paris.to.porto

Okay. So that train ride was rough. Very rough. The first leg was great. We had a nice comfortable little cabin (at one point a smelly guy sat with us, and we thought the train was full. It turns out he just wanted to sit with us, so we moved to a different, empty car) and it only took about 5 hours. Then we got to irun in northern spain where we had to wait a bit for our next train. Irun was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. This train was the one we got to sleep on. I wsa thinking that it wouldn't be too full since it was a wednesday night, but it was packed. We got a cabin with four other people- a french mother/daughter, and a cute little french couple. The guy of the couple was the only one who spoke english, so we had a fairly quiet train ride! After an hour or so, we pulled down the beds. *t* and I had the middle bunks, the couple had the top bunks, and the mom/daughter had the bottom. The train kept stopping during the night, so I didn't really sleep at all. We were supposed to arrive in coimbra (portugal) at 8:33am, but the train was delayed for some reason, which meant we didn't get there until 10:30, therefore missing the 10:02 train we were supposed to take to porto. Luckily, we got on the 11:16, and got to porto by 12:30ish. While portugal is beautiful with all the old buildings, as *t* says, it's kind of rough. It's really humbling to realize that so many people can live very happily with so little. Porto is amazing. We saw churches, climbed towers (and yes- *t* joined me) and sat in the sweltering heat watching adorable portugese children jumping of a 70 foot bridge into the douro river. Today we went to the taylor port wine place. We got free tastings, and a great tour into the caves. We had a really good lunch (which was needed since we've been surviving on crackers, fruit, bread and peanut butter for days now). Tomorrow we're taking the train to lisbon, but for now, we're avoiding the ninety something heat and fry-your-skin-off sun by spending some quality time inside!

crazy.keyboards

The keyboards here are throwing me through a loop. To show you (and to have a record of it for myself) I'm going to type out, from top to bottom, left to right, the keyboard. Here goes:

²&é"'(-è_çà)=(backspace key)
(tab key)azertyuiop^$
(caps lock)qsdfghjklmù*(enter key)
(shift key)


As you can see, to use numbers, you have to press shift. Otherwise you end up with a french letter, or a ( or ). As for the letters, the ones that give me the most trouble are the a, m, q, w, z. I think that we should get a discount on our internet cafe time since it takes twice as long to type anything!

paris-and.a.challenge

Wow! Two updates in just a few days! What lucky blog readers you are. We are still in Paris, but are taking a 20 hour train ride to porto, portugal in just a few hours. It's actually three seperate trains, so we have a bit of a break which is good (especially since I've been getting a little motion sick on them...woo hoo).
Yesterday we walked what I believe must have been about 15 miles. We started at our hotel in st. germain des prés, walked over ile de la cité to see notre dame, through the 4th, 1st, 2nd, and 9th quarter into the 18th where we hiked the stairs to montmartre and saw sacré coeur. I climbed a heck of a lot of steps to the dome at the top for a great view (thank goodness I've been working on my cardiovascular endurance before leaving boston!!) while *t* had some "alone time" on the steps of sacré coeur. (We decided ahead of time to split up for a while each day so we didn't kill each other. Our "alone time" seemed to coincide perfectly with any intense climbing activity!!) Next we stopped to get lunch at a grocery store. For 2,93 euros (about 3.75 dollars) I got a loaf of bread, some brie cheese, an apple, and a peach yogurt.
While we sat in a park eating, a little old lady walked by wheeling her dog in a little leaning cart thing with wheels. Call me crazy, but I thought the whole point of taking a dog out was to give it some exercise. I guess the french have different ideas. As soon as I get home, I'm going to post the picture I took of this.
We then walked down the bd. de Clichy (which turned into bd. des batignolles and then bd. de courcelles) until it hit the arc de triomphe. Again we had some alone time while I climbed the 284 stairs to the top for an amazing view of paris. Last time I was here, it was very foggy, and the views were pretty crappy. From there, we walked down the champs elysées to the Louvre, across the bridge, and back to our hotel in st germain des prés. It took us about 10.5 hours.

Here's the challenge: Whoever can do the research and give me an accurate estimate of how many miles we walked (taking into account the extra climbing for me in sacré coeur and arc de triomphe) first, gets a prize from europe. Send your estimate as a comment to this post, and if someone else beats you to the punch, but you don't think their estimate is correct, reply anyway with your supporting evidence. Good luck!

frankfurt.to.paris

Howdy from paris! We flew to frankfurt and hung out there for a day or so. On the plane over, there was one point when it was pretty turbulent, and this lady behind *t* screamed like we were going to crash! We couldn't stop laughing! I loved walking down the river main- there was some big carnival going on on the other side of the river, and there was a sponge bob square pants boat and a bunch of german kids singing the song. It was funny. We had frankfurters for dinner, which (unlike in the US) can only be called frankfurters if they are made in frankfurt. I also had some cider type drink called apfelwein. It was interesting!

Today we took the train to paris. We had our own little compartment which gave us some quiet time which was great considering I only slept for 1.5 hours over the first 40 hours or so. We walked around st. germain de prés (where our hotel is) and had dinner in a great little restaurant. Tomorrow we're going to walk all ove the place (since we've both been here before, we don't feel the need to go to all the big places) and we're taking a train to porto, portugal Wed. afternoon.

So...so far so good! I just need to get used to the rearranged keyboards these crazy french have over here!

et#2's.cow

As promised et#2- here's one of you cows. Unfortunately, while I've now discovered where the other one is located, I won't have time to photograph it as the cow parade ends the day after I return.

leaving.on.a.jet.plane.

(I stole that title from et2 when she went to japan. It's just too cool not to use!)

I'm off to europe today. We leave at 9:50pm which I figure will help to get the jet lag issue over with right off the bat. We'll sleep on the plane, be tired for the first day, and then just go to bed a little early. We should be on europe time in no time!

I'm not sure what my internet access will be like, so who knows when my next post will be. Keep checking though, since I'll post about where we've been and what we've seen. Take care!

paint.pants

Since I took the kids with me on my last cow quest, they're now very interested in the whole "cow" thing. Today, since I wanted to stay close to home in order to get trip stuff ready, we made paper mache cows. This entailed using multiple recycled materials (soda cans, paper towel rolls, duct tape, and newspaper) to build the form, and then an hour or so of quality messy time. When all was said and done, all three girls were pretty much covered in the flour/water mixture. I noticed that the spattering on their jeans actually looked like white paint. Maybe instead of paying money for paint spattered jeans, people could start spattering their favorite pair with flour and water. That way, they'd have the option of washing them out when they wanted a change!

melty.

Tonight was the first night that I made really good at home pizza's. I've tried this before, but always on a cookie sheet or something, and the crust doesn't turn out so great. *p* has some pizza stones, and he always makes great pizza, so we decided to give them a shot. *ac* and *nn* were coming over for dinner, so *nk* came up with the idea of making gourmet pizza's. Despite the 100 degree + temperature, and the oven cranked to 500 degrees, they turned out great! (Thanks to central air.) I carmelized onions earlier in the day, and we had mushrooms, pepperoni, grilled chicken, peppers, basil, broccoli, etc to add to them. We each had our own, so no one had to share or fight over a stray mushroom on their side. We had leftovers too for lunch tomorrow. Earlier in the day, two of the kids made chocolate chip cookies with me which we had for dessert. When we needed to soften the butter, we just stuck it outside for a few minutes. It was evenly soft instead of having patches of melted butter like the microwave produces. Just think...if we lived in phoenix, we could soften butter all the time.

lazy.reader

When I got my fairly new iPod speakers, they came with a little gift-card-type-thing that offered me three free audio books. I recently found this card, and checked out the website (audible.com). Basically you pick a plan which is a certain amount per month, you get a free audio book each month, plus a discounted price for extras. With my card, I get three extras free. I'm thinking this might be a good idea for europe. I'll be spending a ton of time on the train, and I'm sure I won't want to actually read the whole time, but I'll probably get tired of listening to music. Having some audio books would be a good compromise. Now I just need to pick out some books to download, so if you have a few minutes (or just need an excuse to procrastinate) check out the options, and send me your recommendations.

personal.chef

*nk* came today! She's staying here for the week while she works at the hospital affiliated with tufts. So she got here and we were trying to figure out what to do for dinner, and it turns out that she likes to cook. She made us a great dinner. I joked that it wasn't me doing the favor of having her stay here, but me using her as our own personal chef!
While I was on my way to cvs, I saw a great bureau in a trash pile. I decided to pick it up on my way home, repaint it, and use it in my guestroom since there isn't one there now. Unfortunately, by the time I remembered to pick it up three hours later, someone else had grabbed it. Since it was 11pm and dark out, sister *j* and I decided to do a drive around trash viewing. I didn't find anything else, but she grabbed two scanner printers, and a foosball table. We tried to be all quick and quiet while grabbing it, but it didn't work out so well. The people who had thrown it out were still up, and as we stumbled around trying to shove the thing in the back of the car, I heard some guy laughing at us. It didn't help that we were right under a street light.