I packed up and left Paris on a noon train to Caen. On the train I sat next to a very nice French woman with perfect English. When she was in her early 20's she lived in London for a year to better her English, so she was French with a British accent. She was a retired flight attendant, and great company. Sitting across the aisle were a couple from New Mexico, who were on a 6 week trip that includes Belgium, London and France. The man said he met 5 women fro...

Happy Ascension Thursday….a national holiday in France. Churches and many businesses are closed…and one Resistance museum. Oh well; I'll catch it next trip. I started the day visiting one last church, St. Severin. Another oldie, this one in the Latin Quarter. Not much else to say… you can see the pictures. After that, I did something really geeky. Paris is known for its outdoor markets, and while this is often a produce market or maybe a flower marke...

I've spend the entire evening trying to figure out why I can't load pictures to this site anymore. I think it has to do with Java, but I've maxed out my minimal technical skills. It is 11:40pm, and I am too annoyed to write now. More tomorrow.

I went back into tourist mode today, focusing on some churches I had wanted to see last time but ran out of town. First, I went to the Deportation Memorial, which honors French citizens who were deported to concentration camps during WWII. It is a small memorial, but touching. Most interesting to me was a list of badges that concentration camp victims wore to identify why they were encamped. I think most of us know the primary group were the Jews, but other gr...

Kristen left at the crack of dawn to return to Germany, so I used the first half of the day for some housekeeping items. I went our first thing to purchase skin care products. I have some old favorites from my last trip, as well as some new ones I wanted to try. While these products are sold at just about any Pharmacy, and there are as many pharmacys as patisseries in this city, there is one that sells them at a discounted price. I tried going to the discount...