France II: Bucket List Bonanza

"When you were in Paris, did you see...." Yes!

Notre Dame (Better at night with fire throwing street performers.
I am now a Cathedral expert and will share some interesting commentary about the carvings when I cover the Amiens Cathedral:

Louvre:
When I landed it was Free Museum Sunday! Who doesn't love that? Apparently...no one on the planet causing such a huge Disney line that I didn't attempt it. The Bucket List Fodder to time ratio wasn't correct.

The Impressionists Museum
I decided if I was going to wait in line it would be for the Impressionists.
Here is a huge picture of the line around the block. I estimated it would be over an hour. I was behind a family from Australia with their 5 yr old daughter, they flew 24 hrs to get to Paris. About 10 mins in security came and pulled them aside to the much shorter "Family with a small child" line...and ME since I looked like their Australian son for the day. I would later learn there is no sense of equality for everyone in France. So subjective treatment, we would see as unfair, does not apply. Another 10 mins and we were IN!

It's bigger than I thought, Kings Island has nothing on this Monster.

If my French was better I would have explained to the mobs of tourists that Paul Revere delivered the Eiffel Tour to France to warn the French Canadians that they weren't going to take their guns. He was also ringing some bells.

This street is not a favorite of the locals since it is mobbed by tourists and looks like a big Vegas Shopping Mall. This is also big, but how about that lamppost for a close second!

We chose to take the stairs up to this Basilica, to be greated by people selling bottles of beer in the street. I guess that's legal here too.

We also saw a street performer who used his soccer skills and love of the song Mambo No 5 to entertain the tourists (not pictured).

Vacation Part II: France

I just spent a week in France for vacation visiting friends from school and work.
I had a great time and actually filled my iPhone with pictures, about 700.
Here is every place I visited in France:

Here is every place I visited in Paris:

I'll have to split this into several blogs to cover all of the different things we did. I'll start with Meghan's request to get pictures of all the food I had. I did forget at times, and one place was too fancy to take out a camera...until after a bottle of wine and we closed it down so I got dessert pictures. Notice my inside joke where I tried to sneak in a coke or Pepsi glass into most pictures.

4 Cheese Pizza (Goat, Gorgonzola, Mozzarella, Parmesan)

Desserts

Layers of chocolate:

Crepe:

This was the fancy 400 year old restaurant. A supplier suggested it in Paris as a great French experience. I had a Mango cold soup, Smoked Salmon (Tried some good Fois Gras), Veal Tenderloins, then split the desserts shown: Creme Brule, Chocolate Lava Cake, and Violet Ice Cream:

Burger: This translates in to something like Burger with a Rider on a Horse (The egg)


White Chocolate Hot Chocolate at a Cafe:


Cheese shop:

Vacation: Part I Nantucket

Some photos from Vacation in Nantucket

Our Harbor in Harwich

Main Street Nantucket

Our Cottage in the Harbor

The Great Penny Race Fountain

The Beach

Lighthouse moved from original location near bluff

Lighthouse on bike ride

Crazy Storms

We've had some crazy weather and storms out here.
The other week the tornado sirens went off an hour before any storms came, because the system was moving 80mpg. The wind killed my tulips but no major damage.

This past Fri night at 1:30am, I woke up to some serious thunder and lightning. Lucy gets nervous, so I was checking the radar on my iPhone and saw the image below (you do not want to be the red pin).

Then at 1:45 am, a huge lightning bolt struck very close by and it felt like the entire house jumped. My security alarm and everything went crazy, so I thought for sure me or my neighbor had been hit by lightning. I stayed up for a bit incase a fire started. Things that did not work at the time included, the phone, all lights and ceiling fans that touched the attic. And my sump pump, which I spent most of my time on that night with all the water we had.

After checking things out and no fire I went to bed around 3am. I had reasoned that the lightning must have hit close and traveled in through my phone line since most downstairs light and TVs etc still worked.

I woke up around 9am to look around in the daylight, I was drawn to my guest bedroom to find this in the wall above my window.

And it looked like I hulked out in my sleep and pulled my window frame apart!



So I was directly hit by lighting at the peak of my roof above my garage. The bolt came down popping out the wood, it's hard to see unless you zoom in but parts of the bricks are missing, it shot them out like buckshot into my neighbors siding. Then came down through the window through my drywall.




All in all, I am super lucky, no fire, so far not too much electrical damage. I've had the Fire Dept, Plumber, Electrician, Roofer over. Mostly just the structural, cosmetic stuff left.

The only weird thing is, since then I have had the strangest dreams...

Tulips

Last Fall, I planted some tulips in my front yard.
Here is what they looked like before all these storms and wind got a hold of them.

New Cat Information!

As a new cat owner, I often look to Tom and Meghan for advice on how to raise a happy cat. They never seem to let their cats outside, so I would follow the same routine with Benson. But after some deep discussions with him and some experimenting, I have come to the conclusion that he might like to spend some time outside!
I would have hoped someone would have mentioned this possibility to me before now.

Here are some videos showing how much he likes being outdoors.
He Loves It!


Off he goes...


And it tires him out...

Animals

To Tom, who needs 2 cats when your one is this busy!




But he does like to relax, notice the curled back paws.


Dog beds...


My spot on the couch, he doesn't care...


On the book shelf...


Seen here with the Crazy Eyes!


All of this tires out Lucy...