Our Long Sejour en France

We are finishing up our second week in Paris. Last Thursday, my friend Joan and her husband Remy came to stay with us. They are starting a 3-week stay in France, heading off to Provence on Thursday. Then Chris's sister Lisa and her husband Jan will stay with us few days. I've been slowly recuperating from what turned out to be campylobacter bacteria infection. I received an alarmed email from the doctor who treated me to switch from the antibiotic I was taking to azithromycin. She prescribed a 1000-mg blast to deal with it. I had totally lost my appetite, so as I slowly increased my repertoire of food, I started to feel better.  On Saturday, the four of us decided to hop a Big Red Bus and get the overview tour of Paris. It was helpful for me to do something relatively low impact. It turned out to take longer than we thought, as we ended up in some serious traffic tieups around rush hour.  Here's a picture of the Eiffel Tower from the bus: That evening we attended an immersi

 I'm back! Did you miss me? My "cold" turned out to be an infection. Actually, two infections: one in the lungs (no surprise there) and the other in the bowels. After a couple of days of being very sick and dehydrated (I won't go into the TMI details), Chris took me to the American Hospital in Paris. Once I got authorization from our international health insurance (had to have this to stay as long as we are), they thoroughly treated and investigated: an IV saline drip, an EKG, a CT scan, and then an IV drip of amoxicillin. They gave me a prescription for Augmentin, but I'm having trouble finding a pharmacy that can fill it. Apparently there are some shortages of antibiotics, which I think I read something about in The New York Times. Today is Ascension and the pharmacies are closed, but I'm hoping I can find something tomorrow. So not a whole lot to report. My friend Joan and her husband Remy have arrived today to spend a week with us, so I'm hoping to fee

 Translation: I caught a cold! Isn't that great? Sounds like I trapped it somehow. So much more empowering than falling victim, as I usually feel. Rather, it's an accomplishment. It hasn't stopped me entirely, though. More on that below. First, we've been settling in to Paris and our apartment. We still really like it, but the kitchen really shows its age. The condition of the kitchenware is pretty bad: dull knives; dirty pots and pans (someone didn't clean properly before they left); glassware made for children rather than adults. But we're making do. Given that we're staying for a month, we decided it was worth buying adult glassware.  We're gradually finding grocery stores where we can find some more familiar items and food is actually reasonably fresh. Our first adventure in food shopping yielded shriveled green beans. I'm still yearning for unsweetened coconut milk. Chris says "lots of luck." But I'm not finished looking. On Thursd

 Some of you may know that Chris and I have been trying to get to Paris - first, in 2015 and then again in 2020. I got sick enough in 2015 that I couldn't travel. You all know what happened in 2020. But we are now in Paris, so 2024 has been good to us. Many of you asked us if we were excited about our prolonged trip. Before we left Indianapolis, we were not excited, just because we were too encumbered with selling our house, packing up and emptying the house, working with our architect on the renovations for our Chicago apartment, and planning our trip. But I finally got excited when I knew we were on our way to Paris. Here we are in the TGV train (très grande vitesse - very high speed) on our way to Paris from Barcelona: The train maxed out at 290 km/hr. at one point! So much better than flying! Before saying more about our first few hours in Paris, I should finish up in Barcelona. Naomi left this past Tuesday to go home to Chicago. Chris and I spent our final day in Barcelona at

 Today is Naomi's last full day and our second to last. It's been raining all day. So we're mainly staying close to home. Naomi says we've hit all the places one of her customers recommended (La Sagrada Familia; the Picasso Museum; the Joan Miro Museum; Montjuïc. The only place we haven't gone, but are going tonight is the restaurant Agua for dinner. Actually, there's one other place we didn't get into: The Park Güell. We got this close to it: Foolishly, we thought we were going to walk right into the park. It's a park, right? No, it's a fabulous highly desirable tourist locale, and we needed tickets to get it. They were sold out by the time we got there. But it was an interesting neighborhood, and I enjoyed walking around. We regrouped at a coffee shop and decided to go to the Joan Miro Museum instead - of course, getting tickets ahead of time. The exhibits touched on his training in and eventual rebellion away from "representational art."

 We've been in Barcelona for 4 days and have 2 more to go before we move on to Paris. We've done a ton of things in Barcelona, which I'll touch on later. But I have to tell you about what we saw this morning. Chris and I went to mass today, had breakfast, and then made our way toward The Picasso Museum, where we had tickets for 1:00 p.m. We had some time to kill, and the Metro landed us near a pretty impressive park, so we wandered through. Chris thought he heard bagpipes, and there were definitely drums, so we made our way toward them. As we approached, we saw these wonderful, huuuuge giant puppets of various figures in history and legend and literature (even Pippi Longstocking!). They weren't all heroic. There was one I was convinced was Muammar Gaddafi. We saw signs for Al Capone and Mata Hari, too.  Here's a link  to an explanation of what the event was all about. The link refers to this event being similar to the La Mercè processions, festivals held in honor of