Quick Hitters #3

Back by popular demand is Quick Hitters.  Yes, the request of 1 person does make it popular demand. 

Sandy and I went to see a 1 man show titled "How To Become Parisian in 1 Hour" a few weeks ago. It was hilarious.  The man is French, lived in America for many years in the restaurant industry, and returned to Paris to start his 1 man show.  It poked fun and Americans and French mostly.  I highly recommend it!

The only souvenir I got while we were in Geneva were the socks above.  They are comfy and go well with my toe shoes.  I made several attempts at taking pics, but they all turned out blurry.  I think the sheer awesomeness of them prevented the camera from properly focusing.


We had something rather amazing happen a few weeks ago.  I've mentioned how Parisian people keep to themselves and they don't tend to make friends with others.  Well, there was the lady that lives in our building that introduced herself to us in the lobby of our building after we'd been here about a month.  A few weeks ago, she knocked on our door during dinner and said that she was going to the open market the next day and wanted to know if Sandy wanted to go to get some inside tips.  Of course she would!  So she went and learned a lot of great stuff.  That night, she made us this for dinner.  It was awesome!

This weekend, someone on our street decided it was finally time to get rid of their Christmas tree.  Typically, the end of May is the limit.

A few weeks ago at dinner, my 7 year old randomly says, "Dad, can you make a drink out of meat?"  I love that kid so much...

Just behind us a few blocks is the open market I talked about earlier.  It is on Thursday and Saturday.  They setup poles for the different booths on Wednesday and take them down later on Saturday.  Nick got to use his scooter and Morgan got to use her Heelies through there the other day.

Here is a night time view down the middle of that setup.

There is a big rollerblading community in Paris.  They go on tours through the streets on Friday evenings, and also do it occassionally on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.  Yesterday, they came down our street.  Best guess is that there were about 2000 people, complete with police escort.

This is what the kids look like when you take random pics of them on the Metro.

I'm thinking... I'm thinking...

We live right down the street from the Rodin Museum.  It was a 5 minute walk from our apartment to get there.

The museum is in the house where he lived for the last 9 years of his life.  The property is about 5 acres with a large wall all the way around. Here is the entrance:

The entrance must've originally been a servant's quarters.  There was a gift shop and there was also an area with special collections.  Included were works by Rodin, as well as other sculptors.  In the special collections area, I decided to take a picture of a casting of The Kiss, one of Rodin's most famous pieces.

And shortly after taking this, I was told you weren't allowed to take pics in the Exhibition area.  So, I got a picture that apparently very few people get.  From there, we went to explore the grounds.  There were roses all over, lots of trees and bushes, and beauty everywhere.  Amid all of the flora and fauna are various sculptures of Rodin's, including his most famous piece.

The Thinker was surrounded by bushes and flowers.  Just around the corner was the sculpture Balzac.

There are paths all over the edges of the property, and you can stumble upon random sculptures.

From the garden there are amazing views of both Invalides and the Eiffel Tower.

The view from the back of the garden to the front is amazing.

In the background is Rodin's house where most of his work is located.  There were so many rooms with various works by Rodin, as well as some of his friends.

The detail in his work...  I'm not sure what I can say.  Click on the pictures to see the detail.  I had pictures that just didn't turn out as well as I'd liked, so I didn't post them here.  Also in the house was a room dedicated to the relationship that Rodin had with Monet, including a Money painting and personal letters between the 2 of them.  There were also paintings from Rodin's personal collection including Renoir and Van Gogh.

Before leaving, we saw one of Rodin's largest sculptures titled The Gates of Hell.

It was a lot of fun and absolutely gorgeous.  I think Sandy and the kids might go to visit the gardens since it was so peaceful there.

To wrap it all up, I have to post this pic.  I kept waiting to see how low this guy would crouch while taking this picture.

Field Trip!

As you are probably aware, Paris has a number of museums.  However, they have more than just art and history museums.  They also have a few amazing science museums.  Two of these are geared toward kids and allow them to do hands on experiments.

A few weeks ago, I took the kids to the Cite de Sciences & de l'industrie.  It's the biggest science museum in Europe with 5 floors of fun and excitement.  There are sections on light, sound, the universe, images, energy, transportation, man and genes, technology, math, health, a separate section for 5 to 12 year olds.... and much more.  They also have a giant sphere (think Epcot Center) that contains a 1000 foot IMAX screen, a decommissioned submarine that you can tour, planetarium, a separate cinema showing special 3D films, an aquarium...  Seriously, this place is huge.  Here is a picture of the outside.  The building itself isn't that impressive from the outside. 

But here's how it looks from the inside:

This is the main floor.  There are 2 floors up and 2 floors down from here.  I let the kids choose what they wanted to see.  First up was light.  There were probably 40 or so experiments with light, vision, and optical illusions that the kids could play with.

 Here was a mirror booth.  I have no idea what Nick is doing.

 This was a great experiment with a bow, a metal plate, and sand.  By rubbing the bow on the edge of the plate, the vibrations caused the sand to jump and to form into patterns.

The area was fairly dark (since the experiments were light related) so it was tough getting good shots.  We had fun in that section, though.  We spent well over an hour there.  We decided to grab a quick drink before heading to another area.  Beside the concession stand was an alien cutout where you could put your head in to take pics.  Naturally, we did.

Don't they look great?  For probably the 100th time, I said to my kids, "You're weird... just like me" and then we smile.

I do have to say one thing about the concession stand, though.  The kids each got a drink and I grabbed a bottle of water.  I went to pay with my credit card, but their machine was broken.  I only had enough for 2 drinks, so I put my water back and got drinks for the kids.  After taking this picture, we walked past the concession stand and the guy working there said, "Mister.  Come here.  You can have this" and he gave me the bottle of water for free.  Where does that happen????  Paris.

We went to the sound area next.  Again, tons of fun experiments.  Since they were sound related, the pictures would've been pretty boring.  There was a place where you could whisper to someone about 50 feet away with the help of 2 large dish shaped objects pointed at each other.  We also got to talk to the Mona Lisa:

We also spent a little time in the math area where we had to guess fill rates and volumes of cylinders.  There were some fun uses of shapes and bubbles, too.  We also hit the health area briefly before we were told that the museum was closing.  Below, the kids are trying to pedal around this cylinder while keeping upright.  It was much tougher than it looked

Overall, we spent 3 1/2 hours in the museum and barely scratched the surface.  We will definitely be back.  It was a fun and educational experience for all of us.

Here is a fun view of the IMAX theater from inside the museum.

Geneva Part 2

On our 2nd day, we knew we wanted to go up the gondola to Mt. Saleve.  If you look at the first picture of the boats in the lake in the previous post, Mt. Saleve is the mountain behind the buildings.  It is visible from all over Geneva.  It also happens to be located in France, not Switzerland.  We hopped the one local bus and took it to Veyrier, the Swiss town located at the French border that is right beside the gondola.  Once again, I messed up and we got out of the bus too early.  It resulted in about 20 minutes of extra walking for us. Thankfully, it was through a nice neighborhood.  We eventually found the road that crosses the border.  We took our passports with us, hoping that we would be stamped going between the countries. Unfortunately, we did not.  This is the "border patrol" station between France and Switzerland.

It was completely empty.  Nobody so much as looked at the crazy American family scurrying through a border checkpoint.  BUILD A FENCE!  anyway...

The side of Mt. Saleve that faces Geneva is a sheer straight cliff face.  How tall is it?  Here is the view looking up:

Here is the view looking down:

We went up the gondola and were treated to an amazing view of Geneva and the surrounding area.  It was breathtaking.

If you click on the picture and look at it original size, you can make out the Jet D'Eau in the water.  The air was so fresh up there.  We grabbed a snack and then headed up one of the paths to get even higher.  Some of the trails were a little steep, but we were able to stop on occasion for some pictures.

Nick led the way the entire trek:

We got to a large open field that was surrounded by trees and relaxed there for a bit.  Nick and I could see a clearing a little higher on a trail, so we decided to check it out.  We quickly decided to go back down for the girls.  We found the area where they launch hang gliders from.  There were several of them floating around at the time, but we didn't get to see them launch.  This was the view from up there:

We spent time looking around up there while Nick got as close to the edge as possible. 

We eventually made our way back down to the gondola and to the base of Mt. Saleve for our sneaky return over the border to Switzerland.  Again, nobody even noticed.


When we got back to Geneva, we were very warm from our journey.  We got an ice cream and then headed to the pier that has the Jet D'Eau.  It is very impressive to see up close.

You can walk near, and actually past the Jet.  When the wind is blowing away from the pier, you still get a nice cool mist that will cool you down, as happened on our way out.

However, if the wind shifts, you can get very wet.  This was when we were past the Jet.  The only way back to land is down this path.

They got soaked to the bone and loved it.  The biggest problem is that it's only about a 4' wide pier and there are no railings at all.  If you lose your balance or slip, you either fall into the rocks on one side, or the lake on the other. 

The Jet is even amazing at night.

Our 3rd day involved some shopping and walking around.  We found some awesome pretzel sandwiches for lunch, bought some great chocolate, and then headed to what every guide book says is "the best place to find a hidden treasure" in Geneva.  The Flea Market.

All we found were fleas.  Seriously, it was terrible.  The only thing I considered buying was this:

I don't know what it is.  I don't really care.  I just think it needed rescuing.  The one fun part of the flea market is that it is located directly beside a big skate park.  Nick loved it.  There were guys with skate boards, inline skates, and even the small Razor-like scooters.  We watched them for a while. 

Yes, that guy in the 2nd pic is going upside down on a scooter.  I think Nick wants to start trying that.  He's found a small "ramp" near our apartment that he likes to jump with his scooter.  That'll do for now.

Overall, it was an amazing trip.  We were glad to get home, though.  (Yes, home is apparently in Paris)  Sandy and I both commented that it was weird to want to go back to Paris because it was cheap.  How expensive was Geneva?  Here is a Dockers long sleeve button down shirt.

The cost of 110 francs equates to about... $125.  For a Dockers shirt.  I don't think so.

It took a while to decide which pictures I would post here.  Between the 2 cameras, we took about 350 pictures over 3 days.  Some were awesome, some were funny, and some needed to be deleted.  We even ran into the problem where Morgan was taking a picture, but was photobombed by some stupid American tourist.