What do you do when your best French speaker is now hospitalized?
4. How do you get insurance forms printed while in Amboise, France? Is there a Kinkos?
5. Is the surgery going to be tomorrow? (Answer: no.) How about the next day? (Answer: yes. No, wait, never mind, no.) How about the next day? (Answer: Yes. We think. Probably. Call in the morning to find out. Ok, it turns out, yes, it did happen on day 3.)
6. How is the French medical system? (Pretty good.)
7. How much English does the hospital staff speak? (Very little.)
8. How do you make a phone call from an American cell phone in France to a phone in France?
9. Should Kim go home as planned on Wednesday, even though the surgery hasn't happened yet? (Yes.) If so, how does she get back to Paris? (Lots of different trains.)
10. Can we return the rental car 3 days late and do a different location? (Yes, they were very nice, though those extra three days apparently cost more than the first 4.)
11. Is it possible to have surgery in the morning, get released from the hospital in Amboise at 5:30pm and drive to the airport in Paris all in one day? (Yes) Will this be fun? (Not by the end.) Will it rain? (Indeed.) Will the freeway be closed? (Of course!) Will the gas station be closed? (Clearly.) Will your phone battery die? (Nearly.) Can you stop at the temple along the way? (Yes!) Will you get to drive through the longest urban motorway tunnel in the world? (Yes. It's over 6.5 miles long.) Will you take the wrong exit when the tunnel forks halfway through requiring you to go back through the tunnel a second time (and pay the toll a second time)? (Undoubtedly. It was just that sort of day.)
12. How do you navigate Charles de Gaulle International Airport with someone who can barely walk and needs a wheelchair? How do you say wheelchair in French? (It doesn't matter, once you get to the airport they all speak English and Francois will take care of everything.)

Getting from the hospital in Amboise to airport gate 16 hours later was perhaps the most exhausting thing I have ever done. I suppose once the trip is sufficiently in the rear-view mirror (not yet) this will all seem a wonderful character building experience. Check back in a year and we'll see how I feel. But I guess we proved that we can survive unexpected challenges in a foreign land.

It wouldn't be a trip to the hospital in France if the ER isn't on strike. (But they were still there working. I'm not sure how this all fits together.

Is the fact that this cemetery is right across the street from the hospital a good sign?

This macaron was very tasty. The decor in our emergency hotel room was .... less tasty.

Continuing the theme of "pastries you do want to eat in places you don't want to eat them": A religieuse in a hospital room. It's like a big, round, double-decker eclair. (And for the record, I was only two vowels short of spelling it right on the first try.)

Paris, the Vacation Part

If going to Paris (PARIS!) isn't enough of a reason to re-resurrect the blog, I don't know what is.

Shannon and I went to France for 10-ish days last month, and I here I am to report on it. (The number of days is a little fuzzy. Is it how long I was away from home? How long I was in France? Do I have to adjust for time zones?) You don't want a long list of everywhere you went along with the number of steps I took each day. You just want some pictures. So here are my ten favorite pictures, in rough chronological order, from the trip with a brief blurb.

The walls of Sainte Chapelle are, essentially made of entirely of glass. Hypothetically there are a whole bunch of bible stories in there, but you'd have to be 50 feet tall and much better at remembering all the stories in Chronicles. This is your first, and last, reminder that I'm not a photographer and took all of these with my phone, and the sun is where ever it is in all the photos.

A baguette in the park, and a couple of French kids. From the start, I insisted that I wasn't going to make many demands on the trip, but that I wanted to eat baguettes in the park.

The obligatory Notre Dame selfie, for proof that I was actually there, or at least that my photoshop skills have improved. (They haven't.) Since the fire, this is as close as you can get to the Notre Dame, which looks pretty good from this angle.

Not quite so good from this angle.

The Memorial of the Martyrs of the Deportation is across the street from Notre Dame and is for those who were shipped off to Nazi death camps. The memorial is all underground, which makes for poor photography. I thought it was a very well done memorial. Above the exit it says, "Forgive, do not forget ...."

I ate lunch on the street in Paris. It turns out that when you actually do this, the tables are (I am not kidding) about 2 inches from each other, the tables are tiny, your neighbors are possibly smoking, and the foot traffic is about six inches away. It's not really charming or relaxing. But it was tasty.

Omaha beach. We had a great tour from Thomas who did an excellent job of making the tour about people, and not about nations.

When Blockburgers go on vacation, they always go to cemeteries. This one also at Omaha beach.

In France, everything must use spiral staircases. It's a law or something. These ones happen to be inside the Arc de Triomphe.

Sometimes when you're at the Palais de Chaillot checking out the Eiffel Tower a parade of baton twirlers comes by with their little 5 piece band in tow. You know, because those things just happen.

Who made this stupid 10 picture rule? The first place we stayed was just down the steps from Sacré-Cœur, and this was on the sidewalk just outside our door. (It's Sacré-Cœur, if you couldn't put that together.)

We went to Musee D'Orsay and saw art. Some Manet, some Monet, some Van Gogh, but I'm including this Renoir here because it's Shannon's favorite and is the one hanging in our bedroom.

Sometimes when all of your vacation plans have completely fallen apart, you find yourself at the train station in Amboise, France at 10pm buying baguettes from the baguette vending machine. You put in your Euro and the baguette comes "banging down the chute". (Shannon's words.)

We went to several castles. This is Chambord, the biggest (of the ones we went to). It's so large that by the time you're close enough to feel like you can see it properly, you're too close to take a picture of it. If you were to zoom in enough on the photo you could see people on the balcony on the third level. The main rooms must have at least 30 foot ceilings. Wikipedia puts the total height at 184 feet with 440 rooms and 282 fireplaces. In the center of the chateau there is a helical staircase.

Paris temple, night. We made it here 5 minutes before the visitors center was supposed to close, and stayed much longer that I thought we would on a day that turned out to be probably be the longest, most tiring day any of us have had in a long time. But I'm glad we got to see the temple.

Mackinac Island Getaway

In 13 years of marriage, Shannon and I have spent, I think, 4 nights together away from our girls, and never more than one in a row. So, for a three-weeks-after-our-anniverary gift to ourselves, we went away on our own for three whole nights. (Shannon's parents were nice enough to stay at our house with the girls.) We decided to take our romantic getaway to Mackinac Island, which is a small island between the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan. (Lesson time: Mackinac Island is near Mackinaw City and yes, that's how you spell each of them. They are both, however, pronounced the same - "Mackinaw".)

Part of the allure of Mackinac Island is that there are no cars on the island. So if the whole point of the trip is to have a relaxing weekend with your spouse, no driving sounds pretty good. In our quest for a quiet, car-free weekend, we strapped our bikes on the back of the car and drove 7 hours to get there. Late May is really the earliest you want to try and vacation in northern Michigan. The daffodils were out up there, and the tulips were just starting, but we mostly avoided the rain and had temperatures in the 50s. The advantage to going in late May though, is that the hotels are about 15% cheaper before the main tourist season starts, and the island is much emptier.

We spent 2 nights on the island at the Cottage Inn, which is an 8 or 9 room B&B. Because I'm nuts, I got up the first morning and went for a run around the island. Literally, I ran around the whole thing, because I guess I wanted to be able to say that I had. (It's 8 miles around.) I went back to the B&B, had breakfast with Shannon and then we rode around the island together. There's a state highway that goes around the island, but because there's no cars you only have to contend with walkers, bikers and horses and horse-drawn carts. (The horses mostly stick to town.) Here are some sights:

 

Arch Rock. This is a sea arch from when the Great Lakes were deeper. This shot is from the road looking up at it. Once you climb the 6 kajillion stairs to the top . . . 

This is from the top of the arch, essentially. You can see the road around the island through the trees.

 Panoramic shot from the arch looking out across Lake Huron

Shannon at the beach. You can see the Mackinac Bridge in the distance, which connects the two Michigan land masses. While I did run and bike the island, we didn't do more than stick a finger in the water - it was extremely cold.

 Shannon at British Landing. The British landed here at night and sneaked up on the American fort on the island before they had even realized that the War of 1812 had started.

 Here's the view from the fort looking down on town. This is the main tourist part of the island. We stayed in the yellow house just to the left of the church steeple. The island is basically just tourists and people there to sell fudge and t-shirts to the tourists. I asked one college aged girl working at the fudge store what they all do on the island for the whole summer. Her response was, "I'll be honest with you. We work a lot of hours, and then we drink."

 From the fort looking over the town and harbor.

Having been around the island on day one, we used the second day to explore the interior of the island and head down dirt roads and trails to exciting sounding places like "Skull Cave" and "Crack-in-the-Island".

 Shannon was super impressed by Skull Cave.

This is Sugar Loaf rock.

This is Shannon standing inside Sugar Loaf rock.

 The sign said that there are many cracks in the island. This is the largest one. I can't imagine how we missed all those other ones.

 

Downtown Mackinac. I even saw a horse drawn street sweeping machine.

The Grand Hotel. We're far too poor to get any closer to the place than this, but it is beautiful.

After two days on the island our rear ends were tired of our bikes. We went back to the mainland and spent a night in Mackinaw City and then drove back home through the Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin. (It wasn't all that exciting.)

My Hat

A year ago, we went to Washington DC and surrounding areas. Everyone in our family was allotted one souvenir for the trip. Shannon got a cameo necklace at Gettysburg on the first day. The girls opted for stuffed pandas from the National Zoo on day 4. But even through all the gift shops we walked through, I couldn't find a souvenir that met my high standards. Eventually, we made it to the 6th and final day of the trip, in our 6th state that week and at our last stop of the day: the headquarters of the Appalachian Trail. And there, I finally found my souvenir - an AT hat.

I was due for a new hat, and there it was with its white blaze on the front, which is how the 2,000+ mile Appalachian trail is marked on its run from Georgia to Maine. So I happily bought the had (and a key chain) and our trip was complete.

When our recent trip to Disneyland came up I packed my hat and wore it each day at the park. That is, I wore it until the morning of the last day in the park, when the final moments of my hat were captured on film:

Fractions of a second after this picture was taken, my hat went flying off, forever lost in the brier patch. After dutifully stowing backpacks, hats and sunglasses (not only for myself but for the girls also) for more than two days, I never considered the hat on my head as we climbed on that ride, and it was gone in the blink of an eye, gone to a watery grave in the Splash Mountain water filtration system.

I went back a few times during the day to see if my hat turned up at Splash Mountain, but without luck. We checked the park lost and found on our way out at the end of the day, but they gave me a business card with instructions to call back the next day. I waited 5 days before calling and gave them what has to be one of the more detailed descriptions of a lost hat that they've ever had. They went and looked - no hat. I left my contact information, but they pretty well admitted that if it hadn't turned up after 5 days, the odds were against me.

Shannon, being an excellent wife, got on line and ordered me a new hat (1400 miles of driving not required) which arrived a few days later:

But, of course, as soon as she did that, Disneyland called to let me know that my hat had turned up! Who knows where it had been for 9 days, but it doesn't matter, that which was lost is found.

So now I have two of my favorite hat. A brand new one, and a broken in, wrinkly version that shows some oxidation on the metal on the back from spending some time in the water.

As a side note, it took a lot of searching, but we finally found something free at Disneyland! They pay for the shipping to send stuff back to you! Given what airlines charge these days, I think next time we go, I'll "lose" my entire suitcase at Disneyland and save myself some checked baggage fees.

Disney Photos

I don't take many pictures, but here are a few from our trip to Disneyland. Shannon and my parents took pictures too, but, well, I guess you'll have to wait for them to post them on their own blogs or something. The picture quality isn't always great and I'm too lazy to even think about editing them even a tiny bit, so, on that note, here are some pictures:

The view from our hotel room looking into California Adventure. The weather was lovely.

 Ella carried this leaf around all day. Not sure what kind it is, but it came from this tree.

Julia, being sensible, knew I wasn't going to buy her this lollipop for like $114, so she just got her picture with it instead.

 Tigger and Eeyore. I hopped out of line before we got to Pooh. Despite not talking, Eeyore was definitely a sweetie.

 Thankfully, Disney has one line you can wait in to see multiple princesses, so for our 30 minutes of waiting, we got to see Snow White, and this new princess they've recently invented (fine, I googled her for you, she's Elena) but really, we were there to see . . .

Cinderella. Ella made it clear that meeting Cinderella was a requirement for the trip. Not even her (Ella) tiny little bladder would be allowed to get in the way as we waited in line.

I was not convinced that meeting Tinkerbell was a priority. But 25 minutes later, here we were. (Fun fact: Tinkerbell speaks French (at least this Tinkerbell does).)

Ella in Toon Town

Julia is a much more aggressive driver, evidently.

All of us (plus plastic Goofy) in the hotel lobby, wearing our new Disneyland t-shirts.

Disney Awards

After three days at Disneyland, I figured I should do a "review". It's not like the world is lacking for books and blogs about Disneyland, and how to do it "right", so I don't care about trying to help you plan your next vacation. Besides, pretty much everyone I know goes to Disneyland way more often than I do anyway. Instead, I'm handing out awards from our trip. (Only things that we actually did were up for consideration here.)

Best Ride: California Screamin'
Julia and Ella don't hesitate to list this as their favorite ride in the park. Ella was just barely tall enough to go on it. Going in to the week, we weren't sure if the girls would like the bigger rides, but it turns out, the faster the better as far as they are concerned. Also, we went on this twice, with no waiting at all. We could have done it again, but I think my insides would have turned to jelly. It's been a long time since I went on roller coasters.

Most Ridden: Big Thunder Mountain
I think Shannon and I did this 5 times? It was just happenstance that every time we went anywhere near it, the line was either short, or the fast pass time was both short and convenient. It's a solid ride, so we didn't mind going on it again and again.

Worst Ride, kids vote: Indiana Jones
The girls did not like that the ride was dark, scary and jerky.

Worst Ride, adult vote: Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage
Longest Wait: Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage (54 minutes)
The app said the wait would be 20 minutes. Upon arrival at the line, the sign said 40 minutes. We'd been checking throughout the three days, and found that generally the wait times were a bit shorter than what the signs said. Not this time. 54 minutes, mostly in the sun. Plus, you can get the same experience in your dentist's waiting area if you position the fish tank between you and the TV.

Most Expensive Letter: G
California Screamin', Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters, Soarin' Around the World. Can Disney not afford to put that extra letter on the signs?

Most Closed Ride: Pirates of the Carribean, Matterhorn (tie)
I guess this is what you get for going the first three days in March.

Longest Wait/Ride Ratio: Peter Pan
First, Shannon and I waited in line for 20 minutes or so by ourselves on night, only to have the ride break down. After another 10 minutes of not moving, we got out of line. Of course, the ride started back up again as soon as we were out of line. (We had fast passes that we didn't want to miss.) The next day we waited through another 30 or 35 minutes of the line with the girls. As the ride was ending, Ella's first comment was, "That was short." So, there you go, an hour in line, 3 minutes of Peter Pan.

Best Food: Churros
Duh!

Most Broken Ride: The Haunted Mansion
The line stopped moving for about 10 minutes while we were waiting. We had literally just stepped out of line when it started moving again. (We just stepped right back in to line.) Then the ride stopped 4 or 5 times while we were going through, though never for more than about a minute.

Most Surprisingly OK ride: It's a Small World
The song wasn't nearly as annoying as I anticipated, and the girls loved all the terrible animatronics. It was worth it just to see their eyes light up at the hundreds of dancing dolls. Plus, the line was about 5 minutes long.

Most Realistic Ride: Disneyland Monorail
It was designed decades ago, but somehow Disneyland looked into their crystal ball and perfectly captured modern mass transit. The wait was way too long, there weren't nearly enough trains running, and even when it did come, 20% of the cars were empty because they were broken. The ride itself was perfectly boring.

Most Unknown Attraction: Sleeping Beauty Castle Walk-through
Did you know you can go inside the castle? Does anyone? There's no line, and it only takes a few minutes. You get to see a series of window displays that tell the story of Sleeping Beauty. Very low time investment, if you've got little kids who think going inside the castle is neat.

Most Anticipated Ride: Autopia
Julia was really looking forward to "auto-topia". I think she was a little bit underwhelmed. I think she was expecting something more like go-carts and less like riding lawnmowers on a guide rail.

DC Trip, Day 6 & 7

Day 6: Shenandoah National Park, Harper's Ferry

Saturday we loaded up the car and started for home the long way. A 2 hour drive took us to Shenandoah National Park, which is essentially a single road that winds through the "peaks" of the Shenandoah mountains. The park is 100 miles long or something like that, and we were only able to see the northern third, but it was very pretty. Though the mountains aren't particularly high, they still have a decent prominence over the surrounding area, so you can forget that you're barely over 3,000 feet up. We took in some vistas and went on a pair of short hikes, because the park includes part of the Appalachian Trail.

 Pretty panoramic views

The AT is over 2,100 miles long and runs from Georgia to Maine, and if I ever have enough money to take weeks and months off of work, I'd love to go hike a lot of it. But for now, we settled on two hikes of roughly a mile a piece. Neither hike went anywhere particularly noteworthy, but they were pretty. Between the first two hikes, we saw a black bear and cub from our car. Then, on our second hike, we met this guy about 30 yards ahead of us on the trail:

 A very average bear

Coincidentally, this is also the point where Shannon declared that it was time to turn around and go back. I reluctantly agreed. The bear just wandered briefly across the trail and continued on into the woods without ever giving any indication that he was interested in us at all.

 Me on the AT (the white line on the tree is how the AT is marked)

We left Shenandoah (and it's very disappointing visitor's center and gift shop) to head for our last new state of the trip - West Virginia. We went to Harper's Ferry, which is on the point of WV that sticks the furthers East. It's historically significant as a great place to cross the Shenandoah before it joins the Potomac which made it strategically important in the civil war. It was also the site of John Brown's raid in 1859, which aimed to start a slave revolt and was quickly put down by Colonel Robert E. Lee. We hiked around a bit where the civil war cannons were placed, but didn't go into town where the restored buildings are. The hike turned out to be very hot and humid and (say it with me) we were getting very tired.

Before leaving town, we did head to the Appalachian Trail Headquarters, which is in Harper's Ferry. It's a little bit ironic because West Virginia only has 4 miles of the trail itself, but that's where it is. We looked around for a few minutes, enjoyed the air conditioning, I bought a hat and a key chain and we continued on to our hotel in the Pittsburgh area.


Day 7: Not the John Johnson Farm and Driving Home

A few years ago we went to Kirtland and made the trip to Hiram to see the John Johnson farm. As it's a half hour or so from all the other church history sites in the area, I don't think too many people visit there. As a result, we had a tour all to ourselves. The missionary couple there gave us a private tour and were thoughtful enough to have one do the talking while the other would hang back to keep an eye on our girls (who would have been about 5 and 3 at the time) to make sure they didn't get in too much trouble. This let us pay a little bit more attention to the tour. They also did a good job of fitting the tour to our interest level and time constraints.

Fast forward to the present, and we figured that since it was a Sunday and we weren't going to church, we could make the detour on the way home to stop by the John Johnson Farm and have it be our "church" for the day. It was something like 20 minutes of extra driving, and we planned to get there right about 11:30 when they opened. Surely no one would be there at 11:30 on a Sunday, right?

Wrong. When we got there, there was an entire youth conference there. Somewhere on the order of 100 kids and leaders. We walked up to the home and the missionary told us that we were welcome to join in the tour, or we could wait 40 minutes until the current group was through. We hung out in the garage area where they were giving general background about church history, doctrine and revelations that happened in Hiram, and it was clear that this wasn't the tour for us. And we could see that this was going to be a 40 minute long fireside-like doctrinal lesson with 50 strangers. None of those are bad things. It was not, however, what we needed: an empty, time-flexible tour with the ability to connect with our children, to keep them engaged. On that tour they would have struggled to see anything, understand much, and keep quiet enough to be curteous to others.

So, we bailed. After using the bathrooms there, of course. It was a little frustrating, and a little bit ironic.

Beyond that, the drive home was pretty uneventful. Some rain. Lots of driving. We got home around 5:30, which never happens when we go on trips, because we're usually completing a 2 day, 20 hour drive back from Utah. So instead of falling into bed and leaving everything to deal with the next day, we actually unpacked, started a load of laundry, put the suitcases away, had dinner (pancakes) and got to bed at a decent time. It was kind of amazing. (And good, because I got to come right back to 3 very long days at work.)

So, there you have it. We went to DC, walked everywhere and saw everything.