Questions for the Hodgepodge and the City of Lights

If you're here looking for this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge questions you'll find them at the bottom of this post.

But don't you want to hear about Paris first?

P is for Paris

Just typing that makes me happy. Oh I know people go on and on about something they call the 'attitude' you run into in Paris but the city, she is tres belle! I have been to Paris a few times which might sound a little snooty but I promise, it's not. Think of it like this-when you live in London you're just a quick two hour train ride from The City of Lights. Kind of like where I live now in North Jersey. I could hop on a train and be in Washington D.C. in a couple of hours. Incidentally, did you know the design of D.C. was the creation of a French born architect who was heavily influenced by the city of Paris? I'm afraid the similarity ends there for me.

The very first time we ventured out of the UK following our move was for a trip to Paris aboard the Eurostar. It happened to be Thanksgiving weekend and we ate fish on the train which the girls felt was very wrong but c'est la vie. It was chilly in the city in November but I'm convinced there is no bad time to see Paris.

We did the typical touristy things on that first trip which included the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. Oh and we ate our fair share of crepes and Croque Monsieur too.

We spent a few hours one afternoon in Montmartre and the girls had their portraits drawn.

Those portraits hang in my upstairs hall and are a happy reminder of what felt like a huge adventure to us at the time.

Notre Dame is spectacular.

You climb what feels like a thousand steps to get the best views-

Of course Mr. Rule Breaker had to tap the bell.

Fyi...that's a no-no.

When my sister and niece came to visit us in the UK my niece really wanted to go to Paris. Hubs and I were discussing the possibility one evening and I was saying how a week isn't really even enough time to see London, let alone make a day trip to Paris. Hubs said, 'Yes, but how often in your life do you get to go to Paris?" Daughter2 piped up and proclaimed, 'Well, if we go with the relatives it will be my third time this year."

There are days I miss ex-pat life.

Daughter2 was on the school swim team and they had meets in Paris. She still talks about the coach making them run up the Eiffel Tower steps as part of their training. I'd post some of her pics but daughter2 loves to travel the world and take dozens of pictures of her friends up close and personal. They might be in Paris, they might be in Cairo, they might be on a Greyhound bus...you can't tell from the pictures. People are the 'thing' she wants to remember.

I have lots of Paris snaps but I'm only sharing a few and only from that first trip. That trip marked a moment in time where we circled the wagons and united firmly and completely as a family of four. Life still felt a little strange on the other side of the pond but on a cold and gray Thanksgiving weekend in the city of Paris we were given a glimpse of the opportunity that lay before us.

We saw something else too...we saw that we would need each other to successfully and happily navigate these new waters. If you have teenagers you might recognize how big that thought is. Teenagers are typically entering a stage of pulling away, not drawing near. Every city has a personality all its own and Paris is no different. And of course beauty is different things to different people but to me, Paris will always be beautiful. It was here that we stopped looking back and started looking forward.

And now, back to reality...here are the questions for this week's Hodgepodge.

See you back here tomorrow (Wednesday) to link answers~

1. What are your plans for Easter Day/weekend?

2. Besides Jesus, what one person from The Bible would you most like to meet and why?

3. What is one modern day convenience you didn't have as a child that was easy to live without?

4. Are you more right brained or left brained? If you don't know what that means there is an interesting little quiz here.

5. What is something you intended to do today but didn't? Why?

6. Cadbury Creme Eggs or Reeses peanut butter?

7. Who was your favorite cartoon character when you were a child?

8. Insert your own random thought here.

The Happiest Place on Earth

Heigh-ho, Heigh- ho, its on (and on and on) with the A-Z blog challenge we go...

O is for Orlando

More specifically, Walt Disney World, but I'm attempting to meet the challenge requirements here so you're going to need to work with me. What would 26 travel posts thru the alphabet be without including Walt in at least one? And that picture up above is from Disneyland Paris but stay with me...

The problem with a post on WDW is this-what can I say about WDW that has not been said in the literally hundreds, if not thousands, maybe even millions, of posts already out there in the land of the internet? Probably not a lot, so I'm just going to record a few memories for my blog. Technically our last trip to Disney was Disneyland Paris and not Orlando but I'm including that here because its my blog and I can.

O is also for outside the USA.

Like I said, use your imagination...it is Disney after all.

I've made five trips to Disney however I will not be discussing visit number 4 when I helped chaperon a group of middle school show choir students on a trip I can still barely talk about. And yes, it has been ten years but let me just say that trip put me off Disney for a while. It wasn't Disney's fault that just the idea of going back to the park made my insides churn. 

Some day I might write about that week but not today. Suffice it to say when my co-chaperon and I landed in the Baltimore airport and saw our husbands waiting for us we both burst into tears. Keeping tabs on middle schoolers who are not your own can be a fun and rewarding endeavor. It can also be something else altogether.

My first trip to Disney was in 1993. The daughters were 5 and 3 years old and my dad had passed away the year before so we invited my mom to come along too. I was looking thru my pics from that trip and I think I was so caught up in the magic myself that I really didn't take many...mostly I just soaked up the experience sans camera. These three photos pretty much sum up the whole week-

Scrumptious.

I could eat their little blonde headed pony tailed selves up with a spoon.

I know some people say they want to wait until their kids are older to go to Disney but there is nothing quite like the pure joy and abandon with which a just turned three year old will fling herself at every familiar character she sees.

Here's the third picture-

This child exhausted every single solitary ounce of energy she possessed (which was a lot by the way) and left the park every night passed out cold. She woke up every morning crying because she'd missed the monorail and we'd have to explain that she snoozed thru the ride home. The monorail was almost as exciting as the park rides.

And yes, my just turned three year old had her paci on that trip.She's almost 21 years old now and extremely well adjusted so please no haters.She might not be so well adjusted had I removed that paci at age 2. This child needed her paci.

So did this child's mother.

We returned to Disney in 1997. The daughters were now ages 7 and 9 which are fabulous ages for the park. This trip we made with friends who also have two girls and we had an absolute ball. We took a bajillion pictures but I've chosen just a few-

At the Hunchback of Notre Dame show they chose a child from the audience to be the announcer. Daughter2 was frantically waving her arms and legs hoping to be picked but the emcee didn't think she could read all the big words. Ha. Not a problem! She received a certificate which was very exciting stuff for a seven year old.

We ate lunch at the Sci-Fi diner one day. You sit in a car and watch sci-fi flicks as if you're at a drive in movie theater. Do you think hubs knew this was shades of things to come?

Speaking of shades of things to come...

...here we are in 'England'. Well the Epcot version anyway. Oh the things we don't know that we don't know.

In every country in Epcot the girls posed in hats~

Epcot also gave out passports to be stamped and there was a craft in every country...painting in France was a favorite~

My future art student who one day, in the not so distant future, really would get to France.

We returned to Disney in 1999.Hubs had a meeting in Orlando so we met him there as did our friends from the prior trip. The daughters were now 9 and 11. Animal Kingdom had recently opened so that was something new to see and Epcot gave out yardsticks that year with each country adding something to the stick.

Making your own mask was a big hit.

Disney (and the rest of the world) was getting ready to welcome a new millennium in a couple of months and they had a giant 2000 over the Epcot ball. We needed to squeeze in as much fun as we could before Y2k hit. That was pretty much a non event but do you know what did happen?

My girls got older. They were into fast cars on Disney's brand new test track, the Rock n' Roller coaster (not me!) which was also new, stunt shows and more big kid stuff.

Flash forward 8 years. September, 2007 and the daughters are seventeen and nineteen. It was hubs birthday weekend and that next week Daughter1 would be leaving the UK to return to the US for her second year of uni. Daughter2 had just started her senior year of high school.

Where did those little girl years go, anyway?

I told them we were going to do something Daddy wanted to do for his birthday and that was 'see a castle'. We had them convinced we would be spending the day at Leeds Castle which is lovely but does not exactly scream FUN when you're almost twenty.

We picked Daughter2 up early from school and they tried to put on their best happy faces so Daddy would not feel bad for dragging them 'somewhere educational' and headed on down the motorway. As we zipped past the exit for Leeds Castle they wondered if we knew we'd missed the turn. Strains of Disney songs began to fill the car and we finally let them know the castle we'd actually be seeing belonged to Cinderella.

Disneyland Paris.

You can get excited about a weekend at Disney even when you're seventeen and nineteen. And forty-seven. Even if it's all in French.

Disney's magic is pretty universal.

And of course nothing says welcome like armed guards.

Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore, so to speak.

When we saw Main Street USA we all felt a teeny tiny twinge of homesickness.It was that whole taste of home in a foreign country I think I've mentioned a time or ten.

Disneyland Paris was celebrating its 15th birthday in 2007~

Hubs had a pretty good birthday himself.

He was way older than fifteen but here's the thing about Disney....

You're never too young...

or too old....

to feel the magic.

A Day in June

N is for Normandy

One of my absolute favorite trips.

Ever.

We decided to drive to France and this was our first time taking our car on the Chunnel train where you get on in England and come out thirty minutes later in France. France- where the driver is now sitting on the right hand side of the vehicle and driving on the right hand side of the road. In the UK you sit on the right hand side of the car but drive on the left hand side of the road.

Is anyone confused?

Wait until you need to pay a toll.

Think about it.

Daughter1 rode the entire way in the third seat of our car facing backwards all the while working her Game Boy.

It makes me green just thinking about it.

We left the UK on a Sunday and learned pretty quickly that sleepy little French villages do not have much in the way of food on Sunday afternoon/evening. We stopped in village after village en route and nada. We had seen the Golden Arches as we were circling Caen and hubs exclaimed that he did not drive all the way to France to eat at the Golden Arches, nuh uh no way. When it appeared the only alternative was going to be a vending machine at the petrol station we reconsidered and in we went. Turns out you could have a beer with your hamburger in this Golden Arches so the guys were happy. My sister and brother in law were traveling with us.

Also, I see I've written an entire paragraph and have not begun to discuss Normandy so I think I'm going to need to find another letter to tag and make this a two-parter.

There is so much to say.

Isn't there always on thissideofthepond?

We had booked a B & B in a really tiny village called Villers Bocage.

The inn happened to be owned by a lovely British woman who was a model in her former life. She had given me driving directions but none of us could see any houses along the road where we'd been told to turn. Almost out of nowhere we spotted a drive leading down a hill and there it was...our B & B-

Hidden from the road but lovely.

And, because it was tucked out of sight we learned that the Germans had taken over this house during the war and used it as a base of sorts. There is a wall in the house where the owners have peeled back the layers of paper and put plexiglass over a spot where the Germans left their autographs...absolutely incredible to see.

Let me back up now and tell you about the first stop we made on Sunday afternoon before checking in to our B & B. If you make the trip to Normandy this is a must see-The Caen Memorial, which is said to be the best WW2 museum in France. It was built on the site of an old bunker and is only a few minutes from the D-Day beaches.

Included in the displays are letters written by servicemen during WW2 and we were all particularly touched by one a young man from Utah had written to his parents. In essence it said if they were reading the letter it meant he wouldn't make it home and to please take care of his wife and how much he loved and appreciated them. I am going to share something else about this particular young man when I talk about our visit to the American Cemetery.

The museum is absolutely packed with things to see and read as well as some videos which show D-Day reels from both a German and Allied perspective. We spent several hours here and I know some people reading are thinking 'yawn' but trust me..it is anything but dull. Even my girls, who were 13 and 15 at the time, explored and read and were moved to tears.

The next day we headed to the beaches-

I'm not sure what I was expecting but I guess I wasn't expecting an ordinary beach.

We visited both the Utah and Omaha beaches and also spent some time in the museum at Utah Beach.

It was cold and windy and the seas were choppy and my heart broke a little bit when I thought of all those young, young men, boys really, who ran courageously into battle here.

I really can't do justice to my feelings with words.

You stand on the beach and you look at the rough sea and the steep cliffs and your heart aches and your heart swells.

Here you can see 'hedgehogs' in the background which were to stop the tanks from advancing.

One thing we were not expecting to see were bunkers.

I don't know why but I guess I thought they'd be filled in or closed over.

Well they're not and in fact, you can climb right down inside those bunkers. Crazy to think you're standing in a German bunker on a French beach but there you are.

Sadly there is graffiti in some of them.

There's no queue to stand in to get inside, no ticket taker, no postcard kiosk...just a beach and a hillside and your own two feet.

Here's the view looking out-

Have you seen the movie, The Longest Day?

It's the story of D-Day told from varying perspectives and one of the scenes takes place in a little town called Sainte -Mere- Eglise. As it happened some of the buildings in the town were on fire the night of D-Day so when paratroopers were dropped in here they were essentially spotlighted in the flames making them easy to see and kill.

One famous incident involved a paratrooper by the name of John Steele who was caught on the church steeple in Sainte-Mere-Eglise. He hung for two hours pretending to be dead before the Germans took him prisoner. He later escaped and rejoined his division.

Today there is a parachute left hanging from that same steeple commemorating his story.

I think this is a good stopping point.

You can read the rest a little bit later in the alphabet.

I will close with these words, which you see written in French, as you enter the museum in Caen~

"Pain broke me; brotherhood lifted me.

From my wound sprang a river of freedom."

And the heart aches...and the heart swells.

M is also for Making New Friends

Yesterday I met two bloggers in real life, Kim from Kimberly's Korner and Darlene from Adventures of a Middle Age Mom.

How funny does that sound?

In real life?

Kim only lives a few minutes from me but we'd never met face to face.

We waited (and waited!) for winter to finally end and then put an invite out to any NJ bloggers we'd come across while reading. We have a list of about ten names but just three of us were able to meet on Friday.

We had a nice lunch at an Italian restaurant not far from here.

The sun was shining too, which felt like a little icing on the cake.

The three of us happen to be in the approximate same season of life and discovered we have a lot in common besides blogging. Of course we did talk about our blogs, why we blog, issues of privacy and even some of the 'technical' stuff which was helpful.

Thanks for a lovely afternoon Kim and Darlene...

it's always fun to meet new people and make new friends.

We're already making plans to do it again and we hope to add to our numbers.

If you're a NJ blogger email me...we'd love to include you in our next gathering.

Tourisme Francais

Je suis heureux de parler de la France aujourd'hui.

In other words...I'm happy to talk about France today.

Or something like that.

I love France...there is so much beauty there, a certain je ne sais quoi which I can't really explain because if I could then that phrase would not fit in this sentence. The countryside is gorgeous...the language is beautiful... and then of course there is all that fabulous food and champagne.

We spent five days in the Normandy region of France in the spring of 2004.

Any guesses as to what the subject might be for tomorrow's letter N post?

I'm getting ahead of myself...first comes letter M.

Incidentally, we are halfway thru the A-Z blog challenge.

M is lucky number 13-whoohoo!

M is for Mont St Michel

Image credit: Tom Curtis

Mont St. Michel is a rocky island situated about a half a mile off the coast of France. I didn't take this first photo but you need to see the island and the abbey from a distance to appreciate its size. It's a bit on the touristy side these days but amazing nonetheless. The 'town' used to be connected to the mainland through a land bridge that would appear and disappear over night courtesy of the tides but that problem has been solved. Tides are still an issue in the parking lot though and you are warned not to leave your car past a certain hour or it will be under water when you're ready to leave. Literally. Under water. As in covered in water.

I did take this picture-notice the sky?

It was tres froid the day we visited and consequently my girls are not going to enjoy seeing pictures of themselves in this post. We didn't have enough warm jackets with us so daughter1 was wearing a coat with a broken zipper that didn't belong to her and daughter2 was forced to layer up in a couple of fleeces belonging to the hubs. Throw in headsets so you can listen in English and learn all about what you are seeing and voila-

They are still adorable.

They will not think so.

Je suis sole mes filles.

I'm astounding you with my French today, aren't I?

There should be some accent marks in there somewhere.

My computer skills are almost as good as my French.

Mont St. Michel is best known as the site of the Norman Benedictine Abbey of St. Michel which sits at the peak of the island and is surrounded by winding streets and medieval architecture. The Abbey dates back to Roman times and was dedicated to the Archangel Michael in 708.

Yes 708 is an actual year.

The actual Abbey that is there today was started in 1023 and was built to help the church enforce its authority during the crusades. It can be seen in the Bayeux Tapestry which I'll talk about tomorrow but essentially that tapestry tells the story of the 1066 Norman conquest of England.

Here we have another not so great picture but I was attempting to hold my camera up high and capture the narrow feeling of the street-

That holding my camera up high trick never works for me.

Narrow little streets like this one wind around and around all the way up to the top of the 'mont' until you finally reach the entrance to the Abbey itself.

From the top of the mont you have beautiful views of the waterways surrounding Mont St Michel. The tides here are some of the most dangerous in the world. They come in at a quick pace and the change from low to high can be up to 60 feet.

We spent the day walking and climbing and listening and looking and shivering and laughing. And we made it back to our car before the tides carried her away.

One of the little things I remember from that day that still makes me smile was a postcard Daughter2 sent to a friend back in the states.

Here is what she said-

"Dear K,

We're in France. It is freezing. We saw monks.

Love, Daughter2

It is a wonderful thing to travel the world and see it through the eyes of the innocent.

If you'd like to read more from the blog challenge click the A-Z button on my sidebar.