Last Post from Portugal

Nice ending anyway to our trip to Portugal; the airport and appurtenant services (like the rental car) are all terrific, and there is free internet access, which is why I'm posting this now from our gate, waiting to board our flight back to Paris.

I hate to say bad things about a country after just a week, but all things considered, I don't think I'll be returning to Portugal any time soon.  The best things I can say about it are that most of the people were very friendly and helpful, and the prices are very, very low.  But the more modern parts (excepting this airport, which is fine) tend to be depressing; it is as if they imported architects from the former Soviet Union to design their buildings.  Here's a perfect example of a modern apartment building (or condo, who knows):



You have to try to imagine a whole landscape filled with these things, to get the full effect.  Then, too, it's apparent that the cities in Portugal could use a little bit of urban planning; buildings and roads seem to be thrown up with no attempt to match styles or even uses.  Perhaps in another context this could lead to something charming, but it doesn't seem to have done that in the areas we visited.

Maybe it's just that I'm still feeling sick, and having to travel while sick is a drag.  I'm just hoping the flight is on time and that we get back to our apartment in Paris soon.  Goodbye, Portugal, goodbye Porto!

Our Election Night Plans

Suzie and I decided to splurge and attend the official American Election Night soiree in Paris on Tuesday night. With the time difference, it will require us to stay up all night. Those who know me know that I'm really, really bad at that, so we'll see how it goes. Also, if the election is close (arrrggghhhh), we may not know the winner until after the party is over.

It's Called Leadership

Those to the right of the political spectrum should read this post in the Christian Science Monitor to understand why Obama appeals to voters (including me) who don't necessarily fall within his ideological range. After 8 years of Bush-Rove, we seem to have forgotten that politics can be more than pandering to the fears of one's "base." It can be -- at its best it should be -- about leadership, about inspiration, about calling others to action. McCain could have been such a candidate, too, but he passed on that chance during his campaign. Let's hope voters go to the polls tomorrow and vote their hopes, not their fears.

New World Record For Sleeping

That was me the last few days, after getting hit with the flu, or something akin to it, which just knocked me out.  So I slept from 9 pm Friday to 12 noon on Saturday, then from 2 pm from 5 pm on Saturday, then from 8 pm Saturday night until 8 am this morning, for a total of 30 hours out of 36.  But the good news is, I feel better, and today was the first really nice day we've had here in Portugal, and we just took it easy, walked up and down the beach, and had a nice lunch at a waterfront restaurant.





So, catching up on our travels, on Friday we went to the Douro River valley, which meant a trip through the mountains.  Unfortunately the day was cloudy and dark and rainy off and on, and although the scenery was beautiful, it was too California-like to be really interesting to me, and most of the places we visited were frankly underwhelming, except for the last city, Vila Real, parts of which were charming.  In truth, I was probably already coming down with the flu, which probably shaded my opinion of the area.  Here are some pictures; as I said, the scenery was beautiful (it's a wine region, famous for port):







As always, more pictures are on my Flickr site.

For better or worse, our apartment here has a big flat-screen LCD TV, with several English-language stations, including one that broadcasts live and recorded sports, so we've been glued to the set more than we should be, watching election news and college football. I suppose everyone's caught the Sarah Palin fake phone call from Montreal radio hosts claiming to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy; if not, you can hear it here. Nice going Sarah, that's what we like to see two days before the election!

I am really looking forward to being back in Paris. Portugal was OK, certainly much less expensive than France, but as a vacation spot (at least this time through), I'd give it a B- at best (although in fairness much of that may have had to do with the weather, or maybe the traffic).

I realize this post was boring, maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

A Little Tired Out....

Every vacation has some down days, and the past two have been like that for me. Perhaps I'm just getting tired of the foreign-ness of everything (especially here, where I can't speak the language), perhaps it's the days getting shorter, perhaps it's not having enough intellectual challenge without the class, or perhaps I just miss Paris, I'm not sure.

Yesterday we went into Porto itself. It is a very unique, unusual city, in a beautiful setting, on hills above a river, but I'm not sure how much I liked it. The older part of the town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and I can see why it has that designation, because it is very unique, with narrow, narrow streets and interesting buildings. But it is a little run-down, and I found myself feeling claustrophobic, and the buildings seemed like warrens for humans, too many people packed too densely in too small of a place. Then, too, there was the traffic; if you think it's bad in Santa Rosa, try Porto at rush hour (at least Santa Rosa has street signs). A few pictures follow, and more are here, which will give you a sense of the place; as I said, it is on a beautiful location, and the waterfront is lovely, but I found it had a strange feel to it, an oddness that I can't put my finger on.







When I woke up today, I was tired in spite of a long sleep, perhaps because it was cloudy and rainy. I almost just bagged the day and stayed in the apartment, but I forced myself out, and I was glad that I did, because we visited a very pretty and very nice small city about 70 kilometers north of Porto called Viano do Castelo, which had been recommended to us as a destination by the very charming and friendly lady in the restaurant in Guimaraes where we had a late afternoon dinner yesterday. The drive up was short and easy (all freeway, through countryside that looked remarkably like Northern California, with forests of euchalyptus in the lowlands and pine in the hills), as was parking (at a premium, it seems, here). After a brief search, we found a restaurant that was recommended by the Michelin guide, in a 16th-century building that housed the communal oven for the village (our table was on the old hearth, beneath the grand arch of the oven, which looked to be exactly the same as it had been 400-plus years ago). The food was excellent, the best we've had in Portugal so far, served to us by a couple that looked to be the owners of hte place. My dish was a type of pork, which was flavorful and tender, served with a slightly vinigary sauce, whole baby potatoes, and vegetables. The boys had steak and mushrooms, which was great, and Suzie had a lamb dish that was very usual, in that it looked something like the Italian dish Osso Buco, but made with lamb. We finished off the feast with two wonderful deserts, a chocolate mousse topped with cream that was both sweet and slightly sour, and a local dessert made of cream that was somewhat like creme brulee, but different; it too was outstanding. Following lunch we walked around the charming older area of the village, which was unspoiled and lively, consisting of plazas and narrow alleys. Again, a few pictures give a good sense of the place.







We also happened upon an old church (dating from the 14th century) that looked like nothing on the outside, but was fantastic on the inside, with detailed, rich, impressive, gold-painted scenes on the side walls (I'm sure there is a technical, religious term for them, but I don't know what it is).






We also visited the municipal museum, which was small but interesting, although our experience there was darkened by the fact that a woman on the staff there kept following us around the museum as if we were going to steal something. She also seemingly gleefully scolded me when I tried to take a picture; I hadn't known that photography was prohibited, nor could I figure out any reason it should be, given that the museum consisted of old porcelin works and old furniture (very beautiful, I should add, but hardly a state secret). We left the museum and walked down to the river:



By the time we got back to the car, it was almost dark, and our drive back was uneventful except for the now-routine Porto traffic jam that greeted us when we got back to the city.

Tomorrow we are thinking that we may give ourselves a break, a day to do nothing but walk up and down the beach. This is totally off topic, but I'm also getting nervous about the election on Tuesday. I watched McCain today being interviewed on CNN by Larry King, and he was pretty good, and it seems to me the polls are still close enough to make an Obama victory uncertain. It's nail-biting time....

Portugal is Beautiful and Friendly ... and Cold

On Monday we left Paris and traveled to Porto, Portugal.  Our travel day wasn't the best; everything was long -- the RER train to CDG took for ever, EasyJet's computers were on the fritz, which meant that we spent almost an hour in line to check in, the plane did one of those "load and then sit on the tarmac" things, which added an hour to the total travel time, the shuttle to the rental car was late and crowded (although we ended up with a cool car, a Volvo diesel), and, to top it off, we had a little bit of trouble finding our apartment.  But we finally made it, got settled into our apartment, then went to a restaurant along the water that was recommended by the nice woman from whom we rented our apartment, where we had a satisfying meal consisting of enormous, delicious portions.

Now I'm sitting in the living room of our apartment in Canidelo, a southwestern suburb of Porto.  We have a beautiful, large, extremely quiet apartment right on the beach, with a large window that looks out on this:



So far our first day and a half in Portugal has been wonderful.  It is far and away the most friendly country we've ever been to.  Without exception, the people have been kind, accessible, and warm, despite our complete lack of ability to speak in Portuguese.  (I note that one of the interesting things for us has been the sound of Portuguese.  We had assumed that it would sound like Spanish, but it sounds nothing like that.  It has a suite of consonant sounds in it that make it sound oddly like an Eastern European language.  And more so than any other country we've visited, the Portuguese seem able to speak English without much of an accent, even people who obviously have limited English ability.)  We've felt so very welcomed here, and between that and the fact that our place is very, very quiet (we haven't heard a siren yet) and that we are not in a big city, we are feeling very, very relaxed.

Yesterday we had a nice, easy day.  In the morning, we went for a walk on the beach, despite the fact that a cold front had come through the day before, making the day very cold and very, very, very windy.  The flip side was that the day was totally clear and bright, with large, powerful waves, and we enjoyed the beach very much.



We wanted to do something outside of a big city, so we decided to visit a relatively nearby city called Guimarães, which is called the "Birthplace of Portugal" because it was the country's first capital. We didn't know what to expect, really, but what we found was one of nicest, prettiest, most wonderful places we've ever visited -- a middle-sized city with an incredibly well-preserved, yet unspoiled and untouristy, older quarter, a magnificent castle dating from the ninth century (the most genuine-seeming castle we've seen, and totally open, so that you could walk along the walls and climb to the very top of the towers), charming narrow streets, and incredibly friendly, open people. Here are a few pictures; more are available at this link.













As an added treat, prices here are much, much lower than in France. Coffees for .60 euros, a meal for the four of us for 24 euros, tip included, groceries less, gas less, everything less. Our money goes much, much farther here. The only negatives so far have been that our internet access is sporadic, and the pastries in the bakery next door are not the same league as those in Paris. (Also, if we were to stay in Portugal longer than a week, I'm sure we'd gain 5-10 pounds; the food is delicious but not exactly what I'd call light.

A final observation concerns my son Andrew, he of resist-French-at-all-costs fame. Of all of us, he has been the most interested in learning phrases in Portuguese -- how to say hello and thank you, etc. It seems that we've introduced a love of language in him despite himself.

Finally, for you Google Map fans, to orient yourselves, here's a map showing our travels in Portugal so far:

[googlemaps http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&s=AARTsJo3wS7L_kUYa3Dc41o4yJqhcRojLw&msa=0&msid=104194220758797817610.00045a6255383142bea4f&ll=41.301539,-8.475952&spn=0.495206,0.878906&z=10&output=embed&w=640&h=480]

A Weekend to Recognize How Good I've Got It, Part 2

On Saturday morning, we followed what has become our Saturday morning routine: Sleep in a bit, drink lots of coffee while lying in bed reading Le Monde, then put on our sneakers and gym shorts and take a run. Suzie found an excellent route, which takes us past two sets of long stairs, which we go up and down four times each, then into Parc Montsouris, then into the Cite Universitaire Paris, a gorgeous, open space with lots of running paths, then back to our apartment for our weekly cleaning. That afternoon we just hung out at the apartment, waiting for the evening, when we met Suzie's friend Stacie and her sister and husband for dinner at a restaurant near the Invalides called Pasco, which specializes in cuisine from the south of France. The food was excellent, but the service was sub-par (there didn't seem to be enough staff), and the meal took over three hours.

Stacie (who is a childhood friend of Suzie's from high school, but who now lives in Luxembourg; it was she whom we were visiting the day of the infamous mad cow incident during our first trip to Paris) spent the night at our apartment, and the next morning, after a breakfast of croissants and pain au raisin and fresh baguettes and jam and coffee, the three of us walked from our apartment all the way to the Marais. The morning was cloudy and chilly, still and very autumnal. Here's a candid shot of Suzie and Stacie, and a close up of the magnificent fountain near Port Royal at the southern tip of the Jardin du Luxembourg:





Leaving the Jardin du Luxembourg, we walked north through the touristy part of Paris; here is the very scenic Saint Chappelle and the Palais du Justice on the Ile de la Cité:



Suzie and Stacey wanted to visit the Musee Carnavalet, the huge museum housing artifacts from the history of Paris, but I had seen it twice, so instead I went to the Modern Art Museum at the Pompideu Center. Of all the museums in Paris, I think this one may be my favorite, perhaps in part because it is so different from most of the others. Housed in a modern building, it manages to be nevertheless somehow very comfortable:



Then, too, I think that perhaps I just enjoy modern art a little more than traditional art. Certainly that's true with respect to the traditional art that is so heavily focused on religious themes; I can only take so many paintings of the Virgin Mary or Jesus on the cross getting stabbed. And this time at the Pompideu Center, I found the section of works from the early 20th century, which were less abstract than more modern works, and yet more interesting and experimental than impressionists. The museum displays its works in very clean, nice spaces, and at least on Sunday, the museum was uncrowded. A few selections that caught my eye:









After a couple of hours at the museum, I met Suzie and Stacie at a tapas restaurant in the Marais, where we had an excellent and relatively inexpensive lunch. On the way there, I passed the Tour St. Jacques, constructed in the early 14th century and the only remaining remnant of the church at the same location.



The boys have 10 days off from school starting today, so we are off on a vacation to Porto, a port city in Portugal, where we've rented an apartment right on the beach. Let's see, the title of this post was....

A Weekend to Recognize How Good I've Got it, Part 1

It's always easy to take whatever it is you have in your life for granted.  This weekend, I had just the opposite experience.  I realized just how good I've got it.

It started on Thursday afternoon. Suzie had to do some "real" work (i.e., work for which she would be paid in real money, rather than in personal-satisfaction credits), so after having a quick lunch with some of my classmates in the cafeteria, I decided to treat myself to a solo expedition to the Louvre. I justified going without Suzie because there are things that I really like to see that don't interest her as much, and vice versa. In particular, I love all things old and ancient. Viewing something that was made by men (or women) 5,000 years ago is, for me, an amazing and humbling experience. So my visit was mostly spent in the wings holding the ancient Egyptian artifacts, with a brief side trip to the ancient Greek wings. I also stumbled by accident on an area that I'd never seen before, which consisted of gorgeous rooms, some of them apparently only recently renovated. I unfortunately didn't have my camera, only my small, not very good video camera, so you'll have to make due with these short videos, which do give a sense of the place.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUj9azCSxUc]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hukThydcp0]

A couple more can be found here and here (a mummy no less).

I even snuck into the Italian wing to see the Mona Lisa, but ended up just walking past it, really, as there were some other paintings in and around that room that caught my eye (although I have to say that the highly stylized religious paintings don't do a lot for me, and there were a lot of those to see).

I left feeling happy and calm. There is something about seeing such amazing works of art, in such a beautiful facility, and in such numbers, that simply makes me feel good.  An example: Many of the large Egyptian sculptures are of couples -- famous-at-the-time men and their wives.  And many in of these statutes, the woman has her arm around the man, or is holding the hand of the man, in a way that looks so affectionate, and natural, that for me it makes the statutes seem not of some ancient, distant, scarcely human species, but of real, flesh and blood men and women, just like those living today.  Those little gestures make the statutes come alive for me; signs of affection from 3000 years ago being just the same as those today.

The next day, Friday was the last day of this session of my classes at the Alliance Française, a particularly sad day for me because (1) the woman who was teaching my class -- a wonderful, enthusiastic, meticulous, professional, organized, warm, and very, very funny dynamo of a teacher -- won't be continuing with our group next month, and (2) several of the students I like very much are leaving.  So we had a little mini-celebration; one student brought flowers, another chocolates, a third homemade bread, a fourth various pastries (that was me).  Here is a picture of all of us:



It's amazing how close you can get to feel to people in a short period of time. I consider all these people my friends, and I've learned a lot about some of them, and I'm sad to think that it's almost a certainty that some of them I will never see again (although I do have hopes of staying in touch with them all).

I also have to take a little time out here to brag about this:

These are the results of the exam I took a few weeks back.  Since this is what I'm putting energy into now, I'm proud of these results, especially given the fact that I've come to the conclusion that I'm not particularly naturally gifted at learning new languages.  My low mark is for continuity of speech, and is unfortunately dead on accurate, and I think it happens because I try to express things in French in as complicated of a way as I do in English, but I don't have the skills in French to do that, and so inevitably I come at some point to a dead end, where I can't summon up the words or the construction in French to say what I want to say, and so am completely blocked, and have no other option than to just fall silent.  A terrible experience for someone who loves to talk as much as I do, and embarrassing, too.  Hopefully that will get better with practice.

I know, I know, I'm a nerd, what can I say?

Later that afternoon, Suzie and I went to one of our favorite places in Paris to have coffee:

This is Le Danton, which is on Boulevard St. Germain at the Carrefour de Odéon, just outside the Odéon Metro stop. We've gone there several times, and I've gone once alone. The staff is friendly and efficient, the prices are reasonable (both for coffee and for omelettes, if you want a snack), and the surrounding area is bustling and interesting. We sat and spoke French for an hour or so while Suzie was waiting for another friend (her French conversation partner). Afterwards, I took the Metro to the Place de la Concorde, and then took a long, long random walk, up and around the Champs Elysees. It was cloudy and cool, and dusk was approaching when I started and completely finished when I was done. I watched the natural light slowly disappear and the lights of the city become prominent, I watched the crowds of tourists ambling down the streets and disappearing into stores, I bought a French magazine at a kiosk (the Nouvel Observateur, which dedicated most of the issue to the U.S. election), walked some more, and finally took a terribly hot, crowded, uncomfortable, long Metro ride back home.

From the Bedroom Balcony This Morning

This glorious sunrise....

You Couldn't Make This Up If You Tried

More evidence that McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate was perhaps the single worst Presidential campaign decision ever made, this story from the New York Times:

Who was the highest paid individual in Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign during the first half of October as it headed down the homestretch?

Not Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser; not Nicolle Wallace, his senior communications staffer. It was Amy Strozzi, who was identified by the Washington Post this week as Gov. Sarah Palin’s traveling makeup artist, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday night.

Ms. Strozzi, who was nominated for an Emmy award for her makeup work on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?”, was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone, according to the records. The campaign categorized Ms. Strozzi’s payment as “Personnel Svc/Equipment.”

Even assuming Ms. Strozzi worked (or was available to work, since you can't constantly apply make up during the day) 60 hours per week, that's still a rate of $190 per hour; pas mal as they say here in Paris.  And if she's paid by the job, assuming Ms. Palin gets made-up four times a day, each and every day (that has to be bad for the skin, no?), that calculates as a little over $400 per job.  Not too shabby, especially since Ms. Palin presumably does some of the work herself.

Ms. Palin-of-the-People, how are we supposed to take your rhetoric about all the evil elitists in Washington D.C. seriously when, with your $150,000 in clothes and your $400 make-up jobs, you apparently either already are a member of the elite, or have serious aspirations of joining?

Memo to John McCain:  Next time, take more than fifteen minutes.

A Very Sour Mood

This today from the Pew Research Center:  Only 11% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. today, which is the lowest figure ever recorded.  Here's a graph of the trend.  By the way, who are these 11% of people who are satisfied with the way things are going nowadays?



Also today from the Pew Center, especially for my friend Jill, additional confirmation that Republicans are happier than Democrats.

Why I Voted for Obama-Biden

I went to the office of La Poste on Rue d'Alésia and mailed my ballot on Monday.  Even though I am solidly in the center of the political spectrum, this decision was not even a close one.  Thinking about my decision, I realize that it was based on three separate but related fundamental notions.

Trite and tired and cliched, maybe, but a big part of my decision was grounded in the belief that the country needs a change after many years of conservative ascendance.  Aside from the centrist Clinton Presidency, for more than 25 years, dating from Reagan's election in 1980, conservatism has more or less dominated American politics and government.  All things get stale after a while, and once you add in the devastatingly horrible Bush Presidency (which did more to kill real conservatism in the U.S. than all rowdies on the left could have ever done), it's necessary to do a switch (even though, as noted below, I'm not convinced that a unified Democratic government won't blow it).

The second element is Obama himself.  As has been noted many times by others, not only is Obama a gifted orator and politician, but he seems to be genuine leader.  His demeanor throughout the campaign has been one of calmness and decorum.  He never seems to get overly perturbed, but rather seems to have the ability to take himself out of a crisis situation and view it with a little bit of distance ... an excellent trait, it seems to me, in a President.  Note the repeated use of the word "seem," because it's not a sure thing; I'm taking a bit of a flyer on Obama, to be sure.

The third element is the performance of McCain during the campaign, which made taking a flyer on Obama an easy thing to do.  I had genuine respect for McCain before the campaign.  But his bizarre and questionable decisions during the campaign lead me to doubt that he would be the best head of state.  Combining the unbelievably stupid choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, his strange "I'm suspending my campaign" response to the financial crisis (and then not), and his angry, all-too-easy resort to classic right-wing slimes, despite having been the victim of them himself in 2000, and I ended up at a definite "no thanks."  My views on McCain were perfectly expressed in this post from George Packer of The New Yorker, quoting from an e-mail from Ken Adelman, an active neoconservative:

Why [am I voting for Obama], since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?

Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

This absolutely nails the problem with McCain.  Instead of cowtowing to his right-wing political advisors, he could have held his ground in the center, and had a chance of defeating Obama.  But once he selected Sarah Palin, it was hard for me to take him seriously anymore.

As noted above, I have some trepidation about a federal government with both the executive and the legislature in the hands of the left.  I'm convinced that the the "center" of the Democratic Party (which has tacked further and further left in the past 20 years) is fundamentally out of touch with the majority of Americans, even those of us in the center.  Using a November victory to take retribution for having to spend the last 25 years in the wilderness will be an enormous mistake.  (In another post, I'll give some examples.)  I very much hope that Obama, if elected, will see himself, not as the President of the left, but as the President of the entire country.  The political fabric in the U.S. needs some repair; it does not need more tug-of-wars over the same old, same old issues.

Oh My God, Is That What They Think?

Silly, funny, and slightly scary and sad poll this weekend in the Femina supplement to the French paper Le Journal du Dimanche.  The poll, carried out by the French polling firm Institut français d'opinion publique (IFOP), asked 1006 people in France various questions about the United States.

Not all the news was terribly bad; for example, 62% of the French (and 68% of those under 35) said they appreciated the U.S. a lot or some.  But some of the other answers were less satisfying.  For example, when asked for the first word that came to them when they think of the U.S., these were the most frequent responses:



Not very satisfying to think that "liberty" is below "Bush", but there it is.  (Interestingly, the biggest difference in response between French men and women was the response "New York" -- 11% of the women said that was the first word they thought of, but only 4% of French men.  I can't be sure, but I believe shopping has something to do with this.)  Even sadder are the items that got only a 1% response:



Sad, here, to see that the frequency with which Barack Obama is associated with the U.S. is the same as for "arrogance," "violence," "pollution," "consumerism," and "obesity."  Perhaps that will change after November.

Worse are the "everyday" associations.  For example, when asked to give three words that best characterize the U.S. in connection with everyday life, these were the (often horrific) responses:



Fast food, number one.  Ouch.  Some are cool, though ... basketball, jeans, popcorn.  Some are bizarre and, to me, almost inexplicable.  Mobile homes?  Motels?  Cheesecake?  Maybe I've missed something.

Sad and a bit bizarre, too, are the popular singers associated with the U.S.  Note that for this question, it appears that the respondents had to choose three names from a list.  How the list was constructed, I haven't a clue.  Here are the results:



I guess I can live with this, although seeing Louis Armstrong and Madonna back to back makes me shake my head, as does any list containing the two words "Britney Spears."

For those of you interested in more details and a few extra questions that I didn't mention, the entire survey can be obtained here.

Opposite Ends of the Spectrum

On Saturday, Suzie and I, craving the outdoors, took the Metro to the Bois de Vincennes, the huge mostly natural park on the east side of Paris.  It was an absolutely glorious fall day: Cool but not too, a blue sky with a few puffy white clouds, a warm but weakening sun.  The trees here are in the middle of turning color and losing their leaves, which made the walk a very pretty one.  We first walked past the huge Chateau de Vincennes, constructed in the 14th century.



Then we headed for a small lake, via a route which took us through a forest left completely wild:



The lake itself, small and manmade, had well-kept walking paths all around it.  A couple of pictures show how pretty the lake and the day were:





After walking around the lake and stopping for a coffee at the always-seeming-present park cafe, we took another route back to the Metro. This route wasn't quite so pretty; the bois is the home of a number of of sports-related facilities, including the French national athletic training center, and is also traversed by a number of roads. In addition, the walk back was long. We figured we walked a little more than 5 miles, which wouldn't have been a big deal to us, but for the fact that we'd both gone out for a run that morning. We were happy to get on the Metro and sit down, something we don't often say. (I followed this with an outing with someone from my class on Sunday, which involved more walking, so by the end of the weekend my feet had had it.)

This pretty excursion in the country was a great contrast to my outing with the boys a few days earlier, to the 2008 Mondial de l'Automobile, the world's largest automobile show, which was being held in Paris at the Porte de Versaille, just a short tram ride away from our apartment.

The exhibition was pretty much what expected, except for the fact that I've never been to anything so large in my life. It was huge. We stayed for almost 4 hours, and saw only 2 of the 7 exhibition halls. The other funny thing about the Mondial Auto was that it was in some ways almost a caricature of itself, as evidenced by these Jetson-esque young ladies; all the different car companies had their own fleet of hostesses dressed up in matching attire, ranging from elegant to ... well, to what you see below. (The best were the hostesses for the Smart cars, very cute in matching colored jeans and sneakers.)



The cars were pretty cool, even though I'm not really a car guy. In addition to all of the new the stock models by all the car companies (some of whom I'd never heard of), each also had one or more "concept cars," highly futuristic prototypes not yet in production. For example this, a car for the very thin:



Or these:





Lots of "green" stuff, too ... hybrids, all-electric, etc. One concept "green" car really was:



Ouch, it makes my eyeballs hurt. Actually, after a while, the whole scene started making my eyeballs hurt; too much light, too many flashes, too much glitz. I felt the same way I feel after I have to go into the Windsor Wal-Mart. Still, I'm glad I went, if only for the experience, and the kids got in for half-price.