A lot has happened since the last post

Yes, it's been an eventful week, starting on Friday the 13th, in the evening. It was covered extensively in the news, so I am not going to rehash it, nor go into my feelings. I've been in touch with family and friends and gave some immediate reactions via Facebook.
I will say, however, that staying away from the constant live coverage on TV is good. It's not easy to avoid getting caught up in the frenzy of speculation, but once I decided that when the cycle was over and I was seeing or hearing the same thing again, I turned it off and didn't go back until later in the day. There's something to be said in favor of the old days, when the news was a program at a set time in the evening and that was it. Yes, it is convenient to be able to turn the TV (or internet site) on to the news as soon as you are aware of something happening, but very soon you realize that the journalists don't really know what's going on, just that it is going on. Once you know there is something going on, is there any real need to keep up with the speculation? Analysis is another thing, entirely, and French TV has some pretty good programs that do good analysis.
Avoiding the TV and not being able to concentrate on much else -- if I turned on the computer to write, I got caught up in facebook updates -- I knit. That has a very calming effect. I've almost finished the complicated jacquard sweater I've been working on.
President Hollande has made some good speeches. He does seem good in crises. One of his proposals is to rescind French nationality to dual nationals who threaten figures of authority (police, military,...). As a dual national and mother of dual nationals, I feel such a law is dangerous. I sympathize with the feeling that the terrorists who are dual nationals are taking advantage of their dual nationality, so I understand why this "quick fix" to the problem sounds so good, but in geo-politics the definition of friendly and enemy state is ever-changing. This law would make dual nationals of any dual nationality second-class citizens in France. Here is the letter written to the President by one of the children of an American friend of mine who holds elected office in Paris: http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/anne-lebreton/decheance-nationalite-francais-binationaux_b_8588582.html

A non-birthday party

The kids cooked this up. Paul has a big birthday this year and has repeatedly said he doesn't want a big to-do. They organized a family lunch.
First most of the family from England arrived to spend the school holiday with us. That allowed the little cousins (Parisian and English) to get to know each other a bit, have a sleepover, watch movies, play on the trampoline, take a bateau mouche tour of Paris. Later in the week, the last two from England arrived and the ones from Tarn-et-Garonne drove up. So, we had all four of our kids on the weekend. Even if the Parisians went home to sleep, we still had a houseful. Fun and games. I had done most of the cooking the week before, so it was just a matter of defrosting....
One sad note during the week, though. A dear friend from the baseball crowd died. He was the one, the papa of the minimes team, who greeted L when he signed up, 11 years old. Later, I was one of the two moms that took over the team management and he went on to taking on more club responsabilities and scoring. He recruited me as a scorer and mentored me. Since I gave up scoring a few years ago, I hadn't seen him as much, but was also glad to see him when I could. Last June, he came to the European championships with his wife -- always happy to see them, but that's when he told me he was sick. I'll miss him. It was wonderful to see how much the baseball community loved him and turned out for the funeral -- all the "kids", now grown men, the scorers, the federation officials, the PUC (our club).
On Sunday, we went into Paris for lunch. And the surprise was finding P and G, who had come up from Six-Fours and their kids and grandkids.....
Sorry, no pictures of this on the blog -- family will get the link to the album, maybe not immediately as I have some sorting to do!

A Week in Portugal

This post got delayed because of the big family visit almost as soon as we got back from the trip.
Last year, in October, we went to Malta with friends, four other couples and us, the husbands of which all lived at the Pierwige when they were in engineering school. I lived at the Pierwige when I spent my first semester abroad in the Spring of 1970. This year, one of the couples was unable to join the rest of us, so there were only four couples all together, two from Paris and two from Biarritz. There wasn't so much catching up to do, since we did a lot of that last year. We only had one year to go over, which was enough to keep the conversation going for the whole week.
The Parisians arrived in Porto in time for lunch, which was excellent. The bonus was warm sunshine. (I had spend a month in and out of a really bad cold -- maybe it was two very similar colds close together. I ended up with a touch of pneumonia symptoms and the doctor had me come into the office the day before departure to check that the medication was working and the lungs were clear, so that I could go. We had already cancelled our trip to England at the beginning of the month for Constance's birthday.) Anyway, I enjoyed my fish and Paul had his first cod dish. Portugal is known for cooking salt-cured codfish in every possible way and he was determined to have his dose of cod. After lunch and a rest, we all set out to discover the city a bit.

There was a tram right in front of the hotel, so we jumped on and did a little tour. Porto is a hilly city. The streets are narrow. The tram, which is small, does not leave much room for people on the tiny sidewalk, and forget about cars parked wherever they can find a space. There are churches everywhere and they are all decorated with azulejos, the tiles that cover most buildings, but on churches they are blue, generally, and tell a story. This gave us an overview of the city before the others' flight arrived. They got the to the hotel just as we were settling in for a cup of coffee. Once they got registered and the baggage was up in their rooms, we set out on foot. (A word about the hotel -- the Hotel Infante Sagres -- we were all happy with it. I forgot to mention, in my review, that if you opened the windows, it was noisy at night because of the clubs nearby, but if you used the air conditioning, it was OK.)

Because we were going to take the train to Lisbon, we headed towards the train station, which looks like any other major train station until you see the tiles inside! We wanted to get information and see about getting tickets. It was a well-advised stop, since the trains to Lisbon leave from a different station. It was good to find that out sooner, rather than too late. From there, we continued up hill to the Cathedral, where there is a terrace with a magnificent view of the city below. The inside of the Cathedral was our first glimpse of the golden opulence of Portuguese baroque. Not my cup of tea. We had a beautiful sunset view from the terrace, though.
After the visit inside the church, we headed downhill into the city and we ended up going down and down and down until getting back to the hotel meant a climb back up. Dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel with our 10% discount coupons -- even with the discount, this was the most disappointing and expensive meal of the trip.
Wednesday and Thursday, we spent walking around Porto and more sightseeing. Friday, we took taxis to the right train station for our trip to Lisbon.

Rainy day in Belem

Lisbon is much bigger than Porto, more majestic, which is logical, since it's the capital. It also has more hills, and, in my mind at least, steeper hills. It was completely rebuilt after the terrible 1755 earthquake and, we learned, the new buildings were built with seismic tolerance in mind, the first such building code. Since the country was very rich in the 18th century, the rebuilding was quick and majestic. We visited Belem, the convent, the cathedral, the tower... We walked around, took trams, buses, and walked some more. We went up to the Castle St. George, where there is a wonderful view of the modern city below. The castle itself, what's left of it, is a big, 11th century castle, much like the Norman castles in France and England, but maybe with a bigger floor plan. From there, we walked back down to the modern city and ended up walking all the way back to the hotel after a late lunch! I haven't calculated the kilometers, but my feet felt them.
We had good meals. Unfortunately, we missed the art museum, just steps from the hotel, because when we decided to do a little museum visiting, Monday, it was the day they were shut, so we finally took the "hop on, hop off" tour that gave us a better overview of the city.
It seems to me that there was so much in Lisbon, that I have less to say than for Porto. I think I enjoyed Porto more. I need to go back and take a real look.

Went to England in July

Added: Looks as though I forgot to publish this short post once I got the pictures downloaded.

At the end of July, we went to spend a week in England. The formal reason was to babysit between the end of the school year and the beginning of a sort of day camp at a nearby school. It turned out that C. had decided to leave her job and was therefore free that week when she hadn't expected to be. Her new job started when we left. It was perfect timing.
We went to pick up Ch. after her last day at school, stopping to say hello and have lunch with G's mother. I love seeing her and we had a nice, but short visit. Then we off to pick up Ch. and face heavy traffic on the return trip, which ended up taking more than 2 hours.

 On the weekend, we visited Warwick Castle, which has been transformed into something between a really good cultural visit of a Norman-period castle that children could enjoy and an effort to be a Disney-like attraction. The girls tried their hands at archery and did very well. There was a birds of prey show, an archery show, fun and games and lots of little stands where one could spend more money. The weather was beautiful and we strolled around the grounds, had a picnic lunch, and a very nice day.

We also visited a petting farm, with pony rides for Ch. and A. It was a rainy day, though, and we went to a nice pub for lunch.
On our return trip, the traffic was horrendous as we drove down to Dover. The motorway was cut off and transformed into an immense parking lot for trucks waiting to board the ferries. We had to drive through towns; the detour signs were not always in view or very clear in their directions.