We got a late start in the morning and were able to get a picture with everyone except Herman. We had a lot of fun staying with them and they were incredible hosts.

We hopped upto Versailles and walked around the gardens and market. After that we headed over to Le Vésinet and then back into Paris. We just walked around a lot before meeting up with Claire in the evening.

Our travels made us pretty tired by time we reached La Place de la Concorde. We stepped into The Madeleine and enjoyed some organ music while we waited for Claire to get off work. I had never been to the Madeleine before but I wish I had. It’s got a very different feel from other churches because it was constructed in the Napoleonic era.

We finally met up with Claire. We stopped by a designer pastry shop to buy a cake. Claire was having a going away party for one of her friends later. She invited us though we were forced to decline. We went to the crepes shop that I really liked and had horrible service with mediocre performance. How sad.

We said goodbye and went to Compiegne arriving late and leaving early in the morning for Belgium and Holland.

Behold the Alexs!

After consulting some maps and the interwebs at the Evan’s place I zeroed in on the Catacomb’s location. After getting to the train station Mont Parnasse in Paris we took off on foot. The Catacombs find their edifice at La Place D’Enfer Rochereau (something like Rochereau anyway) and is about a 15 minute walk from Mont Parnasse. Just follow the metro stops

My knowledge of Paris is a startling reflection on my experience in France. Where are the catacombs? I don’t really know but I can tell you where to get a delicious Pizza Kebab or find a genuine Jewish Falafel.

Le Mont St-Michel hadn’t totally tired us out so after meeting up with Beau and Ester we walked down into Centreville to see the castle.

Norman weather can be pretty finicky. It reminds me a bit of Colorado except it’s 10x more likely to rain. It was raining when we left Caen to make the hour and a half drive to the Mont St-Michel. Because it was raining Marion decided to come with us.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Normandy was their livestock. I know that’s probably a strange thing to say but they have sheep and cows all over the place. Even right up next to the Mont St Michel. We actually had to stop and let some sheep cross.

Natacha was nice enough to play photographer and she took some incredible pictures. The Mont St Michel is such an amazing place. I’d love to come back with a real camera and take some photogs but that’ll have to wait for my next trip.

Travel Tip: Be younger than 25 years old. If you are you usually get a youth rate on things like tickets to the mt St Michel which is half price. Our price was something like 3.50 while the adults have to pay 7.00. So be young or be rich.

We decided to get a tour guide so we could have a more informative visit. The girls opted to get an english guide so Gary wouldn’t have to get a headset. I was actually really impressed. I don’t normally go for things like tour guides but in this case it turned out really well. Our guide was really funny. Here he is telling us about the giant hamsterprisoner driven elevator wheel.

After our visit he headed back to Caen to meet up with Beau and Ester.

Monday started off slow. I went and visited a friend in the morning while everyone else was still in bed and everyone was just sitting down to breakfast when I got back. Thierry went out and got croissants for a “classic french breakfast.” We had some hickups leaving which involved us playing cards for most of the morning.

We finally left around 12:30 and drove with Natacha and Noemie to Caen. It took about 6 hours and I picked up a sweet knife on the way. Not for anything crazy, just for cutting cheese and stuff on the road.

Driving through France was cool and we saw a lot of really interesting towns and things. Pictures? No, didn’t take any. We did however take pictures of playing cards once we arrived in the late afternoon.

Is our travel log getting boring? Don’t worry, I’ll make up for it tomorrow.

Sunday felt very much like a vacation to me. Of course, I’m on vacation but all the traveling and bumping around every 5 minutes gets tiring. We went to the local ward and got to see a lot of old friends. After church we milled about, took naps and hung out with Claire (the friend we made on the train to Reims).

Claire showed us the middle school where her mother lives. In France many teaching and management positions come with apartments. It was very beautiful and the picture above shows the schools courtyard.

The school itself dates back to the 7th century and has, of course, changed a lot since then.

In the evening Natcha showed up with her sister Noemie and we practiced the french art of “Bavarde” which means, “talk way too much.”

Tomorrow we’re going to Caen.

Waking up on the train was funny to say the least. The train actually nearly stopped about an hour from Paris and everyone woke up and started moving around. Gary and I were sitting outside our cabin looking out the window. I remembered that I had forgotten my water so I opened the door. One of our unknown room mates was just putting his pants on.

Funny, I usually like to know the names of the people I’m sleeping with.

After getting into Barcelona we only had 2 hours so we went to a grocery store and got some food for the trip. Gary’s Ankle hurt so he sat down in the train station and I walked around a little bit.

Thursday we woke up late and spent some time around Luis and Amaya’s place getting some stuff done and planning the next leg of our voyage. Apparently getting from Madrid to Paris is more complicated and expensive than we previous thought.

The only trains that run direct are overnight trains and they’re half train half hotel. Even with the eurorail pass this would cost us 70 euros (about 100 US). After looking into all the other options we found that if we go through Barcelona we can catch another overnight train that doesn’t have beds. The catch is that it will take us a total of about 23 hours to get to Paris. Plus our final destination isn’t even Paris, it’s Reims which is another 2-3 hours. So all in all we will have traveled for about 26 hours by the time we actually roll into Reims. If I were planning this trip over again I think I would have opted to skip Madrid and go through Barcelona.

Of course then we wouldn’t have met Luis, Amaya and their two children who are really quite remarkable and worth the extra time….

Speaking of, after spending 3 hours at the train station getting our tickets we started to head home.

This may require some explaining. You see, Spanish people love waiting in line. Don’t ask me what it is. Just look at this picture:

What are they waiting for? Good question.

So when we got to the train station we took a number.

Now serving 65…

As if that weren’t enough they put us in the wrong line..

Anyway, back to our story:
It was getting late. We got to the bus station we needed to take around 10 and stopped at a grocery store convenience store to get something to cook. The spanish people call these stores “The Chinese” or “Chinos” because chinese people are the only ones crazy enough to have stores open at that hour.

After getting our food we hopped on the bus and made the 25 minute trip out to the suburbs where we were staying. We asked the bus driver to let us know when our stop was up. He booted us out in the wrong area and it took about 2 hours of walking along with asking lots of people for directions and a phone call we made on a borrowed cell to get into the right area. Of course the girl that let us use her phone gave us the wrong directions so we wondered on. Finally Luis found us in his car, when we hadn’t shown up after 10 minutes he came looking for us.

It’s quite the site; after you’ve been wandering around in the middle of a city you don’t know in a country you’ve never been to, being completely lost, to see a benevolent Spaniard lean out the window of his car and say “Did somebody call 1-800-save-me ?” and laugh. Quite the sight.

Relief doesn’t quite cut it.

In the morning Luis told us he’d take us to the train station and make sure we got onto the right train, which he did. We said our goodbyes and I definitely want to keep in touch.

After a missed rendez-vous with Robynn we got on our train and we’re almost to Barcelona. We’ll have a few hours to walk around before we need to catch an overnight train to Paris.

And on we go…