La Réunion - a full two weeks

My apologies. I was sleepy and sloppy in my first post from La Réunion and got the days of the week mixed up: arrived on Thursday, Hell-Bourg and Ste. Suzanne on Friday (east), St. Philippe and the southern coast on Saturday.
Sunday, we needed our rest and the Thomas clan arrived early in the afternoon. They needed their rest, too.

Cirque de Mafate

Monday morning, Paul, Anne, and I had our helicoptor tour of the island. It's splendid. Our tour took off from behind St. Paul. The company is Helilagon. There is another company based closer to us at l'Ermitage, Corail, and they seem to be just as good. We had scheduled the 7:00 tour because we had been told that one must do it very early so as not have the view obscured by clouds. It turned out that they rescheduled us for 8, which we only found out because we also discovered they would pick us up at our hotel at no extra charge and I phoned to arrange that. The pick-up was at 7:20 and when we arrived at the héliport, we discovered the 7:00 people and the 8:00 all still waiting for the all clear signal.

Take off for our group of 6 was at about 8:30 and the sky was wonderfully clear. We flew over St. Paul and picked up altitude to enter the Cirque de Mafate via the Maïdo peak. From there, we dipped into the Cirque. The cirque is one of the three caved-in calderas of the Piton des Neiges volcano, the one that has been dormant for long enough for people to feel safe living in the cirques. The Cirque de Mafate is only accessible on foot or by helicopter. There are villages on the plateaus that are separated from one another by deep gorges and the cirque is surrounded by almost vertical walls. The inhabitants voted against having a road built along the canyon entrance and against having electricity brought in. As far as electricity is concerned, they were right, because now, they all have solar panels and do not need the heavy installations. Mafate was originally settled by run away slaves. Apparently one was called Mafate and in Malgache, that means either "qui pue" (who stinks) or "qui tue" (who kills). Once the run aways made it into the cirque, no one really bothered trying to capture them. They were followed, later, by the poor second or third sons of planter families, and by Chinese shop keepers.
From Mafate, we went over to the Cirque de Salazie, which we had driven through the week before. It's so much greener! It's canyon entrance is on the eastern side of the island, where all the rain comes from. Still, in spite of being on the rainy side, the waterfalls are just trickles this year.

Turning south we flew over the Piton de la Fournaise, the active volcano, although there's no activity right now. There's a valley, a plain between the two volcanos and we could see the large farms.
And then over les trois Salazes into the Cirque de Cilaos, not quite as confined as Mafate, because there is a road and electricity, but still signs of rugged living.

Les Trois Salazes 

Tuesday, we (quite a group, now) made our way back to Ste. Philippe to visit the Jardin des Parfums et Epices. That was a beautiful visit. I recommend it. The guidebooks say you need to reserve for the guided tour, and you do. That said, they accept too big a crowd on a tour, so you kind of wonder if they do have a limit. Our tour was the 10:30, but by the time they got us all rounded up it was getting closer to 11 and they had opened a tour for 11, so, since there seemed to be fewer people on the 11:00 tour, we switched. It was well worth the wait; our tour guide was the owner! Of course, there's vanilla, curcuma, ginger, mangoes, papayas, bananas, and more. There's so much more, if you go, take notes in order to remember it all. The tour is an hour and a half, but ours seemed to go on a bit longer. The parents of small children dropped out a bit half way through because it's just too much information and stationary pauses. For those of us unhindered by babies, it was an enlightening tour.

 This hole in the ground is what is left when the lava cools around a hardwood tree. The tree burns slowly enough for the lava to cool around it. Once the tree has burned away, the hole is left. This is useful to determine the depth of the lava flow. It is also useful as a natural toilet. The people would choose to build their houses near two such holes, so that when one filled up, they could use the second, until the first had composted, and so on.

Notre Dame des Laves

NWhen we left the garden, we drove past the Grande Coulée, to the east coast. At Sainte Rose, there is this church, now called Notre Dame des Laves. In 1977, a new caldera formed outside the Piton de la Fournaise enclosure and its lava flowed into Sainte Rose, stopping just in front of the church (and a little around the sides). It scalded the building but that was all the damage done! A miracle! The rest of the town was pretty much destroyed and has been rebuilt on top of the lava flow. They've cut steps in the flow for access to the church. 

We continued up the east coast, to Sainte Anne, where we cut across to the road that cuts through the plain between the volcanoes. The "plaine des palmistes" is not as flat as its name sounds. The road winds up and down between the pitons. It's agricultural country. Towards the southern end, it's much more urban and less interesting. As the road descends to St. Pierre, the villages are named for the number of kilometers to St. Pierre: Dix-neuvième, Quatorzième, Onzième. I must say that in the metropolis, there are not so many pharmacies and medical centers or service stations. The roads here are in excellent condition.

On Thursday, we drove up to the top of Maïdo to the viewing rampart for the view into the Cirque de Mafate. It's a beautiful drive. And there are some magnificent views. I envy the hikers that go into the Cirque. There are places to eat and even spend the night. We are no longer up to such hiking. I hope that some of my friends who do hike and who read this blog will consider it as a future destination!

We came back via St. Paul. This is the first capital of La Réunion. It's a big town, but not as big as St. Pierre, and certainly no as big as St. Denis. There are only a couple of shopping streets. There's also a market on Fridays and Saturdays, but this was on Thursday. We did stop for lunch. And we stopped along the coastal road on the way to St. Gilles. In fact, it turned out to be where we stopped on our return from the wedding on Saturday, at Cap La Houssaye.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were taken up with the wedding activities. Monday was Anne's last day with us. We did not feel like doing very much. It wasn't really a nice day for the beach, either. We has lunch at Salines-les-Bains and then spent the latter part of the afternoon with Louis, Gwen, and Sacha, who came over to our hotel for a dip in the pool. We then took Anne to the airport..

Le Marché Couvert at Célaos

Tuesday was a nice morning, so we headed south, along the coast, to St. Louis, where we turned and went into the Cirque de Cilaos. It's a beautiful drive, but there are too many S curves to count. You don't have the impression you are going up a mountain because you keep going up and down, following the meander of the river. There are villages here and there, not along the road, but always a little distance off. There are staircases carved into the rock along the road that lead to paths to get to the isolated farms. There are hiking paths to take hikers into the Cirque de Mafate and the Cirque de Salazie.
At the town of Cilaos, there is a little covered market with local produce: melons, lentils, mangoes, peaches, wine, ... and some local crafts, like the embroidery. Further along the road, at the end, is the Ilet à Cordes, on the opposite side of the cirque.

Célaos embroidery

Wednesday was another rather lazy day, spent pleasantly with the Thomas clan. It rained during lunch.
There was a big storm during the night but we woke up to a beautiful morning and decided to take one last drive. We went back to St. Louis to see the Museum of Decorative Art of the Indian Ocean. What a disappointment! The site is an old coffee plantation, Maison Rouge, and they've started cultivating the rare café bourbon again. A small tin of the coffee, 125gr., costs €22! We would have loved to taste a cup of coffee (€2) but the snack bar was closed. The museum exhibit was of Chinese furniture and porcelain that the locals imported -- very beautiful, but nothing made locally. We didn't stay long. We read the posters describing the particularity of Boubon coffee and the life and death of the coffee market in La Réunion. After this very brief visit we got back into the car and decided to see where the little road ended. That was a drive on a little road cut through the fields -- fields of sugar cane, bananas, a bit of pineapple, and more. Some banana plots were empty of fruit; others had fruit already in bags, but still hanging from the plant; and others had tiny fruit just starting. Some of the cane has already been cut, but there is plenty left. We saw four workers in one field cutting. These hillside fields are not good for mechanical harvesting. This agricultural path led to the Department road 3, slightly wider. Beautiful. There's a break in the road, though, where we had to go down the mountain to cross the ravine and then go back up to the D3, which is marked in green from this point on to indicate it is picturesque. Well, the preceding portion was very picturesque, but this bit, which runs parallel to the main highway, but at about 800m. altitude, all the way to St. Paul, has house on each side. We could imagine that there must be nice views of the coast from time to time, but since we were caught in a cloud, we couldn't see. Tired of all the twisting and turning, we called it a day and returned to l'Ermitage.
Tomorrow, we hope to go to the St. Paul market. It's a big tourist attraction. Almost all the Réunion souvenirs are made in Madagascar, though. I hope it's not a tourist trap. We also want to see the Sailors' cemetery. We've passed by it several times and this time we want to stop.

What a weekend!

The reason we came to La Réunion now was for a wedding: Louis and Gwen. And now, that wedding has taken place -- on Saturday, October 26, 2013, at 13:30.
(This is my own shot. I was seated next to Louis and the camera was in my lap. No flash, no way to check that I was aiming at the couple. But this was the moment of saying "Oui". That's it for really personal shots in this post. Most of the other pictures have children in them and posting those is a parental decision. Family readers will get the link to my album, as usual.)
I'll post the rest of our tourist activities in another post. The wedding related activities started with a dinner for all in the wedding party, hosted and cooked by Louis, in the middle of the week. We are a fairly small party: Gwen's parents; sister; brother and his wife and two girls; an aunt and uncle; Sacha, of course; Gwen's friend, who was her witness and who lives here; Louis' witness, who is his good friend and who came with his wife and baby just a couple of weeks older than Sacha; and we three Lebelles. We ate well and all had a good time. We didn't linger because most of us intended on going up to the top of le Maïdo for the view into the Cirque de Mafate the next morning.
Thursday, Louis and Mikail spent the afternoon diving. That was the bachelor party and Louis loved it! Friday, all of the girls in the party, spend the day with Gwen. A morning at a lovely beach, with paddle boards and canoes. Just as it started to sprinkle, we headed off to another beach to the restaurant where Camille had reserved our lunch. It poured as we ate a delicious meal, but the storm was over by the time we left, so we didn't get wet. We spent the afternoon visiting a tropical garden right here in our neighborhood. The rain had stopped completely by the time we started our visit and it was a lovely, interesting walk. While we were having our day out, the men took care of the babies and prepared the house for Saturday's festivities. Gwen went off to spend the night at Camille's and Louis spent the evening with us and spent the night at Anne's hotel (she has a suite!). Anne had arranged for full sister time for Louis and he managed to speak to both Claire and Emma on the phone.

The Mairie de St. Denis

Saturday was the big day. Camille had made a hair appointment for me, so Paul and Anne spent an hour discovering St. Denis while I was at the hairdresser's. It's not a very big city, so they managed to cover most of the sites in that time and we continued afterwards, having lunch near the mairie (city hall). At about 1:00 we were all near the mairie and ready. We spent the time taking pictures with Louis. Gwen arrived, beautiful, radiant and we went up to the "salle des mariages" just before 1:30.
The couple sit facing the "maire" (or, in this case, the "maire adjoint") and the "secretaire". The parents sit on each side of the couple and the witnesses at the end. We formed an arc around the table. The secretaire read the civil code articles concerning marriage, to which they agreed, and then the full "état civil" of both Louis and Gwen (that's their full names, where they were born, their parents' full names, ...) and they signed the document, exchanged rings and were married. Simple and every bit as moving as a big ceremony.
As with most cities, Saturday weddings are in high demand, so we were quickly ushered out of the room to make way for the next party. There's a patio in the mairie with a fountain, so a few pictures were taken there, and then again on the steps at the front. We then went down the street (Ave. de la Victoire), all the way to the sea front, Le Barachois, for more photos, after which we went back to our cars to drive up to the Jardin d'Etat, (up the same street, but called Rue de Paris at this end) for more pictures. It started to drizzle but the French have a saying: "mariage pluvieux, mariage heureux" (rainy wedding, happy wedding), and it was only a little rain, in the tropics, so it did not prevent our meanderings. We left the city to head back to the house and stopped at Cap la Houssaye on the road between St. Paul and St. Gilles for some cliffside photos. L, who is nine and has very sharp eyes, saw a turtle in the water below. It even came to the surface for us. (Turtles are a sign of longevity in the Chinese tradition, so we decided that this sighting was a good sign for Louis and Gwen!) By this time, the sun had come back out. We returned to l'Ermitage.

A little goûter (snack) was waiting for us: fresh fruit and fruit drinks! After a little time to relax, we walked down to the beach for the sunset and champagne! And when the sun was down and it was completely dark, except for the stars, so bright, we lit lanterns and sent them off into the sky. Once back at the house, we settled down to a perfect dinner, good music, and a good time.

Louis finally told us what the Sunday surprise was going to be -- a day out on a catamaran!  (half day for some, full day for those who wanted to stay aboard) We set out from St. Gilles a little past nine. The sea was smooth; the dolphins came to play boatside. Later on, the sea got rough, so the afternoon shift was called short, but they still got to see dolphins, a bigger species than the ones we saw in the morning, so the day was a success, even for the few who were a little seasick. What we all remember is a good day.
And that was a wonderful weekend. Today is going to be a relaxed, no-planned-activity-or-sightseeing-day. Anne is leaving tonight.

On to La Réunion

Louis and Gwen are getting married! In La Réunion! Not many of the Lebelle side are going to be here. In fact, it's just Paul, Anne, and me. Claire just gave birth to Constance, and besides, Aurelia just started school and can't really be taken out outside school holidays. Emma is just getting down to work on her house and taking time for a trip to La Réunion. It's a long way and merits a long stay. (wikipedia article in English, in French)
Today, Sunday, is a day of rest. At least, the morning is supposed to be. The rest of the family, Louis, Gwen, Sacha and the whole Thomas side, arrive later this morning.
It's a night flight. Taking any flight from Orly suggests an exotic destination, much more so than leaving from CDG. There are no lines; there are crowds. We got to the airport a full three hours before the scheduled departure and the crowd in front of our check-in zone was so big that we didn't see there was a sign for a line for people who had their boarding passes already. We just got into the crowd that slowly became a line for check-in and in over an hour, we were checked-in. I wonder what time the first people in the check-in line got there. We went straight through to the security check and came out at the other end in about half an hour. Our flight was already announced with a delay, so we had time to get a little something to eat. It was already 8:30 and who knew when we'd get our flight dinner! Our Corsair flight was on a recently refurbished 747. It looked and felt new, very comfortable, but we didn't really leave the gate until after 10:30 and it was past midnight by the time dinner came, so it was a good thing we had had a bite beforehand. There's a two hour time difference with La Réunion, so it was about 10:00 a.m. when we arrived on Wednesday morning.
For some odd reason, the local travel agency did not have our voucher for the car, but apparently that happens a lot; our car was indeed reserved and waiting for us, but it was almost noon by the time we got it.
Needless to say, we were a bit tired on arriving at l'Ermitage, just south of St. Gilles, on the west coast of the island. We walked over to the beach, had lunch, and then collapsed for a few hours.
We walked over to the shops and got some breakfast things and some pasta for an eventual dinner in. There is a bit of sticker shock when in the supermarket; almost everything is imported from metropolitan France, but even local produce seemed expensive. Back to the beach for the sunset and back to the studio for a light dinner and plan for our first real day.

Thursday morning, we headed to the west coast and inland from St. André to Salazie and on to Hell Bourg on the rim of the Cirque de Salazie. (photo) The cirques here are really the calderas of extinct volcanoes. This volcano is the Piton des Neiges, which has been sleeping several thousand years. The other one, the Piton de la Fournaise is still very active, almost annually! The landscape changes dramatically as you drive up the dry west coast, past St. Denis, and down the lush east coast. The rain comes from the east. All the towns along the coast around the island seem to be Saint something or other. They were founded by the French. Other towns, inland, have more picturesque names. Something that is striking about this island is that it is rather big, but was totally uninhabited when the French arrived in the 17th century. It, along with Mauritius, Rodrigues, and the Seychelles, are far enough west of Madagascar and east of Australia or southeast of India, that no one had ever settled there. So, the French didn't take it from anyone. No previous civilization was extinguished. The French Compagnie des Indes created the first outposts and then planters and slaves from Africa and Madagascar, followed by low-paid workers from India and China, brought in when the slaves ran off into the cirques -- a rather typical colonization for the period. In addition to the runaway slaves, many second sons, who would not get a piece of the plantation, also went up into the cirques. A few generations along and everyone was a beautiful mix of colors and religions and they had their own créole language.

Hell Bourg was developed in the 19th century as a spa, up in the highlands, away from malaria. It is a pretty little village that has maintained the houses (cases) from the 19th to early 20th century. We visited the Case Folio. It's an interesting guided tour. Isabelle "non-stop" (because you pick up the tour as you arrive and she just keeps going) told us the uses for all the local products: bamboo, different trees, plants, etc. Almost every plant can be used entirely from the leaves to the fruit to the roots, and when no longer productive, the wood.

On our drive back, we stopped in Ste. Suzanne, to visit a vanilla plantation. This is a recent plantation and actually it's a sugar plantation with a vanilla production showcase. The vanilla is grown in the forests. What we saw, here, was just for demonstration purposes. Vanilla is an orchid plant. The flowers, though, only last one day. So the flower has to be pollinated during that day, or there's no vanilla pod. Now, October, is the flowering season, so we got to see how they do it. The technique was invented by a 12-year-old slave, Edmond Albius, in the mid-1800s. He got no compensation other than his master, a botanist, did give him the credit for the invention. Since slavery was finally abolished in 1848, I suppose he didn't have to wait long. It's an interesting visit and a long process for good quality vanilla. The vanilla grows in the forest. It has to be detached from the tree trunk and so that the workers can reach the flowers and then the pods. They have to manually pollinate the flowers (The bees that can do this work are Mexican bees that did not adapt to La Réunion. Vanilla is originally from Mexico.) The pods must be hand harvested as they ripen, just at the right time, 9 months later. The crop is put into baskets and plunged into hot water, not boiling water for 3 minutes. Then, the pods are put into wood trunks and covered with blankets to steam. When they come out of steaming, they have turned brown. They are sun-dried for 6 hours a day, 10 days, and then continue drying in the shade. When they are dry enough (and we were shown how to determine this), they are put into wood trunks to age for a year. During that year, they are inspected regularly in order to throw out any pods that show mildew. After the year, they are sorted by size and tied into bundles and stored away again in wood trunks for further ageing. In all, the process is 2 years. We were cautioned against "fresh" vanilla that hasn't been dried. It looks nicer, but won't last. And the vanilla from Madagascar is sun-dried too long and not aged, so it becomes brittle and doesn't last, either. By this time, one is no longer shocked at the price they are selling their vanilla and is prepared to pay.

Yesterday, we headed south, to St. Pierre and beyond. La Réunion is not yet fully tourist-friendly. There are not many signs to the attractions and it's hard to find street names. St. Pierre is a bustling town with a couple of main shopping streets that measure up to any you would find in any sous-préfecture or préfecture in France. The city hall is located in an old warehouse that belonged to the Compagnie des Indes. We tried to find the market and there was an old colonial house to look at, but the house gates were closed, so we couldn't see it, and the market was on a street we didn't find. We left to visit the rum distillery.
Finding the rum distillery was another adventure because the guidebook did not say which exit to get off the highway and as we were in town, we didn't know from which direction they were giving the little instruction they did. It's a good thing we had a real map and managed to find our way to the main road and finally found signs for the distillery. There, too, is an interesting story about the difference between rum agricole, made directly from sugar cane juice and is more common in the Antilles, and rum traditionnel, made from molasses, which is already a by-product after the juice is separated to make sugar. The bagasse, the fiber, is used to fuel the electricity plants, thus supplying the sugar plants with whatever energy they need and a bit extra for the local grid. They also claim that the sugar cane consumes the entire CO2 production from cars on the island. The guide took us through the distillation process, distillation, condensation, ageing... to tasting and, of course, buying. The specialty on La Réunion is rum "arrangé", with fruit. It's really quite good.

From there, we continued along the southern coast to St. Philippe, where we saw our first lava coastline. The village has been here quite some time, so whatever flow created the beautiful hillside and coast, it was a long time ago. We had a very good lunch at La Bicyclette Gourmande. I had a "sauté vanille" -- a mix of lots of vegetables with shrimp (but I could have chosen meat or chicken) in a vanilla sauce, with rice and lentils. Then we had ice cream for dessert, from a local ice cream maker -- a scoop of ginger and honey and another of pralines. Excellent lunch.

After lunch, we continued all the way to the Grande Coulée, the 2007 flow. Plants are just starting to come up. We stopped, on the way, at le Vieux Port, where the forest has grown considerably since the 1986 flow. The floor of the forest is all fern and then there is a variety of trees and other shrubs. It's very tropical, virgin forest -- but young. Anne and I walked all the way down to the ocean. There are some spectacular sights and, a bit further on, a volcanic beach. We didn't go that far.

Finally we got to the Grande Coulée, but we couldn't see the Piton the Fournaise, because, like so many volcanoes, it was shrouded in fog.
On the way back, we stopped at Le Puit des Anglais, a volcanic swimming pool for safe swimming. Looks like fun! And another stop at Le Cap Méchant, more volcanic seaside.

It might sound as if we covered great distances, but really, no, we didn't. We left in the morning at 8:30 and would have been back at 5:30 if we hadn't got caught in a traffic jam at St. Gilles. We quickly turned around and came back to l'Ermitage for our third sunset.

Philadelphia Weekend

I went to Philadelphia on Friday to attend a class reunion on Saturday. I arrived home this morning, Monday. No time for jet lag!
I am not really going to talk about the reunion, here. Not much. It's the first real high school reunion event I've been to. Five years ago, a group of us who have remained friends over the years got together for a weekend in the Catskills and three years ago, a larger group, 16, spent a weekend at Barnegat Light. In the five years, an email group and then a Facebook group have grown and grown and I've made lots of virtual friends. Some have become real, in the flesh friends on their trips through Paris and I've made an effort to meet up with them on my trips -- old friends and new ones that I never knew in high school. I've said it before and it continues to astound me how strong and supportive a group of women friends can be. I'm very glad I made this special trip for this reunion. There were around 120 of us.
Thank you again, Tony and Barbara, for picking me up and driving me from NY to Philly. I'll try to remember the next time I'm looking up flights and have separate browser windows open that I should not click so quickly on the least expensive flight. I loved seeing you. If I had flown into Philly direct, we could have met there and not had that long drive. Of course the long drive did give us time for a good chat and I loved it. Best to avoid Friday rush hour out of N.Y., though!
Jon, thank you for driving over. I enjoyed dinner with you and Eric and the speedy view of the Barnes.
I almost missed going to the Barnes and if Jon hadn't gone through the trouble of getting himself a ticket, I wouldn't have gone. I arranged for a shuttle ride back to JFK and for my 7:10 flight, with the recommended check-in 3 hours before, so the shuttle was to pick me up at 11:30! You kind of forget that you get a tour of Philly as the shuttle picks up customers all over town. I was not the first, so I can't complain. We got a nice tour of the Northeast before heading for the first drop-offs at Newark. The traffic delays on the N.J. turnpike going north were as bad as the ones we had southbound on Friday and we got to JFK at 4:30.
Back to the Barnes. I liked it. One hour is not enough. The museum building is interesting; the reproduction of the rooms of the original house is well done, so the works are shown as they were in the house in Merion. Barnes' disposition is, in my opinion, coherent. I could see the way the colors flowed from painting to painting to Pennsylvania Dutch chest. I liked the chairs and the pewter ware. I could see how the door hinges and other hardware guided the eye and framed the works on the walls. I could connect the works of different origins, different painters, and see their similarities.
I was not surprised that viewers are not allowed to photograph the rooms, but I was surprised that you can't draw or sketch, either. There's a lot of Renoir and I am convinced that I don't like Renoir as much as I thought I did years ago. I merely mentioned back in 2009 that Paul and I had been to see the Renoir exhibit and that it was too crowded, but I forgot to say how disappointed I was in seeing so many Renoirs. Barnes collected a lot of Renoir - the portraits of little girls, the family paintings, nudes. When I see a lot of Renoir all together, I just don't like it all that much. Cézanne is different. I like some of his landscapes and stilllife paintings, but I get depressed when I see his portraits. Barnes collected a lot of Cézanne, too. He also collected a lot of other painters, so I let my eyes wander away from the familiar Renoirs and Cézannes to look at the others. I'll take a notebook next time to jot down thoughts as I go through the exhibit. And I'll make it to the second floor!
Honestly though, a weekend trip to another continent with considerable time zone differences is not a reasonable thing to do.





.

In the Economist

I'm so glad that the FATCA, banking, tax dilemma has hit mainstream media recently. The most recent article is in this week's Economist. I got mentioned, about the Fidelity (and other brokerages) behavior. Most of the comments are excellent, too.
Today, I'm in Philadelphia to meet a bunch of high school mates. As I've said many times before, I can't really say "reunion" because I feel as though I'm meeting most of them for the very first time. We've been having a great time getting to know one another on Facebook these past 4 or 5 years, though, so I'm looking forward to this lunch.
Then Jon is driving in, and I'm looking forward to having dinner with him, and with a bit of luck, Eric, too, and maybe a couple of Tobi and Jon's friends. I am sorry Tobi can't make the trip this time. I even got to see Tony and Barbara on this short, short trip, as they were so kind to arrange to be on their way home from a trip to Boston and New York. I had (stupidly) gotten myself a ticket to New York, rather than Philly. I got in three hours late because of mechanical problems that held up our flight in Paris. The shuttle into the city took about twice as long as expected, so we got caught in Friday rush hour traffic down to Philadelphia. The upside of that is that it gave us more time to talk!
I'll write more about this reunion in another post, later, maybe on my way back, tomorrow.

Announcing Constance Victoria

Sorry, I haven't written in two months! I just couldn't bear to complain again about all the FATCA business. Victoria has been expresssing the frustration so well, there was no point in adding to it. And for anything else, well I was just lazy. There wasn't much to say, anyway... until now!

Constance Victoria Husaunndee was born on Oct. 3 at 11:28. 3k 150 gr. / 6lbs. 13 oz. Apparently they don't measure length any more.
This is the picture Claire took on her phone this morning. They will be coming home from the hospital later today. Can't wait! We've been to the hospital to visit, but it'll be great to have them home.
Paul and I have been here for almost two weeks, learning Aurelia's routine in order to help Claire out, but unfortunately we are leaving on Tuesday already. I'm leaving for the US at the end of the week, for a very short trip, and then we leave for La Réunion. I guess I'll be coming back here early in November. It's good that Geoff's mother will be able to come up to help out in the interim. Claire will not be allowed to drive for 6 weeks! It's the insurance company that dictates that rule for post c-section driving. Absolutely ridiculous!
Aurelia has settled in well at school. The cut-off date in the UK is Sept. 1. Since she turned 4 on Aug. 31, she is the youngest, but probably the tallest, in her class. This is rather like kindergarten or last year of Maternelle. It's all day. They do learn to read and write. She already knows her letters and their sounds, so the teacher is adding on phonics at a faster clip. Same can be said for numbers. After school, she's got gymnastics on Monday, swimming on Tuesday, music on Thursday. On Saturday, she goes to "French school" in the morning.
French school is in Milton Keynes. Last week, we went to Costco while she was at school and this week we went to the main shopping center. It made me think of my father and wondering what he would have thought of it. It's enormous, clean, with very large spaces for exhibits (this week was weddings with a several antique car limos for weddings, and other vendors) and walking. It seemed like a mile between the two end anchors. The stores are big, much bigger than the Northampton ones, much more stock and choice. And from one shopping center there are passageways to the next and the next. The one odd thing is that you do have to pay for parking -- not much, but still...
So, that's the latest.