Amsterdam is a very pretty city. This time, it seemed like a very comfortable city as well. I think I'm a calmer traveler than ever before in my life. There's less anxiety in walking around a foreign city. I hope I'm a calmer person in all my life these days.

I sat down by the homomonument and saw a rowdy group of older German ladies filling out some sort of tour group checklist game. They discovered a box containing very expensive pink woolen socks on the bench next to me, and loudly proclaimed their good fortune waving their little pink flags in the air before pocketing them and gaggling off. A few minutes later, a pair of young Chinese gents came racing back to find the box empty except for despair, which they took with them. I couldn't communicate with any of these people.

I also saw a very beautiful couple in black on a canal bridge. She was shooting him with dark intentions and a solid, heavy-lensed camera. He was relaxed against the rail, sunlight on his sculpted face and his little digital point-and-shoot slipped into the canals. He made a very late grab for it, then froze in a second of anxiety and regret when it was very obvious that it was irrevocably gone. Sometimes bad-looking things happen to good-looking people, but they learn to let it go with fashionable grace.

I met Justine and her parents at the station, and led them to the apartment getting only slightly lost (I didn't want to show off). The apartment was certainly luxurious -- a wonderful kitchen, large dining area, living room and bedrooms. We had a little protected terrace, but we never got the chance to use it.

We were right in the red light district, and there was certainly some noise -- but it all calmed down enough that it never woke me.

Prostitution is legal as long as it's licensed. The obvious benefit is that it's much less sleazy -- the ladies of the night (and afternoon and morning) seem to be healthy and clean, good-humoured if not enthusiastic. Obviously they're in the business for the quick cash (they're making much more than me), but it's hard to make the comparison to illegal prostitution in North America. They don't seem to be scared or scary, victims or coerced.

The next day, we ate breakfast at the apartment and headed out. We walked a bit around the centre of the city and along the canals until we got to the floating flower market. I managed to not buy a single blue ceramic piece of tourist crap (a first for Amsterdam).

I saw some grafitti that said "sudden prayer makes God jump". I'd wear that on a T-shirt.

We headed to the museum district. The rijksmuseum was firmly barricaded in preparation for renovations, so we walked to the back, where protesters were waving anti-Bush flags and speaking Dutch into megaphones. One banner-waving group separated from the main mass and started quickly and quietly walking away, and another banner-waving group started chanting "nazi-scum-nazi-scum" at them. The police were already between the two groups.

I think it's important to take a stand, so I'd like to clarify my position on the matter. I am strictly against Nazi Scum, and feel that they serve little useful purpose in our modern society.

The van Gogh museum was quite full. We saw several very important pieces, such as his sunflowers, and irises, and almond blossoms, and his room in Arles. Once again, it's astonishing to see the real canvas for such iconic paintings. Him and his cohorts did a number of self-portraits -- frequently with a painting-within-a-painting of another of their number in the background. They weren't ugly men, but they all had a case of 'crazy eyes'.

We walked back up to the flower market for some appel pannekoeken -- delicious Dutch cuisine.

At that point, we separated so Justine and I could shop. Shopping with Justine is a lot of fun, thanks to her impeccable good taste, the good conversation (and impeccably wicked sense of humour). It's just hanging out with a goal.

We ate steak that night. We like to eat the animals, especially grilled flesh from their side ribs with barbecue sauce (and a side salad).

The next day, we separated straight off, and Justine and I headed to the Flying Dutchman seed and bong shop. He has some incredibly beautiful glasswork -- really nice art that doesn't seem right to use as a bong.

Across the road, we visited the Cannabis College and went downstairs into their garden. Our guide was Christy -- she was enthusiastic and chatty about all aspects of The Plant and its utility, its legal and social aspects. She mentioned several times that it was nice to talk to tourists that were interested, but with nothing to prove. She explained which species were for relieving pain, for getting mellow, for profound and cheerful conversations (my favourite) and which were for getting serious messed up. She explained how to grow the plants for optimum size and how to get them to flower. She pointed out what to expect from a good and bad coffee shop, and which varieties to buy. Then we talked about work permits, prostitutes, languages and she took our picture.

We took the Cannabis quiz, but we only got 13 out of 20 questions correct, so we only got the sticker, not the diploma. Christy went over the questions with us so we could improve for the next time.

I recommend Cannabis College to everyone. They obviously have their agenda, but they aren't trying to sell you something. They're volunteers and the 2.5€ visitors fee (for the garden) is nominal. I should have gone to Cannabis College every time I've come to Amsterdam. I could have had my diploma by now.

Then we went to Nes Café just off the Dam Square to make my purchase. I picked up two grams of Royal Dutch Orange (for a nice friendly buzz), a gram of Haze (the 2004 cannabis cup winner, guaranteed to seriously mess with your head) and a gram of Copper Sativa, a nice in-betweener. For transport, I cut a hole in the interior lining of the interior pocket of my Calvin Klein man bag and stuffed the little ziploc bags to the padded bottom, along with a punctured single dose satchel of decaffeinated instant coffee to prevent it from stinking.

Just kidding! It was caffeinated.

Then the serious shopping started. I bought another pair of Esprit jeans (on sale) and a couple pair of red lycra underwear. I'm in the process of abandoning boxer-briefs.

I bought some cheese, cheese knives, spatulas, Dutch licorice and assorted candy.

I bought a rust T-shirt from w.e., and a shiny tank top a size too small. A couple of sizes too small, in fact, so it's unwearable outside of the house -- but it feels great against the skin. Maybe the right occasion will pop up, or I'll learn how to layer my clothing.

Justine confirmed my suspicions that men are wearing very odd, long and thin white scarves theses days, and that it made no sense. We ate some deep-fried meat from vending machines for 1€ and went to the fancy mall that used to be the graceful and airy post office.

We were there the previous day but the mall had been closing, which didn't prevent a hair metal band from performing a rousing chorus of their wry chart-topping hit Testosterone. It was much less irony-laden this day, except for the ugly-is-the-new-beautiful attitude of the designer boutiques. I demand mainstream, accessible fashions within a reasonable price range, and I insist that ugly-is-the-new-still-ugly!

Other than a coffee and a useful waitress explaining that a particular Dutch delicacy was "hard... and soft", that was the end of my trip.

We had to hurry back to the apartment so I could repack my bags, say goodbye and rush to the central station. I got there ten minutes before my train left, which was a waste of eight and a half minutes.

I didn't book first class back to Paris, so the glamour was strictly last-season Gap and the wit was non sequitors with extra pointless and inappropriate adjectives.

Day 1 - There

Our first destination was Morbihan, which is a region towards the south. Given our limited daylight (we left Paris at 10am and squandered 4.5 hours en route) we decided to skip Vannes, which might have been a charming medieval city, and zoom right by the prehistoric stone monuments. We had sunshine and we wanted, nay needed, to see the savage coast.

The presqu'ile de Quiberon is attached to the mainland by a skinny road. Just veer off and you arrive at craggy cliffs andd rushing ocean waves. If you've been to Ireland or British Columbia... well, hold your tongue. Nobody wants to hear the comparison. I had my heaviest of heavy leather jacket and my transformer mittengloves -- and I was thankful. It was a balmy 12 degrees Celsius but the sun had a tendancy to hide behind the exciting and dramatic clouds. The wind was biting -- but it would have been impossible to complain. Brittany is stunning.

We walked and sheltered in the aforementioned crags. There's a warmth of spirit by the ocean, if I may be so poetic. Sculpted rock, white noise of the waves, glittering granite, and so forth. Anyway, my camera battery ran out so we went back to the car to get the spare and to warm up. We brought out Antonio's new kite.

I like kites a lot. I used to have a dragon kite that I loved to fly. Antonio's kite was a little trickier -- it had two separate reels of string that you used to control it. The wind was quite strong, so it would snatch the kite, take it up high where it would immediates start spinning wildly, twisting together the two strings, and then come crashing straight down into a rare or delicate plant, usually with surprising violence and noise. Eventually, we decided that kites are stupid and boring and put it away.

We drove down the côte sauvage to Quiberon, a charming seaside port town -- relatively shuttered for the season. Regardless, we walked along the boardwalk and the beach and I wrote myself love messages in the sand. Hooray!

Then we drove up to Auray, another pretty little town where we called the owner of the gite -- who gave us the most charming directions possible. We were to go to the one-church town of Crac'h, find the only open café and ask where to go next.

We ate crèpes in Auray, passing by St-Anne Church, one of the important pilgrimages in Brittany. I made a very funny joke about how the city was pommé which has a very clever double sense because apples (pommes) are very regional and there were decorative apple banners, and because pommé means way out in the sticks and isolated. Normally Auray is a bustling historic and artistic town -- but out of season and late at night on a holiday, well, we were feeling a little lonely. The restaurant we found, however, served the best crèpes to date -- yum. You can tell when a restaurant has made a commitment to quality ingredients. Even the cider was excellent, and it was all at non-Parisian prices.

Afterwards, we searched out the gite and found the bar, where they told us that we needed to take a ferry to Scotland. The bartender shushed the rest of them and gave us good and clear directions. Then we got lost and had to knock at someone's door to get clarifications. He hopped in his car to lead us straight there.

I dare anybody to tell me that the French are rude to foreigners or tourists.

The gite was pretty and warm, an smelt like fresh sauna wood. I went to sleep happily.

Day 2 - The Charming Seaside Nightmare Continues...

It was still alive when I picked it up. I poked it wth my finger. It moved. So I put this living thing in my mouth and chewed it. It had no voice but I could hear it scream...

We got up the next morning at the break of dawn and broke our fasts. We left straight away for Locmariaquer, a charming little seaside town. Our first stop was at some megaliths, the monuments left behind by the prehistoric people of Brittany. There is a group of three in the city -- a tumulus, which is a covered tomb, a rock table and a huge menhir, which is normally a single standing rock with ritual significance. This menhir, however, was huge, fallen and broken. Carvings and the position of the pieces suggest that it was deliberately placed there in pieces for symbolic reasons -- between five and six thousand years ago.

Then we went to visit the Bay of Morbihan on the edge of town. It was still very early in the morning, so we had the port to ourselves, and had no trouble parking. I suspect it would be somewhat different in high season. The tide was low, so we went walking on the sea bed.

The next stop was Le Trinité sur Mer, another sleepy little port town that probably bustles and bursts in season. We walked through the huge marina -- evidently the town is a major yaghting center with year round yaghting enthusiasts doing their yaghting things. And catamarans, rowboats and hydropters. We stumbled across the fish market on the pier, and while I'm hardly a fishy expert, the fishies looked shiny and brilliant. The crustaceans were energetic and the shellfish were likely very unhappy to be there. Apparently oysters are sorted according to size and sold live by the dozen, at half the price of Paris. We could see the oyster farm on the other side of the port.

We also found an outdoor market that sold bright, organic regional produce. I happened to smile at the sausage lady and started chatting. She wanted me to try her andouille. I asked what was in it, already knowing and dreading the answer (smoked pig entrails). She replied smartly, "it's 100% pure pork!" I couldn't let such disingenuity pass, so I ate the offered chunk. She laughing asked me to eat it facing away from the sausage, because foreigners are liable to spit it out. It is a strong and different taste -- but it's not as bad as andouillette, which is along the same lines with extra putridity, and gravy.

We bought some quiches and cider and went to Carnac to see the Ménec alignments -- some of the most important prehistoric megalithes in Wester Europe. Over three thousand single standing rocks were placed in east-west alignments over several kilometers. The rocks ranged in size from knee-high to larger than a telephone booth. The alignments are only partially visitable -- you can walk among some and touch the rocks, but politely asked not to climb on them or push them over. After decades of tourist erosion, other areas are being left to regrow the natural Breton scrub, kept trim by sheep.

We at our quiche and drank our cider and headed out to the next stage in our trip.

At this point, it's worth mentioning that my good Breton colleague, who shall remain Nameless Philippe, advised us not to visit Bretagne in November. "What, are you smoking some sort of crack for the vacation impaired?" he spluttered, "Bretagne is cold and miserable and there's nothing to see but rain and clouds."

We had had nothing but fine weather, but at that moment it started raining. The sun disappeared for nearly two hours, while we drove to Pointe de Raz. As soon as we got out of the car, however, the sun started shining magnificently through dramatic clouds.

The point is an outcropping of rock pointing a finger towards the West. The view is already spectacular, and adding the golden setting sun makes it impossible to describe appropriately without swearing or crying.

You can climb over the dangerous rocks and perch over the dangerous cliffs. The wind was biting, but there were plenty of sheltered nooks to sit in and enjoy the sunshine.

That evening, we headed to Audierne to find a restaurant. There was only one that suited us, so we moved onto the next town, Pont Croix. There weren't any there, so we went back to the first. That, of course, is the danger of low season.

This was where I learned that oysters are alive at the moment of consumption. If you poke at their side, they draw themselves in protectively. If they don't die from being torn up with your fork, the actual chewing does them in. At first, I felt kind of bad about that -- but hey, lettuce is arguably alive when you eat it.

Then I had the filet of Grondin, accompanied bya carrot flan and potatoes. Dessert was a crème caramel. There was only the one server in the restaurant, so the meal took extremely long -- the host of the gite phoned us to make sure tat we weren't lost.

In the end, we made it to the gite, which was supremely lost, and we collapsed into sleep.

Day 3 - Out of the Frying Pan

We woke up to discover that the gite was perfectly charming, a renovated farm building tucked away in the fields. The host was equally charming -- she brought us breakfast apple cakes made with Grandmother's recipe and lots of coffee. We had homemade apple juice (apparently this years batch was substandard, but I couldn't tell you why) and apple jam. I'm not much of a breakfast eater, but I do enjoy my apples.

Then we walked out throuh the farm and said hello to some cows. There was an electric fence, so I touched it. Zing!

We set out to Douarnenez, which is yet another charming port town. The tide was low again, and the long inlet was filled with Saturday fishermen digging for shellfish. One particular crusty fisherman was eager to show me his catch and introduce me to his crusty mates. Ahoy!

We continued on to the tourist village of Locronan, where they had the good sense to keep the town completely unchanged for hundreds of years. They claim the title of the most charming villages in France and it would be hard to argue. I suspect that it would be overflowing in season, but it was sleepy and pleasant for us.

The church was full of colourful statues, and the light was perfect for the stained glass. The boulangerie was pleasant and warm. We visited a glassblowing workshop and I treated myself to the oddest glass for my collection. We ate more crèpes, and Antonio and I shared an andouille crèpe.

We backtracked to the car to drive to Menez Hom, which has a vast 360 degree view of several peninsulas and the countryside. Once again, it was stunning. The back of the peak is a popular spot for model radio airplanes, which are very amusing to watch.

Onwards, we trekked towards the Presqu'ile de Crozon (Pointe de Pen Hir), to another stunningly incredibly spectacularly spectacular view. It was much the same geology as the other Pointe, but there were also remnants of bunkers that protected the inlets into Bretagne. Once again, we had brilliant sunlight and biting wind.

Since we were in the area, we drove into Brest. Hehehe. Brest. It's one of the important western ports of France and has unfortunately been blasted into rubble and rebuilt so many times that once more couldn't possibly hurt...

Learning from our mistake the previous night, we decided to locate our gite before it got too dark. It was less impressive than the other two. Significantly less impressive. It seemed clean, but my room smelled of impregnated and stale smoke -- funny because the posted signs outside insisted breathlessly on preserving the hypoallergenic quality of the rooms. The guest entrance was cold, unpainted concrete staircase into the back.

Travelling can be a surprise. I don't think of myself as a snob, but it's frustrating to leave a marvellous and beautiful room for a tacky and stinky room at the same price.

The restaurant the host gave us was the best address in Landerneau, the nearest town. Again, it's frustrating to pay the same price for a menu of an obviously lower quality. The less said...

Then the day was finished.

Day 4 -- Return to the Shire

The gite did have a nice breakfast nook looking over the garden. It was bright and sunny, and the coffee was abundant. Really, it was only bad in terms of price and stench.

We set out or our last day on a leisurely route home, passing through Morlaix. It's another charming seaside port town; I keep saying that, but every charming seaside port town is different. Morlaix is dominated by a large doublelayered viaduc and has a very long inlet. It was low tide again,and the muddy ocean floor looked suspiciously like chocolate.

We stopped at a pretty beach, which probably had a name, and got the kite out again. For two hours we took turns practicing flying it and chasing after it whenever it inevitably crashed hard into the beach.

Kites are a lot of fun, especially two-stringed kites when you get the hang of them. The instructions are easy -- pull right to turn right, left to turn left -- but it still takes some practice to get used to the proper force required.

Our last scenic stop was the Côte de Granit Rose, towards Trebeurden, a charming seasode port city. I'd already visited the area thanks to a corporate dive trip. We walked along the pink granite port and once more on the ocean bed. There was enough pink granite for a thousand kitchen counters!

Then to Ploumanac'h for more pink granite: huge boulders sculpted by the ocean into fantastic shapes.

As the sun was setting, we stopped in Perros-Guirec, a charming seaside port town. It was to early for dinner and we were feeling discouraged by our previous night's culinary misadventures. The Green Guide seened to confirm that nearly all the restaurants close during the low season.

In terms of price (25€), quality, ambiance and service, the single restaurant in the guide that was open was probably the best restaurant I've ever visited. Antonio had more oysters of a better grade, Anna had an exciting plate of mixed vegetables and fish arranged in ocean waves, and I had a slightly spiced vegetable soup served with shrimp on toasts. We all had the roasted scallops as the main dish, arranged in a circle alternating with coins of fried plaintains. Original, and highly effective. My dessert was an English trifle with raspberries, Antonio had the chocolate cake with fig jelly, and Anna had the Turinois, a fluffy cake made of white beans from the region.

At ten o'clock, we ended our trip and started back to Paris, where the rat bastard rental company charged us extra for bringing the car back seven hours early. Thanks a lot, Hertz!

I was bored on the plane, so I learned how to speak Czech. This is as far as I got:

Speaking Czech

• ano - Yes
• ne - No
• prosím (PRO-seem) - Please/Pardon
• prosím vas - Excuse me
• prosím ochet - Check please
• děkuji vám (DYE-kooee vahm) - Thank you
• dobrý den - Hello
• dobrý večer - Good Evening
• mluvite anglicky? - Do you speak English?
• co to stoji? - How much does it cost?
• jedna, dvě, tři, čtyři, pět, šest, sedm, osm, devět, deset - one to ten

Notes: The stress is always on the first syllable. The 'c' is usually pronounced 'ts', so anglicky is pronounced 'anglitsky'. The half-circle (called a caron) adds a 'y' sound to vowels: devět (nine) is pronounced 'DEV-yet', but deset (ten) is pronounced 'DES-et'. Other sounds with the caron are č ('ch' as in church), š ('sh' as in shush) and ř ('rzh' as in rzhurzh).

The number four is hard enough to say; čtyři is pronounced 'CHTY-rzhi'.

Many words don't have vowels where we expect them: my guidebook teaches me strč prst skrz krk (meaning 'stick a finger in your throat'). Useful.

Friday Night

I got confused at the bank machine and took out 1000 Kč (Czech crowns). At an exchange of 20Kč to the Canadian dollar, this was obviously not going to last me for the weekend.

I'm normally anxious when I travel, and this time I focused my anxiety on the taxi at the other end. I was arriving late, and all of the shuttles and direct buses were done for the day. All of the guidebooks warned me to avoid taxis in Prague. No problem here, however. I negotiated the price before leaving, and it was within the range of the guidebook. The taxi driver even charged me less than his initial quote, which was a pleasant surprise. I gave him the difference as a tip.

At the other end, Justine was keeping an eye out for me as I arrived. We were in an apartment (not a hotel), so someone had to let me in. The building was just beside the National Theatre (Národní Divadlo), and it was an easy late night walk up towards Charles Bridge (Karlos Most), the centre of tourism for the city.

This was my first indication that Prague is spectacular. It's surreal at night, with the castle, the cathedral, the bridge and the river magically lit. It was overly perfect, as if someone was photoshopping the inside of my eyes.

Saturday

The best tourism can be found in the supermarket, so Justine and I headed out to Tesco's to buy breakfast. We ended up spending an hour looking at the chocolate bars, desserts, yoghurt and smoked fish. Shelley had to wait for us -- but I'm sure it was worth it. We returned laden with breakfast pastries and candy.

As it turns out, many of the pastries were 'joke' pastries, designed to entice the tourist with red jam and cream cheese, but were secretly inexplicably vile. Also, from the carton, there isn't any way to distinguish buttermilk from milk, which makes a difference in coffee.

Having walked across Charles Bridge the previous night, we went directly to the tourist centre of town: the old square (Staroměstské náměsti). Like all tourist centres, there were shops full of crap to buy. We duly looked at Bohemian crystal, russian dolls, Kafka T-shirts, wooden toys and soap.

There is also an astronomical clock, built five hundred years ago and still in working condition. Every hour, the tourists crane their necks to see it go bing, but we just missed it.

Instead, we ate lunch at a little bar off of the main square, and visited the churches on the square. There was the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, which looms over the square with very distinctive and ornate gothic spires. There's also the St. Nicholas church, which has a chandelier in the form of a Russian coronation crown.

Afterwards, it appeared that we missed the astronomical clock go bing, so we signed up for a coffee and cake cruise down the river Vltava.

On our cruise, we had the pleasure of meeting Francesco (he gave us his Czech name, but even though I was motivated, it was too difficult to pronounce). He gave the tour in both English and German. It suffered from the translation.

"The river is clean enough to swim in, but I don't like to swim. Would you like to hear about my hobbies?" he implored at one point. I couldn't actually say yes, but I managed to smile in his general direction.

"Would you?" he asked us in general, waiting for a response. Finally, one of the British tourists on the boat managed to vocalize a feeble "Uh, sure?".

"Skiing and Gymnastics!" Francesco snapped before going on to translate for the Germans on board.

He also pointed out the English-speaking church, where we were welcome to worship our English gods in our own fashion. He pointed out where Franz Kafka nurtured a terrible body image (and was terribly anxious about his proportions in the nude). He started some sort of commentary about a bridge that was particularly Czech in nature, when a passing waiter mumbled "czech czech czech" quietly to us, rolling his eyes.

"Czech czech czech!" enthused Francesco seconds later, as if it were a punchline remotely related to whatever he had been saying.

Speaking of punchlines, he told us that he had a friend that worked at the German embassy, which was beside the American embassy, and the Germans had a favourite American joke. After making us verbally confirm that we wanted to hear his joke ("Would you?") and that we wouldn't be offended, he offered: "My German friend tells me that the Americans learned the Czech language so that they could read Franz Kafka's work as he originally wrote them! Ha!"

Franz Kafka wrote in German.

We got off the boat and walked back to the city centre, through the Jewish Quarter. Everything was closed, so we planned to return on Monday morning.

Walking through the streets of Central Prague is architecturally delightful. If you're a fan of the sinuous grace of Art Nouveau, or the geometrical precision of Art Deco, you'll find everything. There are even Cubist houses, an architectural movement that never really did take off elsewhere in Europe. Gothic and Rennaissance churches, Medieval and Moorish synagogues -- it really is a jewel.

We returned to the town square, and missed the astronomical clock go bing. At this point, we were deeply seized by the need to see the damn clock go bing, so we took up residence at the cafe just outside the clock and stayed there. Some elderly German tourists sat beside us, all wearing the same offensive yellow shirt and waved their beers in circles in some sort of insane ritual involving the tune to "Auld Lang Syne".

On the hour, the astronomical clock went bing. The windows above opened, and the apostles shuffled past, and then some figures wobbled a bit. Well, it wasn't It's a Small World, but I imagine even Disney will look quaintly dull in five centuries.

We went back over Charles bridge and walked through the town on the other side. We passed the John Lennon wall, where graffiti artists have been scribbling layers of peace and love messages since his death. Oddly enough, we didn't recognize it at the time.

Back at the hotel, we put our feet up and ate ham-flavoured chips that we bought at Tesco's that morning. Ham!

We went through the guidebooks looking for an authentic Czech restaurant, and we found one on the other side of the river. Crossing the bridge again, it turned out that the restaurant didn't exist, so we picked another. I had the traditional veal and dumplings, which was covered in some sort of sickly sweet sauce and garnished with whip cream. Justine's goulash was also cloyingly sweet. The bread dough dumplings were hearty, though -- and that's about the nicest thing I can say for the local cuisine.

On the way back over the beautiful Charles Bridge, I noticed a girl sitting on the rail with her boy on one knee before her. I pointed them out to Justine and Shelley, and as we passed, Justine saw the ring box. The castle was lit behind them, and the moon was big and bright.

We stopped to watch (although taking care to look as if we were looking at the view, and not them). The boy put the ring on the girl and I think she hugged him, obviously accepting. I took a picture. As we walked away, they followed us. At the end of the bridge, Shelley approached them and congratulated them. I did too, shaking their hands.

Sunday

Sunday morning, it was rainy and grey. We walked to Wenceslas Square, the other major square. It's much more modern than the old square, with a tendancy towards Art Deco. As it rained, we walked towards the National Museum, passing odd and disturbing modern sculpture along the way. We also shopped for shoes.

That being done, we went back to the hotel and repacked to go to the Castle. As we crossed the bridge to the other side of town, I realized that I forgot my camera! Oh well, leaving some part of the voyage unfilmed frees the imagination and spirit.

On the way to the castle, we stopped at St. Nicholas of Lesser Town. It cost 50Kč to get in (I might as well start including some price info in this log). The church was undeniably baroque, which meant that it was undisciplinedly ornate. The dominant tones were pink and seafoam marble and gold foil. If there was space for a statue, they crammed in two and then gilded them. This was a church meant to prove a point -- that wealth and good taste don't necessarily go hand in hand.

We then climbed up to the castle, which overlooks the city. We arrived as they were changing the guard, and went in.

We bought our tickets (at 220Kč) to see St. Vitus' Cathedral, where the "Good King" Wenceslas was murdered by his brother, and where his relics remain. The cathedral is neogothic, having undergone constant renovations during seven centuries. The stained glass windows are spectacular, easily the most beautiful that I have seen. They were constructed in the thirties, which goes to prove that we've learned a thing or two about stained glass windows since medieval times.

There's also a solid silver tomb for Saint John Nepomuk. He was known for taking the confessions of the queen, and then refusing to relate the scandalous tales to the king (who had him thrown into the river from Charles Bridge). Now, he is the patron saint of discretion.

We climbed the gothic spire (290 steps) to see a panorama of the city. Wow, humans certainly like to climb up high and see things.

At the bottom, we took a break at a coffee place, where Justine found my camera, where it had been hiding in plain sight in my otherwise empty backpack.

We went through the old royal palace, with oddly vaulted ceilings.

Then we went through Golden Lane, a picturesque street, where legend places the alchemists who strove to turn lead into gold for the king. More verifiably, Kafka lived there at number 4. The Lane ends at Dalimbor tower, where a knight was imprisoned to starve to death -- but with his violin. Apparently he played so beautifully that the locals came to listen to him, and bring him food.

We crossed back to the other side of the city and ate pizza and strudels for supper in the old town. We were intending to see one of the concerts -- there were concerts advertised everywhere -- but we misread the concert time.

So we went back to Wenceslas Square and the sausage vendors for a late-night snack, walked back and forth across Charles bridge once more, and then went home to sleep.

Monday Morning

We had a lot to cover Monday morning, so we woke up early and headed back out to the Jewish quarter. We found a French patisserie along the way (cleverly avoiding the vile Czech pastries).

The sites in the Jewish quarter are well-organized into a single ticket for 300 Kč. Our first synagogue was the Piska Synagogue, which has been converted into a memorial for those deported to the concentration camps at Terezin. The two stories of the synagogue were covered in names, carefully hand-written in tiny script. There was also a thoughtful exhibit on the drawings of Jewish children during those hard times.

According to the custom, I wore a yamulka for the first time, keeping my head covered through the synagogue and the adjoining cemetery. The old Jewish cemetery is very crowded, haphazardly filled with 100,000 graves from over 400 years. Given the lack of space, there are apparently twelve layers of graves, and the tombstones are tightly pressed against each other, leaning precariously at odd angles.

We stopped at the Spanish Synagogue, which was constructed in the 19th century, and named after it's Moorish inspiration. The inside is bright and colourful.

Justine and Shelley's last stop was at the old town square for last minute souvenirs, and then they took their shuttle to the airport. I said good-bye, and went wandering until it was time for my shuttle.

First of all, I went back across Charles Bridge (I counted eleven separate crossings during the trip -- an odd number because we took a different bridge back once). There's a plaque where the king allegedly had Saint John Nepomuk thrown into the river, and you rub it for good luck.

I returned to St. Nicholas of Lesser Town and went up the old tower that was joined to it, but is unrelated to the church. Then I went back into the church to take some photos, and to sit for a bit.

I bought Czech booze and some gifts (and some gifts of booze), some traditional wooden toys. I walked around to the Republic Square to see the Powder Tower and the Town Hall, and then I went into Kotva, the cheerfully grim department store. Then I went back to Tesco's for more Czech beer and candy.

Finally, I took my shuttle back to the airport, and went home.

Day 7 : Original Crepestra

So it was Friday, and I thought it would be fun to go out with the girls. Justine from New Zealand was there at work, and since she was otherwise trapped out in Massy (hellhole suburb), I invited her to come along. So the three of us went out for crèpres.

Actually, we were five because Antonio and Anna decided to come along. They were heading out for vacation, so it was nice to see them off. And of course, since the old office chums were getting together, Philippe joined us, which makes six.

Wait, I miscounted -- that's seven. Errr, nine. We met Franck and Emmanuel on the way there, and they were going to get something to eat. I tried to make sure that everyone knew everyone but somehow I completely forgot Emmanuel's name, so I called him Jean-Jacques for most of the night. It sounded kind of French, although I knew it should have started with an E.

The problem with nine people is that the best crèperie in Paris was too small to accomodate us, and they don't take reservations. Le Petit Josselin is (in my opinion) the best of all the crèperies in the Montparnasse area, which are the best crèpes in Paris (but not in France). When you go there, make sure that you try the caramel maison dessert crèpe. I will marry that crèpe some day.

Anyway, we went to a different crèperie, which was mostly empty. We took this to mean that it wasn't very good, but we were pleasantly surprised. I had a crèpe complète (ham, cheese and egg) with mushrooms and I tried their caramel au beurre sal&eacuate; for dessert. It was pretty good, but we're just going to remain friends. We had sweet cider (doux) which is only 2% alcohol, and two pitchers of dry cider (brut) which is twice that.

Then we went home.

Paris isn't Paris unless your feet are so sore that you need to resort to booze to relieve the pain. Fortunately, it was suddenly the weekend. We decided to walk.

Our initial destination was Denfert-Rochereau to pick up Justine. She figures prominently this weekend, since she's also looking to harden her feet on the Paris trottoirs. Since Line 6 is down for the summer (they need to upgrade the hundred year old viaduct), we took the connector bus, and then the métro to Bercy. This is an arena and omnisport centre in the revitalized east of Paris. It's right on the Seine across from the national library.

Beside Bercy is a very large park, where we ate our picnic sandwiches. Normally on the weekend, the park would be full of Saturday sun-bathers and frisbee-throwers, but it was eerily empty. It's surprising how the city empties during August, when all of the French go on seaside vacations.

The park is isolated from the Seine by a large hill, which protects it from noise from the side streets. We went to the top of the hill where there's a series of bronze painted statues representing different countries, and fashioned out of imprints taken from the streets of those countries. We found Canada with the large red maple leaf. We also found a few sun-bathers in unfortunate speedos, so we had to flee.

A bit farther and we got to Bercy Village. This used to be the wine warehouse district for Paris, but was converted into a trendy restaurant/home decoration/camping and shopping centre. There are lots of great designer things to buy. A chrome ice crusher caught my eye, but the emergency response team managed to get it out without much damage.

We had some beers at The Frog and Princess, an English pub. Justine had a Corona and I had a Froegaarden, which I thought was pretty funny. It was very light and extremely wheaty. I could have sprinkled muesli on for garnish. For any relatives and/or Canadian authorities that are reading this, the girls had a Coke and a grapefruit juice. I can prove it -- klepto Kendra stole the Coke bottle.

Anyway, we left the air-conditioned comfort of the pub and took the ultramodern Line 14 halfway across the city to Chatelet. We decided to go to Justine's favourite coffee haunt in La Samaritaine, but we got sidetracked by Sephora and Bensimon as well as numerous hats, belts, bags and shoes. The cafe was too crowded so we went upstairs to the terrace, thinking to treat ourselves to a beautiful view. It was also too crowded. So much for La Samaritaine.

We then walked nearly the entire Paris plage, which accounts for all of the Parisians that didn't leave the city for the real beach. One could argue that it's crowded and largely unpleasant, but I think it's a wonderful idea. It's crowded, but not aggressive, and everyone is sitting and chatting and relaxing. The lounge chairs are all being used, and people are waiting in line for the hammocks. One woman put on a big raincoat so she could be underneath the atomizers spraying water over the boardwalk while her boyfriend took pictures. They had even constructed a pool this year.

Regardless, we were happy to get up and off the quai at the end. We walked up to the Institute de Monde Arab, where there's an excellent terrace that overlooks Notre Dame (and it's free!) Unfortunately, they had already closed.

Later we found the door to the Tour d'Argent, one of the most famous and expensive restaurants in Paris. Youch. I was too scared to even go close to the door, since they have white coated doormen to scoot away my type. I peered in the gift shop next door and thought how sad it would be to buy a souvenir for a restaurant that I wouldn't ever go into. Then I changed my mind and thought how sad it would be if I ever bought a large ceramic fisherman in the process of painfully mutating into a duck (305€).

Our next stop was ice cream on the Ile Saint-Louis. We went to Amorina instead of Berthillon for a delicious gelato. Mine was half nocciola (hazelnut) and half flore di latte (who knows?). We sat by the Seine and ate our ice cream.

Then we went home. I think I made everyone a very fancy seven course meal (if you count salad as two courses and hotdogs as five). Then the day was over.

Oh, my aching feet.

Well, the day had to come, and it came at last. I couldn't put it off any longer. We had to make the pilgrimage to Versailles.

Don't get me wrong -- Versailles is perfectly lovely as far as castles built by absolute (and jealous) monarchs with the resources of a kingdom at his beck. But on the other hand, I haven't ever visited any other UNESCO World Heritage Sites seven (sept) times.

It was hot, of course, but for once I remembered my sunscreen. I dropped Kendra and Brenda off in the line and went and sat in the garden and read. Then they came and we ate our picnic sandwiches in the shade.

The water in the fountains turned on, and we walked to see them all. I even found one that I hadn't seen before, down by one of the quarters of the park that was being restored.

We didn't walk the Grand Canal to see the Grand Trianon, the Petit Trianon or the Queen's Hamlet. It was simply too hot and unpleasant. Instead, we sat in the nearly empty Queen's Garden in the shade and chatted for a bit, and then left to go home.

For some strange reason, the RER train was air-conditioned on the way home!

That night, we watched "Raising Arizona", which has one of the best beginnings of all time. Okay then!

The girls went to the Louvre today, and saw the Mona Lisa. I had to go back to work, and got home late and grumpy. They're taking good care of my place, cooking and cleaning.

The girls went to the Eiffel Tower, walking up to the second level and taking the elevator the rest of the way. I had to go back to work, and got home late and grumpy.

We were going to go to La Defense that evening to see the sun set over the modern skyscrapers. Justine was going to go with us, and joined us for a meal of cheese and salad. Unfortunately, time flew and we never made it out there. Instead, we played Sorry and Jungle Speed. Kendra and Brenda are getting very fast.

I didn't even pay attention to what the girls did today. I think they went to the Marais, which turned out to be closed. They reported being whistled at and followed by dirty and aged French men until they hid in a métro.

Please note: the cliché about old French men chasing young girls is tired. Admittedly as an unwashed senior, you may have "nothing to lose" by menacing Canadian cuties with appreciative whistles and affectionate stalking... do you just enjoy making other people uncomfortable?

Anyway, I came home from work slightly less late with a roast chicken. Justine joined us for a successful attempt out to La Defense. Coming out of the métro, the Grande Arche was exciting and imposing. Down the axis of monuments, the Arc de Triomphe wasn't lit up for some reason.

We walked down through the area, sat by the fountain at the end (Kendra and Brenda waded through), watched the Eiffel Tower scintillate and took the métro home.

We had soft tacos for supper.

They all went on the boat ride on the Seind. Having promised myself never to go on the damn boats again, I stayed home. Hooray!

This was the girls' last day without me cramping their style (I was at work), so they went hunting for all the souvenirs that they'd seen during the week but hadn't picked up. They went through the Champs-Elysées, down by the Hotel de Ville, through Beaubourg. Apparently, they missed one shop, so we will be going back there together on Saturday -- my keen shop tracking instincts once more will save the day.

Anyway, they once again were treated to a delightful man on the métro who was thoroughly charmed by their fresh, youthful wit and vigor. Like a gentleman, he introduced himself by moistening his lips with an enthusiastic tongue and conducting a search party in his pant pockets. Thankfully, he played his little, little game away from our heroines and did not enter in the same car.

Honestly. I mean really. I'm embarrassed just hearing about it. Paris is a very safe city, but I guess it's slightly more safe for a guy.

I got home relatively early to meet the guy who will be fixing the tiles in the bathroom. Hooray! Then we played Jungle Speed until I quit in a huff. The girls have obviously been dosing up on amphetamines -- I had no hope of winning against their lightning quick reflexes (and Brenda's carnivorous fingernails).

All good things come to an end... but not today. Now, Paris is is a beautiful city, stuffed with things to do like a Thanksgiving turkey is stuffed with stuffing. Or a teddy bear is stuffed with stuffing. Stuffing stuffing stuffing. If you're an art fanatic, you can stuff yourself with museums with some of the greatest works in the world, from the greatest era. If you're a historian, strut your stuff through Roman ruins, medieval galleries, by statues, columns and plaques for famous men, women and events. If you're into buying stuff, there are majestic department stores, grand avenues of consumer splendour, warehouse districts, fashion shows and design galleries. Churches, concerts, expositions, exhibitions (see Day 14). Stuff, stuff and more stuff.

We decided to spend the day doing other stuff.

First, we walked through the Montparnasse Saturday market. My plan was to buy some Lebanese take-away, which is unfailingly delicious. Unfortunately, the ravages of August and summer holidays left the market rather bare. No Lebanese for us, although a lot of the fruit and cheese looked tempting. Instead, we stopped at the sandwich counter at the Inno supermarket, and carried our packages to the Jardins de Luxembourg for our picnic.

On the way there, we passed my project manager walking in the other direction. I didn't notice her until we were about twenty centimetres apart, and she said "Bonjour, Ryan." I was surprised, so I yelled "gah!" then collected my wits and introduced her to Kendra and Brenda.

We ate on one of the Forbidden Lawns, but the grass police didn't catch us until we were finished our sandwiches. Haha. Apparently, all the grass is forbidden unless there's a little sign inviting you to stroll over it. I knew that, but like a good Parisian, the rule doesn't apply to me.

Then we walked through to the Senate, and then up and towards the metro at Odéon and up into the city. They had done some shopping during the week and needed to find a particular store that was "near the Nafnaf where we bought those pants" (near Georges Pompidou, in fact). We looked and looked and looked and looked, and they ended up buying their souvenir elsewhere, at which point we found the store they wanted.

Afterwards, we went searching for a café to lounge at. We found one and lounged. Then we stopped in the BHV to buy an ice crusher, but they only had ice shavers. Hmm. Back to Bercy next weekend!

We sought adventure in the Marais, but it was mostly desolate as well. We did find the Picasso Museum, and the ticket lady let Kendra and Brenda in for free, on the grounds that Kendra looked like she was under 18 as well. I, however, had to pay a fine for looking thirty.

Then we went home for a rest.

We ate the best pizza in Paris and walked along the Seine for hours at night. They were dancing, but for some reason the Salsa dancers moved to a different location where we couldn't watch them. Their original amphitheatre was filled with people doing a new dance called "The Do Your Own Thing But Not That Well".

Then they went home. I was sad. I had grown attached to them.

Day 1 : Kendra and Brenda

I picked up my little cousin Kendra and her friend Brenda at the airport on Sunday. I've generally stopped meeting guests at the airport, since millions of people a year manage to find their way into the city each year -- even non-Canadians! This is a special case because I was excited to see Kendra, and I knew her mom and my mom would be more comfortable if I met them at the airport.

To be sure I got there in time, I left my place a half hour earlier than I normally would. And of course, there was a little snag. If I'm meeting you at the airport, make sure you tell me the correct terminal!

But we got into Paris safely, and they set up at my place. We ate lunch, and went right out into the city.

We picked up everything necessary for their carte d'orange next week, and took the métro out to St. Michel for some first day sightseeing. We walked by the fountain, through the Latin Quarter and to Notre Dame, where Kendra was robbed for the first time.

A woman asked her if she spoke English and asked Kendra to change her two tens into a twenty euro bill. Of course, she took the bill and walked away while another woman jumped in to occupy Kendra and Brenda, wailing and waving a photo of her ailing and poor family in their faces. It was very well choreographed, it happened very quickly and it might have worked if there weren't three of us.

I'm naturally more suspicious (especially as soon as the woman asked if they spoke English, which is another way of asking if you are a foreigner). When she stepped back, I grabbed her arm after two steps and told her to give back the twenty euro bill now. She got out her own photo of her ailing and poor family and starting wailing "please, please, please". There's a particular tone of voice for pleading desperately for the health and safety of your poor family. It's carefully learned and performed for you. There's no way any practiced wail was getting away with twenty euro.

I told Kendra and Brenda to find some police or security and bring them back. They left and the horrible woman gave me back the twenty euro and fled when I let go of her. She was trying to sell a bit of the confidence and fellowship among strangers for twenty euro, but she ended up giving it away for free. No harm done (to us) and a valuable lesson learnt.

Then we went around Notre Dame, to that one bridge that the rollerbladers are always performing tricks on, then to the Deportation Monument, the Hotel de Ville, down the new beach on the Seine, up to the Panorama at the Samaritaine (closed), to the Louvre to rest our feet in the fountains beside the Pyramid, to the little Arc de Triomphe de Carroussel, through the Tuilerie Gardens, up to the Obelisk, down the Champs-Elysée towards the stands for the Tour de France tomorrow and then to the metro beside the Grande Palace, which is nearly finished being restored.

Kendra: Paris is exciting but tiring.

Brenda: Amazing! But tiring.

The next day was the final stage of the Tour de France, but we had plenty of time to go check out Montmartre before meeting Antonio and Anna.

So we packed a picnic lunch, and headed out. Brenda planned the metro route. I took the tourist guide for once, because I've done this walk several times but without ever really knowing what and who I was looking at.

We saw the workshops and cafés and hotels that Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Utrillo, Monet, Cézanne, Renoir, Dali and Zola -- at least those are the names that I recognized. There were quite a few other that I wasn't familiar with (but the guide book smugly told me about) and I imagine that hundreds of other Belle Epoque artists and geniuses crowded into the same cafés without making a big name.

We passed by the métro Abbesses with its original Hector Guimard Art Nouveau entrance and walked up into Place des Tertres, the bustling café square lined with painters.

There's a dirty secret for the majority of oil paintings sold in the tourist shops -- they're mass-painted in foreign assembly lines. One person does the Eiffel tower, another the trees, another the Haussman buildings, and another some strolling people.

You're likely to see paintings of better quality at Place des Tertres, although admittedly the painters know their audience. There are plenty of tired Eiffel Towers, charming (but weary) boulangeries, looming Basilicas de Sacre-Coeurs. It makes perfect sense -- Montmartre is still a lively and charming area, but no longer a place to launch a bold and daring artistic movement.

However, I smiled at a lovely young lady who was getting an astonishingly accurate portrait despite her giggling. The cut-out artists were doing too brisk a business doing their silhouettes to solicit us.

We went through the Église St Pierre-de-Montmartre (one of the oldest churches in the city, started in 1134, which is "hell" upside down -- please tell me I'm not the only person to always notice that). There are ancient Romanesque columns inside, just beside the doors. I always like to point them out, because of their age. They're old.

Then we went through to the Basilica du Sacré Coeur, and looked at the view. We ate our picnic sandwiches and cookies on the lawn just below the church. It was a beautiful sunny day.

Anyway, our next stop was the Tour de France. The bikes were coming up along the side of the Louvre, rue Rivoli, so we met Antonio and Anna at the glass pyramid in the Louvre court, and walked to the corner where the bikers would loop eight times.

After a few of the loops, we got tired and wanted to leave, but the corner had sealed itself off with people and we couldn't go home. A few loops later, we managed it and went home early and rest before going out.

That night, we went to the Eiffel Tower to see it sparkle. We enjoyed a bottle of Alsatian Crémant on the lawn beneath the tower. Hooray for France!

It was looking grey and dreary, so I decided to do the tour up by the Opera and the grands magasins. Unlike the Samaritaine, Au Printemps still has its terrace open (even if you aren't a café customer). Then we checked out the glass dome over their restaurant.

Kendra caught heck for trying to photograph a Prada display (although nobody stopped her from photographing the Helmut Lang display).

We also checked out the dome at Galleries Lafayette, which is a bit nicer.

We ate our sandwiches today on the steps of the Opera, and then checked out the interior. I suggested buying tickets to the ballet so that they could see the interior, but all performances were finished until September. It looks like they'll have to take the tour if they want to see inside.

Anyway, we walked between the Opera and Les Halles, and went into the old Bourse to see the dome. This is the big round building by Saint Eustache. It used to be a grain market under Louis IV, and I always thought that you needed to be an accredited agricultural commodities broker to get in. Apparently all you need to do is be pleasant to the guard and promise not to take photos.

We walked down into the George Pompidou museum of modern art, and then by the Stravinsky Fountain, and to the BHV for a bit of shopping.

We made it into Notre Dame just before going home for a nap.

Alright, step step step onto the stage, walk straight and with purpose. Turn to the right with flair.

It's easy for the guys, they point their thin hips in the direction they want to go and go there. The girls move twice as far to cover the same distance -- buttocks swimming left and right through invisible water, flicking off the excess drops with each step. Get to the centre of the catwalk, turn towards the inside and share a model's smile with your colleague (who had damn well better be on her mark). Hands on your hips, swivel to the back, let them see your bottom, look look look and step step back together in sync. Back behind the wall to change quickly into the next outfit, and swim back out into the spot light as the bass thumps.

I finally got to see a fashion show. Au Printemps has a public showing in an auditorium every Tuesday at 10:00am. I knew that Anna was interested in seeing a fashion show, so we made arrangements to meet and all four of us would go check it out. It was obviously more of a publicity fashion show for the gross public (and not one of the invitation-only défilés held under the Louvre), but it was very well done. The models were beautiful and gracious (five girls, one gent) and the music was lively. Many photos were taken... but I left my memory card at home. Poo.

Afterwards, we said good-bye to Anna and walked to La Madeleine. We checked out some of the incredibly expensive grocery stores in the area (with extremely beautiful produce) and saw truffles and caviar. Then we went over the Pont Alexandre III to Les Invalides, just to walk through the court and end up at the Musée Rodin. We headed back to my place for dinner (BLTs).

I can only report today by proxy, since I had to go to work. I left the two innocent tourists at the mercy of the big city.

They still weren't home when I got home, but they thoughtfully left me a note. They also cooked themselves (and myself) dinner, and cleaned my kitchen for me. Excellent guests, and welcome at any time!

Apparently, they had spent the day shopping around town. I had just heard about the wholesale shoe district on Rue Meslay my Place de la Republique, and they volunteered to check it out. Apparently, the street is lined with dozens of shoe stores on both sides, with prices and a selection straight out of a shoe-fetishist's most fevered delusional dreams. If you are a shoe-a-holic, well, I don't need to hear about it. You can go to the Parisian shoe district and then try to tell me about it later.

One shoe strongly resembles another, in my opinion -- but many people tell me the same thing about churches.

They also got some clothing and gifts. Apparently the shopkeepers were delightfully effusive: "magnifique!" and "quelle beauté!" rang through the store. I immediately became suspicious, but they assured me that it generally was polite (and not the creepy, mumbling man with a "business card" that I feared).

Kendra showed me how to "chat" on that "interweb" thing I "installed" on my "computer". Wow, she can type as fast as I can. She can also keep track of more than one conversation at a time. These crazy kids -- what will they think of next?! Hopefully staying off my lawn, that's what.

I went to bed much, much earlier than they did.

Again, I had to work, so I left them to their own devices -- plenty of guidebooks if necessary. I understand that it was another shopping day.

We had a taboulet for supper (cold couscous salad with tomato and cucumber) with merguez (sheep and beef sausage) because it was too hot to cook.

It was too hot to think as well.

Suggestions for our next week? Let's hear them!

We rented a Ford Focus C-Max from Hertz using the deal negotiated by our company. It gets 100 kilometres on 5.6 Litres of diesel, comfortably seats five (which is good, because there were five of us), and is both practical and unattractive. We drove through the regions of Champagne and Lorraine on the excellent French autoroutes, cutting wide and straight through the country at 130 kilometres an hour. We stopped only for toilets, picnics and tollbooths -- 30€ for the entire trip to Strasbourg. It's like going up and down the Coquihalla five times!

In Strasbourg, we stayed at the Comfort Inn, which I recommend. It was clean, modern and inexpensive and they deserve our good word of mouth. On the other hand, the map on their website is terrible, and should be ignored. It's right in the centre of Strasbourg, so we walked around the entire old city the first night -- a pre-tour preparation for the next day, which is a good way to get your bearings, set tourist goals and provide concrete destinations for the next day of meandering.

We at that night at Flamme's, which is an inexpensive chain restaurant that serves flammekuche (or tartes flambées). If I wanted to offend both the Italians and Alsatians, I would describe it as a type of pizza that uses a cream sauce instead of tomato, with various combinations of onions, ham and mushrooms. Dad had a beer with a bitter Orange liqueur (Picon) and the moms and I had Alsatian wine in the traditional green-stemmed glasses.

The next day, we ate breakfast at a patisserie around the corner -- the 9€ breakfast buffet in the hotel didn't tempt us. We saw the pastry chef leave the store to the florist next door to buy a single red rose, and the petals showed up on special Mother's Day cakes a few minutes later.

We visited Le Petite France, which is a neighbourhood of Strasbourg lined with canals, colourful half-timbred houses and many, many little shops for the tourists. We saw baby swans.

Later, we passed by the cathedral, which is particularly pink and covered in frothy gothic frippery. It's colour comes from the sandstone quarried from the province of Vosges, and it's very striking and elegant. The spire looks airy and fragile, and pokes improbably high into the sky. There's an interesting astrological clock inside, and an ostentatiously elegant baptismal font. While we were visiting, a children's choir was singing, which added nicely to the atmosphere.

The square around the cathedral is filled with the usual tourist dreck, featuring cuckoo clocks and storks (the regional bird) and truckloads of postcards. That night we ate at Kléber Place. Mom had a bit plate of choucroute, also known as sauerkraut, which is one of the foods that I don't eat, because it is slimy and gross. In the spirit of the region, however, I ate a spoonful. Mom said that it was much less acidic than the Canadian sauerkraut. I thought it had cloves in it, but they turned out to be juniper berries -- where do you go in the Supermarket to buy juniper berries? In conclusion, sauerkraut is tolerable.

The next day, we got up and searched for coffee. It was Sunday, and Mother's Day in France, and the French traditionally celebrate by hiding all the coffee in the city. The tourists walk up and down the streets looking for the coffee, and if they find some, they get a prize (coffee). We didn't find any coffee. This is a city ten times the size of Medicine Hat, and it was impossible to find a coffee in the centre of the tourist district. Then the adults started pressuring me to go into McDonalds "just for the coffee". That's how it starts, but I've been too damn smug about not eating fast food for too long and everyone would tear a strip out of me if I gave in. So I told them to go in and get their coffee, not to buy me one and I would meet them in the square with pastries from the only open bakery ten blocks away.

Of course, the coffee machine in the McDo's was broken and I still get to be the smuggest ever. Smug smug smug!

We got our stuff from the hotel and left Strasbourg to go tour the wine route. This is a twisty stretch of road connecting lots of medieval villages and fifteen thousand hectares of grapes.

Alsatian wines are named after the species of grape they're made from, such as Reisling, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris, Gewürtztraminer. Most of the wines are white and sweeter than most other French white wines. The only red wine is Pinot Noir. The sparkling white wine of Alsace is called Crémant, which is as rigorously controlled and regulated as the production of Champagne, but without the brand recognition.

I usually prefer red wine, and it seemed silly to purchase only red wine in a region famous for its white wines, so I decided to only purchase bottles of Crémant. The bubbles tickle my nose!

The other thing that tickled my nose was great heaving gobs of snot. You see, I have allergy problems about this time of year, where my body decides that it has had enough of breathing and tries to spackle my head cavities with thick, green effluent. Well, technically, it's more yellow than green, and not really effluent since it's much too viscid to drain (even with the mightiest blows). It's like trying to suck overcooked zucchini through a straw. And the best part is that I know from experience that it will last four weeks.

So we toodled hither and thither among the route des vins d'Alsace until we found ourselves at Mount-Sainte-Odile at lunchtime. This is a convent high above the grapes founded by Sainte Odile, who was born blind to a noble family and rejected by her father. Her nursemaid took care of her until her sight was miraculously cured, and her horrible father wanted to marry her off. She refused, so he gave her his summer house to convert into a convent. She became the patron saint for those with eye problems. We had a picnic lunch here, with an excellent view over the wine route, vineyards and medieval towns.

Our other mountaintop destination for the day was the Chateau at Haut-Koenigsboerg, built 400 years ago and then fell into ruin. During the last German occupancy at the start of the twentieth century, a Baron decided to have it completely and authentically restored, so it's an impressive place to visit today. We walked around the chateau and then happily sat in the gift shop to have some coffee and rest our feet.

We ended the day in Colmar with plenty of time to walk around the old city in the centre. It's a very, very pretty tourist city, even more colourful than Strasbourg. After checking into the hotel, it was getting pretty late so most of the shops were closed or closing. While walking around, we noticed that most of them would be closed the next day (Monday) so we changed our plans to visit Colmar on Tuesday instead. I ate a Roesti Montagnard that night, which is a type of thick hash-brown pancake with cheese in a skillet.

The next day, we headed back to the Wine Route and up into the highest point in the mountains -- the Grand Ballon. We ate with another incredible view, although we Canadians are generally more impressed with historical monuments than with beautiful panoramas. I touched an electric fence, and got a surprising shock. Did you know that electric fences aren't constantly electrified? They pulse. I recommend touching one. Go ahead, unless you're scared.

Then we left the literal mountains to buy figurative mountains of wine. Like I said, I stuck to the Crémants of different varieties -- brut, demi-sec, rosé. The Fixes bought me a bottle of Tokay Pinot Gris, which was nice but unnecessary.

There was a particularly nice woman in the little town of Soultzmatt, who took us into her cellar to see the big wooden barrels of wine. She explained that they had 1100 hectares of vines for Edelzwicker, which is the blended white table wine that you would normally buy by the pitcher in a restaurant, and typically of a quality less controlled than wine sold by the bottle. They had 120 hectares of vines for bottle wine, and 20 hectares for vendange tardive, or ice wine. Hooray for ice wine! She told us that the wines would flower in eight to fifteen days, and that the family was currently pruning the feet of the vine -- a job requiring skill because pruning the feet affects the harvests for years to come. Later in the year, the head of the vines are pruned, which selects the best grapes for the harvest just for this year.

We went back to Colmar for supper, and it was a bit more lively than the night before. I had a baeckehoffe, which is a type of marinated meat, potato and onion stew served in it's own oval casserole. I stole some of dad's choucroute as well. Mmmm.

We spent a bit of time window shopping, which was pleasant. We also stopped at Isabelle's sorbet palace, where she insisted that we take dozens of little samples of all the flavours. I ended up getting the beer flavoured sorbet, which surprised me by it's summertime sweet deliciousness. Mmmmm.

There were some churches in the city, but for a change, I'm not going to go into detail about them. They were neat, and one of them had a storks nest up on the roof. Colmar also has little canals running through the city, but they were nearly drained and under construction. Mom looked at shoes in the shoe shops and I finally bought some of those pants, you know, with the zip off legs that the kids were wearing a few years ago. They were such a good deal, although a bit tight.

The next day, we started home, passing through Riquewihr on the way home, which has been dolled up and leans heavily on the tourist with slightly excessive charm. We went into a horrible Christmas store that forbid photos and videos and had plush ropes forcing you on a path through the entire store, single file, no deviating or turning back please! Four euros for a lemon granita and we headed back to the autoroute.

I bought my own plate of choucroute in the restaurant on the way home.

P.S. Click on the long skinny panoramas for a Alsastastic surprise!

I don't have very much to say about their trip -- they were passing through on their way to Italy, and just spending a bit of time at my place in Paris while they had the chance. Unfortunately (for me), I was away in Washington for most of their visit (as you can see by my frequent and regular business voyages, I am an important and valued peon in the corporate randomcracy).

But we did spend one day together before my parents arrived.

It was fun. Jude visited the automatic toilet.

And we went up to Montmartre.

We picnicked on the slopes in front of Sacre Coeur. We had a big tetra-pak of Sangria. It was delicious.

The sun was out.

And I took a picture of our feet to remember us always. I use this picture (in the high resolution) as my computer wallpaper at work. I like it because it reminds me of man's ability to have feet.

I ate Ice Cream. They didn't have my favourite (cinnamon) so I think I had some sort of hazelnut pistachio. I don't really remember.

Verlane had something fruity.

And we walked down by the Seine where everything was glowing and beautiful.

Including the glowing and beautiful Verlane and Jude.

We watched Salsa dancers for a while.

They were enjoyable.

Then we fought each other for pastries.

The pastries won.

Let's hear it for Verlane and Jude!

I received my cryptic email on Thursday -- another Parisian flash mob is going to be held on May 15th. Wear black. More details to follow on the big morning.

This is typical flash mob mobilisation. You get a few days warning for the date (and maybe a hint), and on the morning you get an email giving you the time, an address to meet to pick up the printed instructions and any other special requirements. In this case, it was near the Jardins de Luxembourg, where the tourist finds the inaccessible French Senate and the French find a bit of Saturday sun and repose.

When you get around to asking me, the secrecy is mainly for fellowship. I have no doubt that the media and the police were informed, and that they cared less. We all signed up anonymously, so I don't know anyone in the crowd. We disappear after astonishing the on-lookers, so it's not like we're hanging out. But it's a thrill to see some girls garbed in black walking down the same little impasse where the dealer is handing out little flyers. We exchange a knowing smile, and a wink without speaking.

The instructions were provocatively labeled "BLACK &", except the ampersand was cut off, as if the designer had ineptly placed the title... or had he? Black and... what?

We were instructed to group together at a certain gate at 14h53 and walk towards the center of the park at 14h54. There's a large fountain. We were to wait on our side of the fountain until the bells finished ringing the hour.

And that's what we did. Black Group was a bit too quick, so we all arrived on our side of the fountain. Nothing was happening on the other side. We waited for a couple of seconds, eagerly. Someone asked me to snap their photo and email it to her. So I did.

When suddenly, White Group marched into position on the other side of the fountain. Hey, White Group, don't you know how to synchronize your watch? Arrgh. Black Group resents White Group. White Group is WRECKING EVERYTHING for Black Group.

The two groups stare at each other. Imagined tension is in my air. As French and Tourists alike tremble in confusion and apathy, I take a picture of myself.

Suddenly, the bells peal. BONG bong b.o.n.g. Is that it? Is that the signal?! GO! Get them! Black Group starts chasing after White Group, travelling clockwise around the fountain. White Group flees around the other side of the fountain. Or are they chasing Black Group, and we are fleeing? It's a serious topsy-turvy philosophical image that I will thoroughly investigate after I get me a White Groupian and hang his head on my wall as a trophy.

It's warm out, but the stalwart Black-clad warriors don't hesitate. I bust a lung chasing the tail end of the White Group. I caught a lovely White Groupian with copper hair and matching sunglasses. She seems... human? Perhaps it is we who are the monsters. "Enchanté," she exclaims. I've forgotten my fury. What were we even arguing about?

When all the Black Group and White Group were caught, we applauded for a minute and then tried to melt away. It was slow going, because we all had a lot to think about.

I was away from the action when an older French man told me that we would have been better off in the bois de boulogne, where nobody would see us and we wouldn't bother Parisians seeking their weekendly rest. Then he told me that it was an idiot demonstration. I told him that it was ephemeral art that brought together strangers to share a moment in baffling others, that it didn't hurt anyone, and now at least he has something to talk about. Strangely enough, he agreed, and told me that Paris is "The City of Humans".

I wouldn't be seeing any of that.

We really saw nothing of Egypt on our arrival. We left Paris in the evening and arrived in Hurghada in the dark hours of morning. One of the tour operators greeted us and our luggage and herded us to the bus. We slept for the next five hours as the bus took us south along the sea to our boat. I woke up once or twice to peak out at a brand new continent.

We had a lot of stuff. Diving is like that -- a small suitcase for you, and a monster suitcase for your equipment. We hauled it to the end of the pier, where our crew stacked it high in a Zodiac and motored it off to our boat, the Nemo. The Nemo is 32 metres long and seven metres wide, with twelve two-person cabins for passengers, each with a private bathroom and shower. My roommate snagged us one of the four upper-deck cabins, so our door opened out to the sea air, and we had a real window. The other cabins were below the salon and had portholes.

The salon was impressively laquered inlaid wood and had tables and benches for eating and filling out dive logs. It also had a large TV, DVD player and stereo system capable of delivering Las Ketchup anywhere on board. Since nobody had thought to bring CDs, we heard their musical styling all week along with Destiny's Child. From what I gathered, there was someone who was under the misconception that the singer would find herself amiss without him, but as the story unfolds, you find that she has gathered strength from the experience, buying herself clothes, a house and a car to boot. Good for her!

Our first dive was at about noon. This is the readaptation dive, so we kept it shallow and tried to remember how all those tubes, valves and buttons work. The Red Sea is saltier than I am used to, which means the water is more dense and floating objects are more bouyant. I doubled my weights to eight kilograms, but it wasn't nearly enough. I could barely stay underwater for the three minutes at three metres standard security decompression stop. For the rest of the week, I dove with ten kilos.

Dive cruises are hooper efficient for managing the equipment. The tank, jacket and regulator were left assembled for the entire week. After a dive, you could rinse your equipment with fresh running water on the dive deck, walk five metres to the benches and lock your tank in. You unscrew your regulator, which is the signal for the crew to refill the tank, and hang your wet suit where it can dry before the next dive (out of direct sunlight). There were twenty-four little cubbyholes, each with an outlet for charging dive lights, cameras and the occasional cell phone.

We met the dive master on board, Bruno, who gave us the general rules of the boat. Most of them were along the lines of "don't do dangerous things you know you shouldn't do." For example, Goofus dives below 40 metres and has to miss the next day of diving, but Gallant waits until he's finished diving for the day before he hits the booze.

These first dives weren't just technical readaptation for me -- from the beginning, three things struck me as different from all my previous dives. First, the water was warm, between 24 and 26 degrees Celsius. I don't believe I've dived in water above 18 before. It's an enormous difference. Second, I've never had such good visibility. I haven't had much luck in the Mediterranean, and Bretagne was as obscured as the Pacific. The largest difference, however, was the amount of life underwater.

I must have seen as much on the first few dives in the Red Sea as in all of my previous diving put together. This is where language problems are going to come in -- while I can barely remember species in French, I never knew some of them at all in English. Some are easy, such as poisson-clown, or poisson-perroquet (clown fish or parrot fish). I don't know the translation of murène, a giant grey eel with teeth.

It gets dark early in Egypt in November, so our second dive was a night dlve. It's interesting to dive in the dark. The water is the same temperature as in the day, but the fishies are asleep -- some lie sideways in the coral, some just hang suspended, and some stick upside-down to the wall. Nasty looking urchins crawl out, with foot-long protective spikes and little else. There's a species of nocturnal worm that looks like a bundle of feathers on feet, and another that looks like a little satellite dish made of vines. I imagine both of them trap plankton at night, and they both curl up when you shine your dive light on them.

Other than the urchins and worms, if you're lucky, you'll see slugs -- the danseuse espagnole is aptly named. It's about thirty centimetres long and a beautiful, bright red, with frilly white ruffles at one end. It moves through the water by undulating its sides sharply and gracefully, like a spanish dancer waving her skirt while kicking up her heels. It always lives in symbiosis with a small shrimp, which was either too small or too camoflaged for me to find. I saw a danseuse espagnole for each of the four night dives we had -- even the one where we couldn't find the reef and spent most of the dive turning around and around in midwater with our dive lights.

The next day -- our first morning on our boat -- was our first accident. The lovely varnished wood staircase leading to the lower cabins got wet and... Boof! A dislocated shoulder at St. John's Reef. The shoulder was right out of its socket and we were eight hours away from the nearest port. Fortunately, they found a kinestheologist on one of the other dive boats in the area who managed to wrench it back into place.

We took the victim back to port the next day, stopping for a couple of dives along the way. This seems a bit cold, but apparently the logistics of the trip back were that we could stop a few hours along the route without delaying her return to the local hospital and France. It was a bit of a downer, especially for her -- she's one of the most cautious and experienced monitors in the club and she was missed during the rest of the trip.

Speaking of downers for the rest of the trip, it was about this time that I experienced la turista, which is a delicate way of saying stomach-cramping diarrhea, which is an indelicate way of saying bowel discomfort. I only drank bottled water and sodas (labeled in english and arabic), but I was eating whatever I felt like, including salad. It was rice and water for the rest of the trip. I didn't miss any of the dives -- I felt better under water than above.

During the day, we dove. We saw gardens of coral and sharks. Some of us saw dolphins and turtles, but I didn't. After the diving, we played Jungle Speed and Uno, and watched Shrek in French once. There was turkey one night and cake another, and generally booze in the evenings.

It was a fun week at sea.

You can't fly immediately after diving. Nitrogen dissolves in your blood at the high pressures underwater, and you need to let it evacuate slowly. High altitudes have to be avoided (typically for about twenty four hours) because the dissolved nitrogen in your blood can reform into bubbles under lowered air pressure. This is the same principle that makes it mandatory to surface slowly at the end of a dive -- these bubbles can cause serious decompression problems, such as severe joint pain and neurological damage.

I'm not very good at foreshadowing, so reread that paragraph about potential neurological damage. We spent our twenty four hours in Hurghada, where I learnt how to haggle.

Well, technically, I avoided haggling at all costs. It scares me more than potential neurological damage. And the Egyptians haggle for everything -- at one store, the price of twenty-cent postcards was up for negotiation. As well as the stamps. And then we had to negotiate to get our change back in cash instead of additional postcards. At another store, I managed to reduce the price of some scarab sculptures by one third. I was holding out for a fifty percent discount until I realized that the price we were bickering over was pocket change.

The entire dive group met at a nice restaurant by the sea and had an excellent meal of many Egyptian foods. I didn't eat very much of the meal, given my stomach discomfort at the time. I remember the falafel was surprisingly welcome and digestable. I had freshly squeezed mango juice, which was fantastic -- thick as a milkshake. I had the ice cream and the thick, thick coffee as well. Incredibly enough, the price of the entire meal was the same as a fancy coffee in Paris.

The flight home was uneventful. The rest of the weekend and the first day at work was uneventful. The fourth day after our return, however, I happened to mention that I was still feeling dizzy from being on a boat for a week (what the French call mal du terre or landsickness). This caused a phone chain reaction between dive monitors and a couple of dive doctors until I ended up at the emergency room at the Hopital Val du Grace, the military hospital in Paris.

It is abnormal to still have vertigo that long after a boat trip, and decompression accidents can be treated easily if caught quickly. So I was examined by the médécin de garde, who informed me that it was unlikely that I had a problem, that it was probably too late to do anything about it if I had, and that I needed a neurological test the following week. So I trundled back the following week, where the hyperbaric specialist had me touch my nose in sudden, alarming ways, and balance on one foot. He told me that it was correct to have come to the emergency room, but there weren't any symptoms of neurological impairment. So I got the tour of the hyperbaric chamber, and then they sent me home. It was freezing rain, and I got sick.

Fish fish. Fishy fish. Fishy fishy fish fish.

They must have flown over Montreal. For if not, we are all lost.

This is the point where I saw them. I was late for the rendez-vous, but only by moments. Darned public transport that doesn't magically teleport me to my desired location on a mere wish!

We took the long ride back to my place. Fortunately, the airline lost their luggage, so we were unemcumbered. The best way to travel!

We had a lovely lunch of cured Basque ham with mimolette and a baguette. Hooray for the baguette!

And then we went for a night walk.

Deanna fell.

They must have gone to the Montparnasse cemetery, or hired a street urchin to take their camera there. I would have been at work, so I couldn't prove otherwise.

But they cleverly hired a street urchin that looked JUST LIKE KERI so throw me off their tracks to Notre Dame. I know their little tricks. I won't be fooled, this time.

There was a contest at the Medicine Hat News to take your photo on vacation with the Medicine Hat newspaper. They sent in this excellent photo, but they didn't win. Poo.

So they went to the Louvre, and walked and walked and walked.

It's a big museum, don't you know.

Sooooooooo big.

It's the biggest. Think of any other museum. It would be smaller.

This is a good picture of the smaller arc de triomphe.

This is my sister (or a lookalike street urchin).

One day, we went to Sacre Coeur to sit on the steps and drink wine out of plastic glasses.

I suggest to all my future guests that we take a bottle of wine and drink outside monuments. There's safety in numbers. And booze heals the feet!

One day, we must have gone to Versailles. I remember that I sat outside in the gardens while Deanna and Keri raced through the chateau, elbowing aside tour groups and knocking aside the elderly. They win for the fastest visit of the chateau, for which I am truly thankful.

But we miscommunicated the meeting time -- they thought I would be waiting at the predetermined spot all afternoon, but I only intended to be there at the moment the fountains started. So they went to grab a panini in the garden.

The next day, we went to Père Lachaise. This time, we found Gericault's grave (remember the Raft of the Medusa?). There was a sculpted bronze replica of his most famous painting on his grave.

One other day, we went to go to a real football game, out at Parc des Princes, the 49 thousand seat stadium that is home to Paris Saint-Germain. Keri was so excited that her eyes were glowing. Hooray for Keri!

We were playing Marseille, and we won. Hooray for PSG! We also saw a great Nike commercial on the big screen TV (Tag!)

Deanna and Keri went to Disneyland so they could get sick to their stomach on spinning rides.

And then they went on a boat.

We always have trouble taking pictures of the Eiffel tower at night. If the foreground is sufficiently illuminated, the tower disappears. Likewise, if the flash isn't used, the foreground disappears. So I faked together some of our photos, so we could all have fond (fake) memories of the trip.

Bye Deanna and Keri! Thanks for visiting!

The hotel was hard to find. It was comfortable enough, but the walls were made of cigarette paper -- and our neighbour snored like a cement mixer. We didn't sleep, which was a shame since that was the reason we had a hotel in the first place.

Afterwards, someone recommended whistling as an alternative to banging your head on the wall in extreme sleep deprived insanity. Apparently, this can distract the snorer into a different sleep pattern without waking him up. I recommend lying in bed in a murderous rage, and then getting sick the next day.

But even with plenty of sleep, some divers took naps.

Here we are getting on the boat. These are all my coworkers. This would have been the first time I'd ever taken my camera on the boat.

And this is the first photo that I've ever taken underwater. Ain't I a stinker?

Underwater, Trebeurden is a dim brown, but there's a lot of brightly coloured and interesting things to see.

Such as crustaceans (yummy)

and squid

and sponges

and starfish.

That's all I've taken for underwater photos.

Fortunately the scenery was nice as well.

Hooray for Trebeurden!

There's another two weeks of vacation, so I'm only going to mention one thing about the 16 hour ferry ride: I don't like ferry rides. I enjoy free time to sit and think, but there's something about ferries that makes me feel restless and trapped, and the horrible "reserved seating" that we bought stank of crowded human bodies. Many of the chairs were broken. Here's Ryan's Irish Ferries travel tip: if you can't get a cabin (we couldn't), bring your sleeping bag and sleep free on the floor somewhere far from the dank, stank "Reserved Quiet Seating". Here's another Ryan's Irish Ferries travel tip: fly.

In fact, that's not entirely true, since we saved a whack of cash by bringing the car along, even if the ferry trip was more than half the cost of the entire two weeks (1200&euro for three, cattle hold one way, and a cabin on the return).

Cork, Blarney, Dingle, Kerry, Killarney

The next day at noon, we got off the Tedious Boat and drove onto magical Ireland. It was cold, it was grey and it was pouring sheets of rain. We headed grimly in the direction of Killarney. I always knew, theoretically, that in other countries they drive on the left side of the road. I can confirm this theory. It's the first time I've ever experienced this, but it's like wearing a speedo: it's odd, but not really that odd, and everyone's doing it. After a while, you shrug and don't think of it again.

I'm not permitted to drive in France any more, since I've passed the one year grace period where a new resident of France has the same driving privileges as a tourist. But I can drive in Ireland, and I did! "Vroom, vroom" were some of the noises I made getting ready to go, and "Look at me, I'm driving!".

"Perhaps you should put the car in one of its gears?" was a noise made by Sylvain.

"... and brake at some of the turns?" added Véronique a few moments later.

It stopped raining when we arrived at Fleming's White Bridge campground just outside of Killarney in the late afternoon, and set up our tents (24.5€ a night for the car, two tents and three adults). It's different than Canada camping, but in an impressive way. The grounds had thick, well-kept grass. There was an indoor dining room for wet weather, and several sinks with hot and cold running water for washing your dishes. The individual sites weren't labeled -- you picked a good section of grass reasonably far from your neighbours. There were neither picnic tables nor campfire pits.

Like driving on the left, I knew theoretically about the campfires. But I confirmed anyway with an older English lady at the washing up station that night.

"A campfire at the campsite? Oh, how lovely camping in Canada would be!" she exclaimed with convincing wonder. "Still, I'd be afraid of the bears."

Europeans always bring up the bears. "Grrr," I replied.

I didn't mention that I've seldom had a hot shower at a campground in Canada, and never a luxury as a washing up station. But I can't compare the two -- we weren't in Ireland to camp, and we were staying in campgrounds that let us cook our meals, sleep, shower and spend the day touring. A hotel without walls.

So we cooked our supper. Well, we had elected Sylvain cook and Véro and I were washers-up. And then we went to sleep.

Our tent was moist in the morning, but it wasn't raining. The sky was grey and grim, and threatening as we had our breakfast. We never did have the Irish breakfast, with the eggs and potatoes and white and black pudding -- it was always the French style coffee (for Ryan), tea (for Véro) and hot chocolate (for Sylvain), with brioche or pain de mie (a "normal" loaf of sliced white bread) and nutella and jam. I don't have a lot of breakfasts with French people, so it wasn't until we reached Ireland that I learned that they drink their hot morning beverages out of a bowl! It's true, and there is no justification.

We headed off to visit Cork, passing the bright and pretty buildings of Macroom on the way. It was easy to park in the center of the city, and we walked around the Grand Parade and some of the really nice pedestrian streets. Our mission was to find one of those folding picnic tables, and we went from department store to sporting good store. I suspect the Irish salespeople have a conspiracy -- they memorize a long chain of stores that they are sure will carry your item. We quit after spending far too long looking.

Our first real tourist stop was after lunch, at the Tower of Shandon. It's the carillon for the attached church and has a great view of the city. I told the man that we were French and he asked us to play La Marseillaise on the carillon upstairs. Apparently, any old idiot willing to pay the entrance (5€) can ring the bells. There are eight of them, and they've thoughtfully provided music. They didn't have the French national anthem, but they did have O Canada, so I gave it a good effort.

Continuing upstairs, we had to clamber up and over the beams holding the bells themselves. We could touch them. We met a man doing some restoration work -- apparently he was hoping that no tourists would arrive while he was up there. Church bells are loud. We also met a breathless woman from Toronto who rushed to the tower to meet us on hearing our anthem. We shared the view at the top of the tower, and I noticed a little door to the belfry, just large enough for a crouching human. And open. So I crunched up and waddled in. It was full of... well, bird waste. There were rickety ladders going up to the upper levels, at least another six metres up, but they were covered with guano, so I opted to return outside.

Back downstairs, I asked the man at the desk about the hole.

"Did you go in?" he asked me. I nodded. "Hmm. And you look so intelligent." Evidently, the grate had fallen in about six years ago but hadn't yet been replaced. I thought the grate was there to be walked on, to avoid slipping in bird by-products.

We went to Saint Finbarr Cathedral. They charge to get in, but since it was the end of the day, they let me in for free. The pipe organ was interesting -- it was sunk into the ground in a big square sub-basement. Then we passed by Elizabeth fort. There was some sort of police station and some remparts closed for repairs. That might have been it, but it started raining hard, so we went to find a bit of shelter.

Back at the pedestrian mall, we stopped at a little cheese shop and bought a variety of Irish cheeses. The proprietor was a young French man, so we stopped to chat in French for a bit.

Our next stop was Blarney (7€ entrance for the castle and gardens). The castle is in ruins, but the stone is there. You have to lean over backwards and upside down over the void in order to kiss it -- which legend says will grant you the gift of eloquence. There's a man specially designated to hold your legs and collect your tips.

If there's anyone out there who is going to tell me they heard of a friend of a friend who peed on the most famous and kissable tourist stone in Ireland, you can keep it to yourself. I'm sure the scabby and diseased lips of countless tourists have scoured the stone "clean".

We went through the gardens as well. There was a "witches stone", where other tourists had left coins from their countries. I don't know why, but I inexplicably found a Canadian penny in my pocket, so I left it there as well. I have no idea how a Canadian penny got into my pocket.

We planned the Dingle Peninsula for the next day. This is a skinny peninsula just north of Killarney, and it's full of prehistoric sites and scenery. I haven't mentioned the scenery yet -- it was already spectacular, but it hit us at full force at Dingle. Wow. We reached the town of Dingle at noon and went to look at the harbour and the local church. It was reaching one of the busiest tourist weeks of the year, and parking was pretty full.

From the town at Dingle, we went to one of the sites on the cover of our Ireland travel guide. The Gallarus Oratory is impressive because it was built without mortar 1100 years ago out of carefully placed layers of stone, in the shape of an upside down boat. It's still waterproof. Apparently, it's free if you park on the side of the road and hike in, but we paid 2.5€ to use the parking lot and inevitable gift shop.

The next site (Kilmalkedar) was also a church, but from 200 years later, showing the Roman influence of that period. The graveyard surrounded the church, with mostly modern graves, many noting that the Irish occupant had been repatriated from the States. There were some Gaelic artifacts among the graves that predated the church -- a sundial, a stone cross, and an Ogham stone. This was the only Ogham stone that we saw outside of a museum, and I had no idea what it was at the time. Our travel guides were little help, except to note that Ogham stones are found all over the region.

We took a small side road to Dun an oir, or the Golden Fort. There had been an important battle (and subsequent massacre) there many years ago, but now there's... nothing. It was one of the few sunny moments of the day, and we rambled along the colourful cliff jutting out into the water. There are a few spots where a bump of earth might have been covering one stone on top of another. It would be a nice place for a picnic.

We wound around the little roads in the region, using the terrible, terrible map purchased in Dingle. Based on parking accessibility, we passed by Sybil Head (one of the sub-peninsulas on the Dingle Peninsula) and clambered over Clogher Head instead. It was still grey and windy, and we followed the paths to the end of the head, climbing up and down and over scattered grey rocks. We had time to sit and watch the water for a bit and then headed out to Dunmore Head, where the oscar-winning film "Ryan's Daughter" was filmed. We went down to the beach and I stood in the Atlantic, getting my shoes wet and my socks sandy. It was chilly enough to need my raincoat, but the beach was still in use.

Continuing the circuit around Dingle, we stopped by a stone house where a charming Irish grandmother was sitting on her porch waiting for tourists. She chatted briefly and charged us each 2€ to walk around her property and check out her beehive huts. At this point, I didn't know what a beehive hut was, when they were built, or who lived there. The name is apt -- it's a stone hut in the shape of a tall dome, built by stacking flat stones without mortar. A couple of the huts were without roofs, and there was a large double hut built like a figure eight. The grandmother's ginger cat followed us around, meowing loudly until it was petted. Her sheep, however, generally walked away.

On the way back to the campsite, we stopped at a last point marked on the map. Dunberg Fort dates from the Iron or Bronze age, and was a fortified encampment. It had a large stone hut in the center and a thick wall of stone, and three or four ridges of earth rippling out. The weather had finally committed on a light, spitting rain. When we arrived, there was a man in a plywood shack ready to take our 2€. We were his last customers of the day -- he had already gone home by the time we left.

We took the Conor pass home, the highest pass in Ireland. It was very windy, still spitting and eleven degrees Celsius. The view was incredible.

I got to drive back to the campsite (vroom vroom), where we finally sat down to eat the picnic lunch we had prepared that morning. I went to the camp reception and bought electricity for the night, and we realigned our tent so we could get access to a plug and charge our cameras before going to bed.

That night, it rained. Hard. Fortunately, my tent is waterproof on the side that I sleep on. Sylvain was less fortunate. Since it was wet out, we had breakfast in the common room. It didn't feel like camping, but it was nice to sit down for a bit. We decided to stay in Kerry for two more nights to see both The Ring of Kerry (a famous road tour around the Iveragh peninsula) and the Lakes the following day.

Our first stop was Tesco. I love foreign grocery stores, with all their crazy brand names that the locals think are 'ordinary'.

We wandered a bit up and down a spit that looked over the Dingle peninsula from the day before, and then picnicked at Caragh Lake. The tour was supposed to go around the peninsula, but we missed a crucial turn and went straight into the heart. This is apparently hiking and rock climbing country, and we saw quite a few bikers as well. When we got back on track, we found ourselves at another stone fort -- Cahergall -- which had been restored sufficiently that it was safe to walk on. There were little staircases zigzagging up and down the circular mortarless stone walls, which were tall and thick enough to have one or two little rooms built inside. We could see another round stone fort in the distance, as well as the square ruins of an old castle.

Later on in the day, we drove over the bridge to Valencia Island, which is just on the edge of Ireland and one of the important sites in the history of radio. We found an old slate quarry, where a grotto and waterfall had been excavated for a statue of the Virgin Mary. Neat stuff. I like caves.

Because we hadn't had enough of stone forts yet, we went up and around a narrow road to Staigue Fort, nestled in a protective valley and looking high over the water. It was late enough in the day that we were the only tourists determined enough to visit. It was completely deserted, but we paid our 1€ into a little iron box (for "trespass"). The walls were mortarless stone (obviously a common construction technique for that period, about the fifth century) and about 5 metres high and 4 metres wide. It had the crisscrossing staircases up the inside, but we were asked not to climb them. The View Was Incredible.

We drove back through Killarney park, but it was dark and we didn't see anything.

We slept in late the next day. I woke up before the others, but I had forgotten to prepare a euro for the showers, so I sat in the common room writing postcards until camp reception had opened. Sylvain and Veronique joined me afterwards, and we started planning the next stages of our trip. This was very difficult, because we didn't want to pass by any of the important sites, and all the sites were important to us. We finally decided to cut out Northern Ireland entirely and do as much as we could in the south and center.

This was to be our last day in the southwest, and we stayed close to Killarney. We ate at the Danny Mann Pub, which was deserted at lunchtime. This was my first restaurant meal in Ireland -- Sylvain and I had the fish and chips and Véronique had the lamb stew. It was magically delicious! I believe Véronique won this round, since I didn't find another Irish stew that looked as good as hers. Sylvain and Véronique had the Apple and Bramble crumble, leaving me to explain what bramble was (I think it's where they threw Brer Rabbit or something). I had the Bread and Butter Pudding for dessert, since the waitress couldn't explain what it was (it's a bready cake with raisins and custard).

We drove off to the Ladies View, which looks over the Lakes of Killarney, the forests and the mountains. It's named after a visit from Queen Victoria and her entourage, who were taken with the view. The View Was Incredible. Well, it was.

A couple of steps away and we visited Moll's Gap, which is a pass through the mountains in the area. TVWI. In the middle of gawking and gaping at the incredible view, Véronique recognized some carnivorous plants off the path. Hooray for carnivorous plants! We spent some time ignoring the incredible view and taking some macro photos for a change. Then we went to the Moll's Gap Giftshop. Sylvain bought a sweater and I bought a keychain that said "Ryan" with my very own coat of arms. I normally don't encourage the commercial bastardization of the important work of Heraldry, but it had white lions on it, and hey, I'm a tiger. So close enough.

We breezed through Torc Waterfall, which was merely nice after a day of incredible views, and headed to a long hike through Dunloe Gap. All of our guidebooks emphasized that you can't drive through Dunloe Gap -- which isn't only technically true. The roads were fine, and there were plenty of motorists that passed us, but I was glad to walk. TVWI. There were lush little lakes and collapsed cliff faces. You could hear underground rivers. If we had walked far enough, we would have made it back to Moll's Gap, but we turned around at the halfway point so we could get back to the car before it got dark.

We had hooligans that night, with that noise they call music and the shouting. Another camper asked them to keep it down. So they did.

The Burren, Connemara, Aran Islands

The next day was a travel day, on to stage two of our trip -- towards a campsite at Spiddal, near Galway. We hadn't realized that it was a bank holiday, and a long weekend for the Irish, so our trip of about 240 kilometers took us five and a half hours. It warmed up to 24 degrees, but we were stuck bumper to bumper in the car. We hate the city of Ennis. I'm sorry, Ennisians, but not as sorry as your traffic management.

We were camping in Spiddal, one of the strongly Gaelic regions of Ireland, where the language is currently spoken. Most of the campsites near Galway were full because of The Galway Races, a famous annual horse racing event. Our campsite was much smaller and muddier than in Killarney, but we found a quiet and enclosed spot to set up our tents and unpack. We took a quick trip through the little village and to the grocery store to get some provisions, planned our next day and then went to bed.

Our next destination was backtracking slightly to The Burren. Geologically, the area was originally a vaste wasteland of limestone, a single sheet covering everything. Hundreds of thousands of years of erosion wore away fissures and cracks which were attacked and filled by an amazing variety of plants. Mediterranean and Alpine species coexist here, many of them rare.

Newtown castle was abandoned. Corkscrew hill was mislabeled.

But we made it to Aillwee cave. I love caves. I like the fact that there's a hundred metres of mountains above your head and if you turn off the lights, it's 100% dark. No exit signs, blinking digital lights or little red equipment indicators. Aillwee cave is not an insane geological fairyland though -- it's a fairly young cave, only about 8000 years old, and much of that was spent submerged. It's still partially submerged every year (all the electrical fittings are specially waterproofed). Thus, there were only a few formations, stalactites and stalagmites. One of the interesting features of this cave is three hibernation pits for brown bears, where some ancient brown bear bones were found. I didn't know that this was odd until the guide pointed out that this was the only cave with bear remains in Ireland. There aren't any bears in Ireland. They don't know what they're missing... Nice gift shop, though.

We passed a long time wandering around The Burren. It goes on for as far as the eye can see -- covering hills and plains, an incredible view -- but the tiny details are also interesting. The fissures are wildly sculpted but shallow, and the plants are bright and hardy. Walking on the layers of limestone gives a hollow, knocking sound.

Driving on, we stopped at Poulnabrone, the most famous dolmen in the area. I think this was a prehistoric grave, made of a few enormous stones in the shape of a door. Sylvain and Véronique dodged around and around the tomb, trying to take a decent picture without any of the busload of tourists in it. I gave up early and took a picture of the busloads of tourists swarming over the thing.

We found a perfumery that specialised in the fabrication of perfumes and soaps out of plants growing in the Burrent. I stopped for some gift shop stuff from there.

Leamaneh Castle was closed.

We continued on to see the sculpted Kilfenora High Crosses. They had been taken away for restoration. The 12th century cathedral was closed for renovation.

Our last stop of the day couldn't be closed -- the Cliffs of Moher are an incredible view among incredible views -- it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's frighteningly high at 183 metres, and only a bit is open to the public, because the rest is "closed" and "dangerous" and "fenced off". We did our safe walk behind the fence, and then followed a tour group of elderly ladies up and over it to get the real view along the muddy and slippery dirt path.

At one point, I stood at the edge of one of the rock shelves with my back to the cliff and took a picture of my foot over the void. I normally don't have vertigo, but that did it for me. Shivers.

I tried to explain to Sylvain and Véronique that the litter barrels were technically inaccurate, because once garbage is off the ground it ceases to be litter. They weren't very impressed.

Back to the campground, and retired to the camp kitchen to sit up writing postcards and recharging our cameras.

The region for the next day was Connemara, the boggy interior north of Galway famous for its mountains and scenery.

The first stop was Roundstone, a village on the ocean noted for it's artisanal crafts -- Gift Shop among gift shops. The music store we visited was worth the detour. I was seriously tempted to buy a big bodhran, but I left the percussion behind to focus on my tin whistling. If you're into original pottery or decorative metalwork, this is the place to visit.

We spent the rest of the morning on a beach with clear water and white sand among black rocks. The sand was strange -- it was made of tiny twisted worm shaped shells, and it was pokey on the feet. The water had carefully sifted this stuff based on size, so I spent a long time looking for pretty shells.

We did the route through Sky Road, which as an incredible view as promised, and headed up towards the north towards the Twelve Bens. These are twelve mountain peaks, and they are as well known in France as the Blarney Stone is in Canada. We stopped by the Kylemore Abbey, which was a manor and then a nunnery, and is now a girl's school. The tour was very interesting, especially the abbey gardens which were used to feed the Sisters and were being restored from ruins today.

On the way back home, we stopped and checked out some of the peat bogs. Peat is a layer of dead vegetation that can only partially decompose in the extremely moist and acidic ground, which is dried and burned as fuel. It acts as a great preservative, so many ancient Celtic artifacts have been found undecayed in the peat. It also acts as a sort of quicksand, so many Ireland tourists can be discovered and studied in the future. You are not supposed to hike through this area without a seasoned guide.

I'd already been finding the road signage a bit hysterical in Ireland, but I've never been cautioned so much as in Connemara -- Slow! Please go slow! Loose chippings! Major Road Work! Sheep! Horses! Narrow bridges! Slopes, bends! Won't somebody think of the soft shoulders?!

Our next day was unique: the Aran Islands. We drove directly to the port at Rossaveal -- picturesque route, incredible view, grey and green panorama spilled out over the world by the perfectly proportioned hand of God, blah-de-dah -- and got on a foot passenger ferry (19€ round trip, 3€ parking) to the main city on the largest of the Islands. We hired bikes at the town of Kilronan (10€ for the day) and set off. We biked the length of the island, stopping in Kilmurvy for lunch. I had the Irish stew with rough Irish brown bread and Guinness in the juice at Nan Phidi's Restaurant, and I introduced the French to carrot cake. Just like mom makes!

Our first tourist stop off the bikes was Dun Aengus, one of the most well-preserved prehistoric forts in Europe. It's in the shape of a three layers of stone walls in a semi-circle against a sheer 80 metre cliff. In between the second and third wall of stone, the builders placed chevaux de frise, upended sharp rocks designed to be impassible for horses or carts. It's unknown whether the fort was designed as a semicircle or whether the other half of the fort crumbled away into the ocean. I guess we could always ask a geologist, but meh -- I'm already in my pajamas.

The cliff didn't have any barriers. You could stand as close as you wanted and lean way, way over, and the only thing preventing you from plummeting to your death was yourself. Apparently there had been some fatalities, but not enough to wreck it for the rest of us.

We continued our biking along the island in the sun. It was beautiful weather, warm enough to discard extra clothing. The boys took off their shirts and Véronique was the cleverest of all -- she had unzippable pant legs. Ingenious! We saw Clochan na Carraige; a clochan is a beehive hut, and this one sheltered a monk. Next was Teampall Breachain, where there were "7 churches". There are, in fact, seven foundations but only two of them were churches. There was a graveyard spanning the ages from Roman inscribed stones to freshly dug with flowers.

The next church was Teampall an Cheathrair Alainn, which really summed up the Aran tourist experience. The Aran Islands belong to the same geological region as The Burren -- flat and stone, but windier. Nothing would grow here for the earliest inhabitants, who lived by fishing. But generations of islanders built up tiny plots with rock fences that sheltered the ground from the worst of the wind. They added layers and layers of dried and decomposed seaweed, sand and vegetation to create their own compost and eventually land capable of providing basic agriculture. To get to these little churches, you had to follow the vaguest of signs to a point where you could drop your bike, and clamber over the little fences, sometimes with only the dust of previous tourist feet to guide you through the little rock maze of fences and stiles. We were lucky, we had a bit of help from a cottager with her border collie.

We covered most of the island in the day, and headed back to the port to buy as much water as we could carry and take the ferry back. Hooray for the Aran Islands!

Clanmacnoise, Glendalough, Dublin

The next morning, we broke camp and stuffed it in the Clio, and set off in the direction of Dublin. By the end of the day, we needed to be at our next campsite, snuggled in the Wicklow mountains in the east of Ireland, just south of Dublin.

On our way, we stopped at Clonmacnoise, which I insisted on pronouncing in French (ending with a nwahz instead of noyz). This is a monastery founded in the sixth century, and we got to see one of the typical Irish monastery towers -- a thin, featureless round tower with a conical top. The top at Clanmacnoise had fallen off, but we did get to finally see some high crosses. There were two complete stone crosses, about three metres high. One was covered in sculpted scenes from the scriptures and the other was more ornamental with elaborate knotwork patterns. The original crosses were from the 9th century and were recently moved (after more than a thousand years) into a visitor's centre to protect them from the climate and tourists. Good fibreglass replicas were placed in the monastery ruins, which was pretty cool because you could go up and poke them without feeling like a vandal.

One of the churches in the monastery was still active, although only giving one service a month while searching for a full-time rector. There was also a large open air pulpit where the Pope prayed.

We ended the day in our next campsite -- Moat Farm Camping and Caravan in Donard. It was great! Scenery, just off of a small two-pub village, plenty of well-kept, soft and clean grass for the tents and tons of space. The shower and cooking facilities were spotless, and they even let us leave our cameras in their office overnight so we wouldn't have to move our tents to an electrical hookup. I think word of mouth is important -- if you ever need to camp near Dublin, stay there.

We headed towards Glendalough monastery the next day, but like the pilgrims from a century before, we stopped in the Wicklow mountains at the Wicklow Gap. There used to be a stone paved path through the peat, and some of it remains. Today, the pigrimage path is a hiking trail.

Glendalough was founded by St. Kevin in the sixth century. It's a monastic city, with a number of buildings, churches, a well-preserved round tower and of course, graves. There were several graves from the early eighteenth century in readable condition (although it's possible they had been recut). The view was incredible. We took a lot of pictures, and took advantage of some of the trails between the monastery and the lakes. We visited a spot where St. Kevin is said to have meditated, isolated for days in his stone cell in the woods. There is a legend that a blackbird once laid an egg in his unmoving and outstretched hand while he contemplated and prayed.

That day, we also visited the Russborough house, once of the only "modern" stops on our trip. This is a mansion from the mid-eighteenth century, most recently owned by Sir Alfred Beit, one of the inheritors fo the de Beers fortune. It's particularly famous for the white stucco sculpture ornamenting the walls and ceiling. We had a nervous, charming older lady take our group through the house pointing at each piece of furniture, dating and identifying it's origin. In one of the rooms, we were respectfully asked not to tread on a priceless sixteenth century Turkish carpet. Apparently, despite the fact that black-hat carpet experts insisted it should be under glass in a museum, the still-living Lady Beit prefers it to be on the floor for the public. Darn those carpet experts anyway and their elitist ways!

The outside of the mansion was a dull grey, but I found another copy of the Farnese Hercules in the wings of the colonnade. This is the statue of Hercules leaning on a staff holding the golden apples behind his back, and now I've seen copies in three countries, including two chateaux in France and the original in Naples. The Irish revolution of 1796 was fought on the lawns in front of the mansion, and entered the house. It's remarkable that the only damage to the building was from the soldiers boots on the floors.

The Powerscourt gardens had closed, so we went to see the Powerscourt waterfall. What a ripoff. 4€ each and ten minutes total to see a trickle of water blubbering down a little cliff. Not recommended.

We went to Bray Head, a panorama of the coast in the suburbs south of Dublin, where Véronique freed a toddler's head from an iron fence. He was wailing and she was the only one to notice. He found his mother, but we had to chase them down because we still had his bottle.

We drove around the mountains and found the Glenmacnoss waterfall, which was free but mostly inaccessible, and we visited another Incredible View at Sally Gap, and then found our way back to the campsite.

Our last full day in Ireland was reserved for the city of Dublin. We knew it couldn't be done in one day, and headed straight for the center of the city to give it a good shot. We cut off several of the major attractions immediately for time constraints -- no Phoenix Park, no National Gallery, no Guinness Warehouse tours.

We visited the exterior of St. Patrick's Cathedral, but we were too fatigued from a week of entrance fees -- the prospect of paying 4€ to visit a functioning church, well, it's understandable when it's a tourist attraction, but it's not pretty. Inside the church were all the flags of the Knights of St. Patrick, the viceroys that ruled Ireland standing in for the King of England.

I thought I head read that only one of the two major churches in Dublin charged admission, so we headed off to the other. Christ Church Cathedral only had a strongly worded invitation to pay their 4€ fee, along with an apologetic note stating that these historic sites receive no maintenance support from the Irish government, and cost upwards of 100€ an hour to maintain. Polite, but no dice.

We walked on to Dublin Castle, which has been there since the early thirteenth century, although completely reconstructed in the eighteenth century. The tour was great (4.5€, 1 hour). Our guide was well-informed and entertaining, and incorporated much of Irish history, their struggle for and achievement of Independance and resulting current issues. We saw the room where the revolutionary James Connolly was kept before execution -- he was injured, so he had to wait for five days while the law was changed to permit him to be executed by firing squad sitting instead of standing. We heard the story of Robert Emmett and his famous speech: "let no man write my epitaph". We saw decorations from the days of the viceroys, decorated with the symbols of England, Scotland and Ireland: the Unicorn, Lion and Harp, or the Rose, Thistle and Trefoil.

We saw the "overflow parking" for the standards of the most recent Knights of St. Patrick for the most recent viceroys, since the spots in St. Patrick's Cathedral had been filled. Of course, since the Independence of Ireland in 1922, there won't be any more Knights, but we saw the coats of arms of the Irish Presidents they've had since (two of which have been female).

We ate in a pub, which was an obvious mistake. I had chosen a recommended restaurant from the guide, but it was closed for the day. I had the Irish Stew on the grounds that it couldn't be too offensive, and it wasn't.

At that point, we separated for the first time in Ireland. I went to check out the Book of Kells, a sixth century illuminated manuscript at Trinity college. The exhibit was relatively expensive (7€), but worth it. I finally learned that Ogham stones was an alternative way of recording text using a series of coded slashes. There were a couple of rooms dedicated to the art of book binding and ancient books, on the art and technique of scribes and illuminating, and on several of the most important illustrations in the Book of Kells. The last room actually contained the books, one opened to a page showing text (book of Luke describing the ancestry of Jesus) and another opened up to an illuminated page, the entire page decorated with precision and detail. I would have liked to see other pages of the books, but the CDROM was 30€. Forget that.

From the Book of Kells, you return to the gift shop through a long hall of old books. Apparently this hall was the inspiration for the Jedi library in that hackneyed and tired sci-fi film that won't die the death it deserves. But that's another subject (meesa gotta bone to pick!)

It was my last opportunity, so I bought my Irish sweater. I paid too much for an obviously machine knit sweater "in the style of Aran Islands", but I really liked it. Hooray for Irish sweaters! I saw the Molly Malone statue and took a picture.

We wandered around the Liffey river and through Temple Bar, the famous pubbing district. It would have been nice to stop for a drink, but we were pretty tired and still had to drive back to the campsite, so we decided to check out one of the village pubs for a Guinness. Which we did. And it was good.

The next day -- pack, drive to Rosslare, get on the ferry. This time we had a cabin, which is highly recommended after the painful cattle "reserved seating" on the way in. We slept, woke, wandered the boat, and got back to the insane heat wave that was terrorizing France. From 20 degrees Celsius to 40!

In conclusion, Ireland is fun, but there's too much stuff to see and we didn't drink enough beers. The end.

That's Shannon, I mean. Katrina at this point was still in Spain. We (Katrina and Sandra and I) had gone to the Opera a few weeks before. The Opera Garnier, as everyone well knows, doesn't put on operas, only ballets. It was a good ballet. Then Shannon went to London.

Katrina is an old friend from Medicine Hat. Her family moved next door to my family when we were both really little, and we've spent countless vacations together -- Las Vegas, Victoria, and tons of camping and card parties. It was really nice to be able to spend some vacation time with her again (even if I had to go to work for most of it).

I should have put some of Katrina's Spain pictures up here. It looks like this Spain place is pretty cool. I should have been there with her.

Shannon, on the other hand, is a very new friend. She's also from Canada, and we met on one of the filthiest web sites on the internet. That's what we have in common. Her mom was supposed to email and threaten me, presumably to ensure I wasn't one of those those sociopathic internet fiends that moms hear about. I was kind of disappointed that she didn't, because I was going to have my mom reply. Hooray for moms!

So, we all went to Notre Dame. Katrina and I had a beer, and then we went to see the Eiffel Tower. They've upgraded the tower so that it glitters with thousands of little strobes for the first ten minutes of every hour. I played with the exposure settings on my beloved Canon S230 digital camera until I came up with a decent photo.

And then some other stuff happened. Katrina went back. Shannon and I saw a kangaroo and joey. You know, stuff and things.

Then we went to Disneyland or something.

My recollection of Disneyland in California is a bit hazy, but Disneyland Paris seemed strikingly familiar. The all-American Main Street, USA opened before the rest of the park, so we took a few morning photos of a partially deserted park.

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #1: Sleeping Beauty's castle is pink with square trees, instead of light grey or blue or whatever it is normally.

The Cast Members kept the crowd under control with a velvet rope as a scratchy recording welcomed all the boys and girls to the Magic Kingdom in several languages. They asked us not to run when they finally pulled the cord aside. There would be plenty of Magic for everyone. So we made a break for it and they gave us heck.

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #2: The classic Space Mountain, as I recollect, is a sterile white futuroscope. In Paris, it's brass and green retro-classic Jules Vernes. You aren't warned that there is a loop in the ride.

We went on some of the new rides that cropped up during the last ten years -- there was a heavily subtitled show Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, and Dumbo the Flying Elephant was reprised as a rider-controlled rocket. By "reprised", I mean that the Imagineers hoisted the same ride mechanism up a metre, shredded some of his fibre-glass clones and reinjection molded him into rocket shapes painted with pagan astrological symbols under a ripoff of a Dark Crystal prop. From the design, it was probably cross-marketed as an afterthought with that Atlantis movie we never heard so much about.

I was going to mention that Atlantis: The Lost Empire starred a Canadian (Micheal J. Fox), but decided it was too gratuitous. If you're Canadian, you probably already filed this fact away, and if you're not, you probably don't care.

Dumbo is a he, right?

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #3: There isn't a TomorrowLand, but a DiscoveryLand.

The Tarzan show was fun. The kids really got into it.

We figured out the FastPass system, which didn't exist the last time I was at Disneyland. The most popular rides have special FastPass reservations. You pick up a ticket with a time indicated on it, and continue your day (at less crowded rides, restaurants and shops). At the reserved time, you can go through the FastPass line, which is significantly shorter than the normal line. You can only get one FastPass reservation at a time.

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #4: One of the most popular rides in Paris was Peter Pan, which was pretty much the only ride we didn't go on. The line was forty minutes long, even at the time of day when you could walk onto Pirates of the Caribbean. What's up with that?

It was a holiday long weekend in summer, but it wasn't too crowded. The longest we waited was twenty minutes, and that was for the Big Thunder roller coaster (one of the best rides at Disneyland Paris, partially underground and an excellent view of the Phantom Manor).

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #5: In Autopia, you spent forty-five minutes waiting around a traffic circle while the other kids honk at you, and gas costs three times as much. Just kidding. I don't remember Autopia from the Disneyland California, and I forgot that they are real little cars, simplified for the kids. Gas fumes and all. I dared Shannon to drive with her eyes closed and we nearly caused a pile up.

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #5 (for real): The exterior of It's a Small World is colourful. I prefer the Paris version to the white and blue version of California.

Canada was represented, which I don't remember from California. My strongest memory of It's a Small World is from when I was seven years old, so it just might be that I hadn't learned to associate Polar Bears and Totem Poles with Canada yet. Hockey Players plied their trade on top of a Haida-inspired wedding cake and Royal Canadian Mounted Police were also tastefully displayed beside the Moose.

I recently read a short novel called Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (read it online for free!), which prominently features the Haunted Mansion. It is an excellent story -- a great science fiction premise in a great location. I had a new appreciation for the Haunted Mansion, and was eager to see it again.

Disneyland Paris vs. Disneyland Classic #6: There isn't any Haunted Mansion, but there's a Phantom Manor.

Both the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Phantom Manor were very faithful to the originals, but neither were exact copies. We ate our dinner at the Blue Lagoon, the restaurant inside the Pirates attraction.

We stayed for the Fantallusion parade and fireworks. We took our spots an hour before the parade started, and it turned out to be a very good idea. The best spots were right on Main Street. We followed the float with a burbling Minnie Mouse (I was screaming "I love you Minnie!") so we could get close to the castle for the fireworks, and then they made us go home.

So we went home, falling asleep on the metro.

Disneyland Paris is different than Disneyland Classic. It's smaller. You can easily spend just a single day there, see everything and some of your favourites twice. It's good. I didn't feel rushed or stressed.

For Shannon's final weekend, we went to visit Vaux-le-Vicompte, another chateau close to Paris. You can't easily get there on public transport, so we hijacked Antonio and Anna, and their car. And some picnic food.

It was probably the ideal picnic. We found a little field far from everything with a creek and stone bridge, a shady tree and horses. There weren't any cars or buildings in sight. We ate picnic spaghetti that Antonio and Anna had prepared -- it was cooked with egg and tasty ham into a finger food.

Vaux-le-Vicompte was great. Evidently Louis XIV thought so as well -- it was his jealousy over this chateau (built by his finance minister, Nicholas Fouquet) that prompted him to build Versailles -- and throw the finance minister into jail for fraud.

And I think I've seen this statue once or twice before...

Well, that's about all I have to say about that. Bye Shannon! And stuff.

AT HOME

• Ryan reads exclusively French books now. Things far beyond the Obelix and Asterix level.
• His toilet paper looks like mini marshmallows. Pink and orange puffs on the shelf.
• Ryan irons his clothes. Everyday.
• The French are known for their fine cuisine, therefore I found it odd that Ryan does not have a regular stove and oven.
• His elevator is surprisingly slow.

• I never heard a single musical in the three weeks I was there.
• Ryan has a special dish for olives.

IN THE STREETS

• Ryan lives five minutes from a bowling alley, but has never gone.

• It is not a lie nor an exaggeration - the dog poo is everywhere.
• On Fridays, the police coordinate street blockades so that rollerbladers can zoom around the city. Sometimes that wee speck whizzing by is Ryan.
• If Ryan had a car, he would fuel up right on the side of the street, or under a building.

• Ryan's boulangerie is closed on Wednesday's.
• His garbage is collected everyday and a recycling program has just recently been started. Remember the ditches in the 1980's...

• Don't be alarmed. They also have the Green Men that come around and clean the city streets and sidewalks everyday.

• Pharmacists scoff at the idea of cough syrup. "That is not good for your throat," they say. Too bad, Benylin.
• In France, sometimes they have marches to protest against strikers.

That's a bit funny. Ryan has become a bit of a protestor himself. I knew he was a Socialist!

• People defy the don't walk on the grass signs in the summer. They're probably tourists.
• Driving standards are... different. Ryan is better off without a car. Really.

GROCERY STORES

• They allow dogs.
• Special cart escalators exist. No, the cart goes alone – you go separate. They are special CART escalators.
• Eggs and 'milk' are not refrigerated.
• 'Protein' bars have less than 3g of protein. That's less than a Cadbury's Dairy Milk.
• You can buy sauce packets (ketchup, mayo, etc) that clip onto your plate.
• Pickles come with a gizmo that assists in lifting pickles out of the brine without getting your fingers wet. Genius.
• Ryan really likes Pims. I bet he wouldn't agree but they are the equivalent of Viva Puffs without the marshmallow.
• Meat isn't sold in family packs.

ADVENTURES

• Ryan is known for playing odd instruments (bagpipes, harmonica... ), so it surprised me a bit that in a city swarming with accordion players he hasn't made the plunge.
• Ryan is now the type of boy who walks across Place de Catalogne and wishes he had a card table to set up and drink tea in the centre.

• Amongst a group of people up in the organ loft of St. Sulpice, Ryan is still the guy who is asked by the world renowned organist to 'help turn the pages' as she pumps away furiously on the grand 7000 pipe organ.

• Ryan + Flea Market = Excitement. He used to hate to bargain, now he yells in French!

BUILDINGS

• Electrical wiring leaves much to be desired. Perhaps the two dot plug ins will prevent child accidents, but exposed wire won't my friends.
• When a store is having a sale, the night before (when it is still open) they will cover racks and racks of items with paper. So even if you want to buy it at regular price, you can't.
• It is a mistake to think that the terra cotta pots in Ryan's neighbourhood will help you to navigate your way home again. Paris is land of the terra cotta pot rooftops.

• People feel comfortable answering the door in their underwear in Paris. That really made me laugh.
• St. Denis, the burbs of Paris, reminded me quite a bit of Vancouver.

HIS FRIENDS

• Ryan was fortunate in that his Alcatel group was very friendly and welcoming when he first arrived. But could they live up to the competition of the fun loving Vancouverites and hilarity of the prairie folk he left behind?

• Unfortunately, the ones I met are strong competitors.
• From the ever-happy Italians with the amazing food and legs of steel to the extraordinarily patient Veronique to the charming Communist who refuses to be photographed – I think Ryan is in good hands. Smiling Sylvain from the travel logs will remain a mystery, though, along with many others.

• We do want him back eventually, though.

FOOD

• Ryan has always been a thin person who eats a surprisingly large amount of food. Paris has enhanced this about Ryan. This boy eats enormous amounts of cheese.
• French people go all agog over chocolate chip cookies.

• Ryan used to religiously smell of McDonald's cheeseburgers following a hike up the Grouse Grind. This will never happen again. He has sworn off fast food and feels there is no need to compromise taste for convenience.

Do not attempt to lure him into a fast food outlet, it will only lead to ruin.

• Ryan loves all cheeses. Except Munster.
• Ryan still enjoys barbeque sauce, but now he has to import it.
• Ryan has recently made each of his recent guests stop and ponder at customs when entering France, "Do I need to declare this wine I brought from home?" to which the world responds, "You brought wine TO France?"
• Did I mention about Ryan and the cheese?

The only sad report I have about Ryan's life in Paris is that we searched and searched for the Canadian pub - The Moosehead. We had to search for it. Search. And we never did find it.

Luckily, Ryan, the ever charming and prepared host had a large shipment of allergy medications as he too is a sufferer.

One surefire way to avoid such mishaps is to sink below the earth's growing surface. Avoid the sun, the green grasses, the flowers, the nasty pollen and retreat to the safety of the dirt.

In Paris, however, you will find that much of this space is already claimed and being used in all sorts of ways. Coming from Vancouver it makes you fear for the safety of the average Parisian. With our constant seismic upgrades we are increasingly confident that our entire city will not turn to rubble when 'The Big One' finally hits. But what would become of Paris in such an event? They have managed to hollow out much of the earth below this ancient city. And if the massive metro system uses 20 foot tunnels how much can possibly be left to support the city's structure? I wish I had paid more attention in my geography course. I didn't even know which tectonic plate I was on.

Clearly it was a fleeting fear as I did spend a great deal of time underground. The metro was a daily adventure, of course, but I also saw the workings of Paris' underground water system. Okay, waste water system. Yes, I toured the sewers. Who wouldn't after Rick Steeves exclaimed, "If you lined up Paris' sewers, they would reach beyond Istanbul!" The thought of these intestine-like tunnels worming their way under the city seemed very intriguing. As my sinuses were entirely blocked, I feared nothing.

Unfortunately, sometimes you find 'museums' are little more than factories or worksites with historic photos on the walls (ie. Mauna Loa factory in Oahu or Medicine Hat's "Great Wall of China"). The sewer museum was basically a tour of a water treatment plant in any major city. And, surprise, it stunk.

Beyond these layers of sewers and metro stops that lie just beneath the surface is another layer of tunnels, at least in the 14th Arrondisement where Ryan lives. After descending about 100 feet near the Denfert-Rochereau lion you can see the work of the bone stackers. The catacombs are a collection of the bones of 6 million Parisians. Room had to be made for modern Paris to grow – modern Paris meaning developments in the last 300 years – so cemetery bones were gathered, carted, moved in religious processions, creatively stacked and labeled for posterity.

Leg bones and skulls seem to be preferred for the task of stacking. That is all you really see, everything else is tossed in behind. After the initial shock of walking down a hall of human bones, you begin to long for a hipbone or a backbone for a change of pace. Other than the creepy dripping ceiling it was a rather scent free, chilly place to spend a hot afternoon.

Really, the dead of Paris take up a remarkable amount of underground space.

As everyone knows, there is no shortage of beautiful cemeteries in Paris; I saw eight in all. My affinity for wandering in graveyards began with the North American version: a park with trees, open spaces and headstones no higher than 3 feet. Doubles can be found, but singles are the norm; family plots are rare. They are peaceful empty places with a few scattered maintenance workers now and again.

Paris cemeteries are quite different. My first stop, Montparnasse, highlighted some striking differences. Grass is rare. Thankfully, bathrooms are available if you don't mind the squatting type. There are benches for people to sit and chat or have lunch if they wish. It is in the middle of the city, with a regular street partitioning it in half, so it is used as a shortcut for people going on with their lives. The number of living people there surprised me. This idea of an active and vibrant graveyard pleased me well, so I had to see more.

If I had to pick a favourite, it would be a toss up between Passy and Montmartre. Passy has an art deco theme with the Eiffel Tower in the background and ornate family vaults. Montmartre is an older, tiered park under an overpass complete with an affectionate cemetery cat.

I must say, the famous Pere Lachaise was a bit of a let down. It has very broken down bits in need of a lot of repair. The huddle at Jim Morrison's grave was crazy. He has nothing on Edith Piaf, though. Ryan could do a fine Flower-and-Fan-Arama there. Although interesting, with its 8 million lipstick prints, I couldn't help but have sanitary concerns about Oscar Wilde's grave.

So I ended up having lunch with Abelard and Heloise, checking out the Columbarium and heading out.

The other four cemeteries were all near or beyond the city limits. They were generally flatter, with low headstones, few sculptures and grouped by age or military status. A few had some odd personal touches.

Some had sections tended so well you wondered if it was an award winning event while others were clearly left to their own devices. This could well have been an argument for procreation – no respectable family plot has its roof fall off!

Speaking of the family name... not a single LaLonde in any of the cemeteries.

Where ARE my peeps, anyway?

Perhaps in the Pantheon, I thought - in the crypt with the men and women who have valiantly or creatively served their nation and led the way to progress and triumph. Nope, not there, either. And the statue of Voltaire was mysteriously missing from the crypt as well. Frankly, he's better off. It was a little too much like a cement prison to want to stay for long.

The other crypt of kings I visited was clear across the city and outside Paris under St. Denis Basilica. It wasn't as disappointing as the Notre Dame Archeaological site, but the deepest portion had some similarities. I hate to offend any budding archaelogists out there, but nothing is more tedious than staring at holes in the earth. It is made worse with the large signs explaining what the item might be, or could be, and all the possible uses of this fine specimen from the ancient world... so similar, yet so different from our own... (insert dramatic pause followed by thunderous, inappropriate music on poor quality headset).

The crazy reliquary and the stained glass were certainly the highlights of this very first Gothic cathedral. That is, if you don't count the fact that my question, "Who the heck is Clovis?" was finally answered.

Once you step out of the crypt, however, you are back on the earth's surface. Prone to natures elements, but now fully aware of what lies beneath. Or rather, what is missing, in Paris' holey underground.