A Good Thick Skirt

Aug 18

We both slept late, and it is apparent that we are taking some French mud home with us, since I can’t get E’s pants clean. I guess when you throw much from a French castle…it really sticks. It somehow seems vaguely like something from Monty Python.

We met my friend Carol for lunch. She and I were best friends at the end of high school, and into university. The last time I saw her was in 1978 – I spent a summer camping in England and she was still living there. Since then we’ve somehow both turned into grandmothers. I was curious to see if we would even be able to recognize each other, but we had no problems at all. She’s a little thinner, and I’m a little less so. We caught up on each other’s lives and families…and then talked about our great dreams at the time, and how reality was somehow different that we ever thought it would be. Not worse, just different.

We ate too much, and talked all afternoon. Fortunately, Eunsol, who was playing a game on her phone, suddenly remarked on the time, and we had to practically run back towards the station for her to catch her train back to Nantes, where she is staying with her daughter and new grand-daughter.

It was a truly lovely day. We finished it off by strolling down the street after we saw Carol off, and finding a street vendor selling crepes with Nutella…one of E’s favourites.

Aug 17

… until they cut off your head.

The plan for today was great: a bicycle tour of Versailles, complete with tours of the gardens and a picnic lunch. Up early – it was still dark out – and easily made our way to the train station to meet the guide. The train tracks were being repaired, but no problem, the train company supplied buses to make sure we got there. Weather network said cool and cloudy but <1 mm of rain. It started to sprinkle as we got our bikes…no problem, we rode along on cobbled roads under the trees, and got damp. Then we got to Versailles.

It’s about 2,000 acres…it used to be 200,000 until the rest of the population decided that was too much. Bicycles are definitely the way to go, there are lovely roads and paths throughout…unless it’s pouring with rain, which it was. The bicycle company thoughtfully provided us with ponchos, which were roomy enough for anyone, and their backpack. We then looked like a group of cycling tents. The good part was we were mostly dry. The bad part was we were sweaty, and out legs were out in the rain.

We visited the Petit Trianon and another building, that was built to accommodate a mistress or two. Lunch was rescheduled into a restaurant. The grounds are lovely, and the buildings were nice. Marie Antoinette didn’t actually say “let them eat cake”—that phrase was written about when she was about 9 and had never been to France. She hired an English gardener to design English gardens for her. French gardens are very regulated with straight lines and beds that are mirror images of each other. English gardens are meant to look for natural, although improving on nature to make them more attractive. She had a river dug, and ruins built to achieve that lived in look. Little open buildings here and there allowed her to drink tea or eat in comfort.

When the enlightenment came, the grounds were improved even further by building a hamlet so that people could get back to nature and enjoy the simple life. Unfortunately, today, it really seemed rural as we squelched through the mud and slipped around. We also missed most of the stories of the tour: the choice was to keep your hood up and not hear anything, or to put it down and have cold water running down your neck.

By about 4:30 we had enough, so when it came time to actually tour the palace, we cut out and headed back to Paris. Eunsol’s shoes were so wet that she made strange squelching noises when she walked, and my pants were stuck to my legs. The moment we got on the bus, she was asleep. I woke her up to get on the train, where she promptly went back to sleep. Woke her up, got her on the Metro, and then back to sleep. Back to our hotel to dry out a little, and then out for dinner.

We went to a restaurant and ordered a complete French dinner: three courses for one price. Eunsol had escargots, followed by boeuf bourguignon, rounded off with crème brulee. She also had a coke, which cost about $1.50 more than my glass of wine. Back to the hotel to shower before bed. I don’t know what kind of mud they have at Versailles, but our pants are soaking in the sink to try to get it out.

It’s not hard to see why there was a revolution. The people were starving, and they thought that the Austrian (Marie A) was wasting flour to powder her hair. When the women came and told the King and Queen what was going on, they were invited into the palace to eat. Afterwards, some stayed outside to party, alcohol was involved, and then when things got out of hand, there was a riot. Or so the story goes. A Dr.Guillotine was concerned that the old method of capital punishment – being drawn and quartered – was too painful and someone should invent a more humane way of killing people, so someone did. Heads came off quickly and neatly. Apparently he was distressed for the rest of his life because his name got attached to it. Marie Antoinette’s last relative ended up in the US being arrested and jailed with her husband for running a cock fighting ring, so being rich didn’t really get them very far.

Anyway, perhaps we’ll come back another year, and try again, or go down in history as the only people to visit Versailles and not see the palace.

Aug 16
This felt like the longest day…Although we only walked 14 km today, so it actually wasn’t the longest. First stop, the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa et al. The building is lovely, but there are too many people in it to stop and admire it. I bought skip-the-line tickets which allowed us to miss the waiting line, which was already 3 hours long by 10 am. That was just to get into the building, followed by another 45 minutes in line to see the ML. They are going to install moving sidewalks before the Olympics to move people by more quickly. As it is, there are multiple guards to keep you moving along…so in reality you get to pass by it, to say you have seen it, but you don’t really get to stop and look at it.

It’s hard to understand why it’s so famous, arguably now the most famous and most valuable painting in the world. It was stolen by a cleaner in 1911; he thought it should be returned to Italy so he walked out with it under his coat. It took the police two years to find it hanging in his apartment. It took the staff at the Louvre 2 days to notice it was missing…and then only because an art student was looking for it and asked where it was. Then they tried to hand a different painting in its place (John the Baptist), thinking that no-one would notice the difference. After it was found and returned, people started lining up to see it.

I thought the best part was the Assyrian art – bas reliefs and door carvings, and the remains of the medieval fort that was dug up when they excavated to build the new pyramid. The place where you can walk around is the original moat, which was not only filled with water, but also garbage and sewage…The well was dug in the middle of the moat, with obvious health consequences, which is reputedly why everyone started drinking wine instead. You can see where the masons who built the original walls signed their work with symbols – since they were paid by the piece, it was important to identify which ones were yours. Apparently, you would need to walk 19 km to see everything in the Louvre, so there is lots to come back for.

We also saw the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory, both of which seemed more remarkable to me than the ML. Somewhere in the world there must be quite a collection of stone penises, given the number of statues that were missing theirs. I was quite interested in Eunsol’s reaction…she didn’t really think it very nice to see all of those nudes, so I may have raised a little prude here.

Next stop was lunch – an excellent pizza and a banana split. I am reduced to eating like a teenager. As we walked along the street, we found a store selling macarons – which may turn out to be the highlight of the trip for her. They are the same price here as in Canada. Then we decided to give our feet a break by taking another circuit on the hop on hop off bus.

Last stop of the day was dinner on the Seine. Eunsol wanted a “fancy dinner” in France, so this was it. We caught the boat from the foot of the Eiffel Tower, and sailed away. Dinner was actually very nice…much better than I expected, and we sat near the window. The really nice thing was that there was no commentary – just looking out the window and eating. I had a great tomato salad with tomato sorbet on top, followed by salmon, and then an apricot cake. Eunsol had prawns, cod and a frozen strawberry layered dessert. She had bought herself a beret today and wore it to supper, so felt very sophisticated. I think I finally hit her idea of a visit to Paris.
As we were leaving the Eiffel Tower on our way to the Trocadero Metro Station, we passed by the National Dance Theatre. Out in front you can take tango lessons from some very well-built, tall, African men (for a small fee). No dance lessons for us, we just watched, but there’s something so very cosmopolitan about African men teaching Spanish dance in France.

Exhausted, back to the hotel. We have to get up early tomorrow to go to Versailles, and E is already asleep. I realize that I’ve missed a couple of days, but I’m hoping for some free time on Sunday to catch up. Having a smaller person to get organized at night tends to use up the time I usually spend writing.

Aug 14

Up way too early, considering how late we stayed up. Breakfast at our hotel, next to a mother scolding a child because he started to cry when she left him to go to the buffet. It made me realize how many of the people we saw at Disneyland didn’t actually look all that happy. Some of them looked determined – as in were here to have a good time, and we WILL have a good time. Some of them look completely overwhelmed, and some of them just look tired.

We found our way to the train station and figured out where we needed to be. Then E needed a bathroom break- that cost .90 EUR. Fortunately I had the right coins, but she had to go alone because we couldn’t get the luggage through the gate. Then it turned out that our train was delayed by work on the tracks – it eventually came and it was lovely. Somehow, I had managed to book us on first class! Really comfortable seats, lots of leg room- the only disappointment to E was that there was no restaurant.

We had to change trains in Lille – because the train was late, we had about 7 minutes to change, instead of the hour we had originally scheduled. The real challenge was that we had to go to a different train station – it was only 10 minutes away, but we didn’t have that much time so we missed the train. We found the right office and went in to explain, and the lady was quite suspicious. First, she had to phone someone to make sure that our train was really late. Then she had to examine our train tickets and our passports. She booked us on the next train, but there were no seats in first class. I thought second class was fine, since that’s what I thought I wanted in the first place, but E felt hard done by and suggested that we sue the train company. That at least provided the smile for the day. When I phoned the car company, they found someone who spoke English and he told me that there was a charge for last minute schedule changes. I must have sounded fairly desperate by then because he told me to hold and then came back and said that he had been able to solve my problem and not to worry.

The waiting room was really nice. Quite a lot of people had dogs, and the lady sitting next to us had a cat in a backpack. There was a man talking to himself, and another one with his head back, snoring loudly, but no-one seemed remotely concerned. The most interesting thing was a machine that E discovered – you press a button for either English or French and it spits out a poem or a short story on a long piece of paper, something like an adding machine tape. Before we left, she had collected several stories and poems. I thought it was a great idea, but the content was strange…poetry by John Milton (1608-1674) is not what you expect in a train waiting room.
The train station had a lot of stairs, and as I was going up the stairs with my suitcase, a young man came along and seized it and carried it up for me without a word. As usual, in a difficult world, I am touched by the kindness of people who don’t even know me. A very nice gentleman texted me to tell me that he would pick us up, and then called me just before the train arrived to tell me where he was standing so I could find him easily. It was a luxury well worth pre arranging – a nice car, a nice driver who took my luggage, and off we went. As we drove through Paris towards our hotel, he not only pointed out sights that we shouldn’t miss, but opened the skylight so E could look up and see the tops of things.

Her first view of the Eiffel Tower seemed to be underwhelming – she thought it was one of those electricity things (her words, not mine).

The hotel is lovely, much nicer than I expected. The room is very small and we have to share a bed, but that’s not much of a problem. It has that wonderful European invention that allows you to turn off all of the lights from the bed, which has fascinated her for some time as she tried to figure out which switch works for which light. We sorted ourselves out, had a nap and then ventured out for dinner. One of the things that seems difficult when traveling with a child is that restaurants don’t open for dinner until 7, but child got hungry at 5. The staff here were wonderful and explained that I didn’t need to worry, there were lots of places to eat that weren’t restaurants. Cafes and brasseries for example, although I’m not clear what the difference is. She sent us off to a creperie.
This part of Paris was settled by immigrants from Brittany, which is famous for crepes so there are many opportunities to eat crepes nearby. The food was really good—a crepe with mozzarella, bacon and tomato for E, and one with goat cheese, bacon and apple for me. I finished up with a coffee, while she managed to eat another crepe, this time with Nutella in it. On the way home we found a grocery store, and stocked up on fruit and yogurt for me, and chocolate mousse for her, in case she got hungry later.

The hotel has a couple of lounges on the main floor, one with coffee and tea as well as wine, and one for reading and relaxing. Unlike the lobbies in American hotels, these were being used. In one there was a woman reading the newspaper, and in the other, a woman enjoying an espresso. We had tea, mostly because my companion was delighted with the Nespresso machine and wanted to try it out. Full and tired, we have gone to bed. I have tied her Mickey Mouse blanket into a reasonable facsimile of a dog, which she has named Mr. Potato, and she had gone to sleep so I can write.

Note that I know there are spelling errors, but for some reason my computer has decided to interpret several of the punctuation keys as diacritics, and Im (comes out at Ièm) not sure how to fix it.

Aug 13

Our last day at Disneyland…first stop after breakfast was to get tickets to the ride through Big Thunder Mountain, one more time. Things are very different today – heightened security: big men with guns and scary looking dogs at all the entrances, men in uniforms with some other kind of bigger guns patrolling around the bus stop and beside the road. It took us a long time to get through the gate, one of the few places in Disneyland that doesn’t tell you the length of the line. They x-rayed our bags, and we walked through the detector. They seemed to pull more people out of line, but that was the only difference.

This time we went to the other side and looked at the Disney Studio side…more stores! The only ride that attracted E was the Twilight Tower – that ride makes you go upside down, and I’m just not that brave. She is a serious shopper, we had to go into many (felt like all…) of the stores one more time in case there was something she had missed. Then she did her planning of gifts to buy and then we had to go back one more time to actually buy them.
Although I have said many times that I would never have matching clothes with my husband, I clearly didn’t mean never with anyone. The day turned cold and damp, and rather than going back to the hotel, I decided to buy us sweatshirts. I picked out one that I liked, and lo and behold, she picked out the same one. Michael used to call her mini-Margaret…all I know is that we walked around all day in our matching shirts and that delighted her.

Because we had made a reservation at a “nice” theme restaurant for dinner, we decided to have a small lunch, which was, once again, chips and salsa and chicken nuggets. I had forgotten some of the details of traveling with a child. 45 minutes in line and 19.50 EUR and I had one happy child. Food and bathrooms seem like the only other places at Disneyland that don’t have a sign telling you how long you will have to wait.
Dinner was at Captain Jacks, from the Pirates of the Caribbean. Eunsol paid for it so I just enjoyed it. The food was good but the space was amazing. It was like being in a cave beside a river. Boats full of people kept going by, and we realized that was another ride that we had to try. The lights were dim, and everything was very nautical. The service was also very nice, and because we had a reservation…no waiting. We had actually made our dinner reservation for Ratatouilles Bistro for yesterday, but E was so sick that we cancelled, and this was what was available.

After dinner, we went on the boat ride, twice. It was like a boat that floated along through caves full of pirate treasure, over a waterfall and through a burning ship. Along the way were ghosts, skeletons, lots of strange characters and Jack Sparrow himself, singing and drinking. By the time we had finished, it was only an hour until the fireworks so we just had time to run around and finish our shopping.
The illuminations started at 11 – it is actually amazing, so much more than just fireworks. Images from different movies are projected on the castle, there are spotlights and fireworks. It last for almost half an hour. Just as it started the rain began, but we decided to pull up our hoods and tough it out. The only glitch was the number of people with selfie sticks who filmed the whole thing and generally got in the way of other people who were trying to watch.

Back to the hotel, time to pack and then to bed.

Reflecting on the whole experience, I have to admit that Disney’s big skill is creating ambience. When you’re in Jack Sparrows restaurant, you feel like you’re with the pirates. When your roller coaster is crashing through an explosion in a mine, you feel like you are experiencing something. The other thing is that Disneyland is remarkably clean. To have that many people passing through every day, doing what people do, and yet there is no garbage on the ground and even the garbage cans are wiped off regularly. Every single staff member was pleasant and helpful. There is a lot that libraries could learn from all of this – its not just the number of people, its that they are trained to be consistently friendly. They all wear uniforms with their names on as well, something that many libraries have failed to accomplish. I have read about their training but the articles are remarkably vague; it was good to see that their claims for their staff, or cast members as they call them, are true.

Aug 12

Up this morning to see our movie. We went down for breakfast, but neither of us could face the crowds, and noise, so we decided to just get something when we got to the movie. There’s a free bus that runs back and forth between the hotel and the park, so went to wait. There was a huge crowd, and most people were really pleasant, waiting their turn. We could see the bus coming in the distance, and then a loud bang, and then we could see the bus driver get out and run around the bus. Clearly it wasn’t coming for us, so it looked like another 15-minute wait. Babies started to cry, parents started to fret, and toddlers started to look for entertainment. There are a lot of strollers here, which can be a hazard to navigation, but everyone is remarkably tolerant about it.

When we saw the bus approach, one young woman decided to run along between the railing and the bus so she would be first on. When the doors opened and the crowd surged forward, she ended up pushing a woman with a stroller, which enraged the husband, who then gave her a great shove. Many hands reached out of the crowd to pat him on the back and calm him, and she looked slightly scared, which was probably a good thing.

We got there in plenty of time for the movie, and managed to find a Starbucks, so we even had muffins and coffee for me and a strawberry thing for E. The movie was really good. It was in French, and I was happy to see that my French was good enough to provide a running translation. There were only 4 people in the audience, including us, so we weren’t disturbing anyone. 4-D movies are quite an experience…we had been to one before, but this one was much more technically advanced. We wore 3-D glasses, and the seats moved up and down and back and forth. Water sprayed on us, wind blew on us, and lights flashed. The story isn’t much, but the special effects are remarkable. I ended up feeling sorry for the hyenas, which I don’t think was what Disney intended. We also saw the trailer for an action movie, also in 4-D, which was quite a bit more active, with huge amounts of shaking as motorcycles roared around corners and crashed into things.

I know E was sick when she agreed to go back to the hotel to lie down instead of yet another trip through Thunder Mountain. She has spent the day sleeping; I keep drugging her and hoping for the best. I find the room very hot – because it is a cool 21 degrees, they have the heat on and it can’t be adjusted. She is comfortable though, and right now that is more important.

My suitcase did not survive the flight and the train trip – the side blew out. I thought I could fix it but Eunsol had a better idea…she is now the proud owner of a Disney suitcase, which I am allowed to borrow until we get home. Also a Disney blanket because it was today’s discounted item if you spent enough money, and she thought it would make her feel better.

Back to the bar for supper, more chips and salsa and a blue slushy for her, and a really good ham and cheese sandwich for me, then back to sleep. We had a dinner reservation for tonight at Ratatouille’s bistro – when E agreed that we should cancel it, I knew she really wasn’t feeling well. We’re both hoping for a better day tomorrow… we don’t want to be the only people who went to Disneyland and didn’t see the fireworks!

Aug 11

Breakfast included in our hotel: another buffet, with lots of the expected…bread, croissants, jam, butter, orange juice, coffee (not good), bacon, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and a fruit salad with yogurt. One small table of ham and cheese – the American theme runs far and wide. I would like to ask the French people sitting around me enjoying it, or at least eating a lot of it, whether it seems like ethnic food to them, and therefore, vaguely exotic.

First stop, a ride through a mountain that looked like a mine: Big Thunder Mountain. It’s actually a roller coaster and the line-up wasn’t too bad – about 50 minutes, which shows you how time warps when you’re having fun. Considering how much people complain when they have to wait 10 minutes in traffic, Disney is on to something. They have admirable line-up management with good controls to keep people orderly and lots to look at along the way. We had so much fun on the ride that we had to do it again, twice more!

After the first time, we decided to get fast pass tickets. Essentially, you go to a kiosk and use your badge to get a time stamped ticket that allows you to skip the line at a predetermined later time – which seems to be 2 or 3 hours later. You can only have one fast pass ticket at a time, unless you pay for a daily one, which can be used any time on any ride, for only 100 EUR. Each. My little shopper is pretty smart – she pointed out that that means that you have 2 or 3 hours to shop or eat, which you couldn’t do standing in line. We have only seen two water fountains, both in really obscure locations, which means that you have to either carry everything or buy it. I wonder how many people get home and then keel over in shock when they get their credit card bill? The use of credit cards is encouraged, which seems like a good way to stop people from tracking how much they are spending.

We went on two other rides…a riverboat, and a haunted house; both were judged very positively by my mini-traveller. While we were waiting in line for the haunted house (a bargain, only 25 minutes), a little boy in front of us pulled down his zipper and peed on the path. His 8 siblings were clearly embarrassed, but his mother looked at me and just shrugged – who is going to get out a line-up that long just because a little one has to go? The haunted house was really neat, many of the figures were done with holographs. Some of the scary effects were a bit spoiled, however, by people using their phones to take videos when the lights went out.

For lunch we had chicken nuggets and nachos because it looked small. We dropped a glass of coke on the floor, and I went back to the counter to explain in my ragged French that we needed another one. No problem…they replaced it for free and someone came and smilingly cleaned up. Disney is famous for how they train their staff, referred to as cast members, and everything I’ve seen supports their claim for their training.

E has her own spending money, which seemed like a solution so she wouldn’t ask me to buy things constantly. Yesterday’s purchase was a Mickey Mouse wallet, selected after we had scrutinized wallets in several stores. She thinks this is all quite wonderful, which is why we’re here – I think she’s just about the perfect age.
Back to the hotel but we couldn’t face another dinner, so we went to the bar. This seems quite exciting to an 11-year old. More chips and salsa. I ordered a sandwich but they were out of that, so I just asked the guy what they had: a Mexican salad: and I had that. Everything else on the menu, they were out of.

We went back to Disneyland part because we had gotten tickets for a 4D showing of the Lion King. Then things got confusing. The tickets were for 10:00, which, being both tired and Canadian, we thought meant 10 at night. Then the guard thought we had missed the movie by showing up at 17:45, but we thought that couldn’t be right because we had bought the tickets in the afternoon. Eventually, with lots of gesturing we figured out that it’s at 10:00 am tomorrow…disaster averted. After spending approximately $50 for movie tickets, we didn’t want to miss it.

E still pretty sick so we decided to skip the fireworks tonight and go to bed.

Aug 10
Up early this morning and on our way to France. Together we had figured out how to get to the train station using the underground – it seemed like a good skill to know. E gets anxious about being late, so she asked if we could skip breakfast in order to leave early, so off we went. We trundled our bags up the street to the underground station, only to discover that it was closed for the weekend for “refurbishment” – which I hope included cleaning. Whenever I’m in Canada, I forget how generally grubby really big cities are. We actually didn’t know where the next station was, so we got a taxi, which took us right to the door, saving us from many flights of stairs.

We found a nice, but very expensive restaurant where we could sit (because we were so early) and have breakfast.
We ordered the bakery breakfast each, no understanding that we would each get a croissant, orange juice, a hot drink (coffee!), raisin bread, whole wheat bread, many butters and lots of jam. Eunsol topped hers off with a glass of watermelon juice. We could have fed many more people with what was left.

Finally, time to board the train. Security was just like an airport – which makes perfectly good sense, then through immigration and onto the train. Boarding was really organized until we got on the train car and looked for our seats. Strangely, the seats were not numbered continuously or sequentially. We solved the problem by wandering along until we found the right seats – they were great: roomy and comfortable, with lots of leg room, and to E’s delight they tilted back so she could sleep.

As they were announcing that they were closing the doors, the conductor came along checking tickets. Sure enough, there were two American women who were on the wrong train. They had really settled in, taken off their shoes, spread out their blankets and were all tucked in ready to leave. The conductor was great…went and got help for them, called someone to get their cases from the baggage car and ran across the platform to tell the other train they were coming. People came and helped them with their bags, and practically shoved them on the other train, which started up right away.

Off we went, the only glitch was that we were riding backwards the whole way. I was really looking forward to going through the Chunnel – we had taken E’s dad to see it when it was being built. There was a really good exhibit at the time, showing how it was a built and how it was going to work. Strangely, we weren’t even aware of it – it was a dark for a short while, like going through a tunnel, of which there were many, and there we were in France!
Our Eurostar tickets include a meal: a croissant, yogurt, jam, butter, water, orange juice and coffee. Felt like déjà vu all over again. E seems to have a cold so I tucked her in and she slept most of the way. The train was remarkably smooth and quiet, and it was a lovely trip through the French countryside. Regular giggles were provided by the announcements – the voice sounded just like Peter Sellers as the Pink Panther. I had a chance to chat with the conductor, since E was asleep, and he told me that Disney contracted with the train company for a daily trip that went directly to Disneyland.

The station was at the gates of Disneyland! One of the extras you can pay for takes your luggage directly to the hotel so you can go to Disneyland right away…we took the bus to the hotel like regular people. I chose the hotel by price. Its theme is the movie cars and there are pictures of Route 66 everywhere; the dining room food theme is Tex-Mex and the rooms are decorated with licence plates. It’s a long way to come to eat chili and pizza.
We decided to wash our faces and head to Disneyland to look around. It is everything I thought it would be but much, much more so. There are a staggering number of shops, and since I am letting my travelling companion set the agenda, we seem to be visiting every single one. Each one has something slightly different in it, so you can’t be satisfied with just visiting one. We wandered around trying to find our bearings, admired the castle, and decided to go back to the hotel.

A Buddhist friend once told me about the idea of “the hungry ghost”. As I understand it, people can have a hungry ghost which makes them want stuff, but no matter how much they get, they just want more. It was at the front of my mind today as I saw people staggering around with giant shopping bags filled with Disney goods. The shops are incredibly and seem very expensive, although I can’t tell if that’s France or Disneyland or a combination of both. If you could track the purchases, I wonder where they will be in 5 years, and whether any of them will be treasured? The most amazing thing I saw today was a Swarovski collection of figurines of Disney figures…who wouldn’t want to own a 250 EUR (approx. 500 CAD) crystal figurine of Goofy?

Dinner was a buffet; what it lacked in quality it made up for in quantity. Nothing remotely different from what you could find in Buffet World in Edmonton, except the price. I am determined not to flinch about the prices, but I also want E to learn about choices. She thinks we don’t eat enough to make it worthwhile to go to a buffet although that was definitely not true of the people around us. About 70% are speaking French, about 15% speaking English but with strong British accents. The rest are Asians or West Africans. So far, we haven’t run across anyone who sounds North American.

E commented that it didn’t seem very French, and then summed it up with, “Of course not…it’s not France, it’s Disneyland!”

Aug 9,2019

Another sunny day, we have really had good weather. A continental breakfast in the hotel…I’m never sure what that means, but today is was hard boiled eggs, yogurt, croissants, juice and many earnest looking cereals. Then, off to find the hop-on, hop-off bus. We managed to make almost one complete circuit before boredom set in, but managed to see Buckingham Palace, St Paul’s, Trafalgar Square and the Globe Theatre as well as driving across Tower Bridge (which E, like 90% of the adults in the world thought was London Bridge). It should be London Bridge, it’s far more attractive and iconic than the real London Bridge.

Then a need for refreshment so off to a very expensive coffee shop to use the bathroom, have coffee and feed the girl. A lemon meringue tart seemed to do the trick. I always forget about the prevalence of cake in England – for every occasion and at every price. Then we walked through St. James Park to Buckingham Palace. I am always surprised that it really doesn’t look that special, although the horse guards outside are very nice. E patted the horse, and I asked the guard if the horse enjoyed it. The guard said the horse didn’t mind as long as he could stand there and doze. There was a second horse guard on the other side of the gate, but he didn’t like to be petted. In fact, from the look on his face, and the snorting and carrying on, I suspect he didn’t much like people. I talked to his rider, who said he was “just learning”. I wouldn’t care to stand there all day long and have little sweaty hands poking my nose…

Thanks to the wonders of technology, E found a YouTube video of a special watermelon ice cream dessert, and that became our mission for the day. We ended up taking a taxi from Buckingham Palace because we couldn’t figure out how to find it, and it turned out to be right behind Victoria Station, where we’ve been about 4 times already. GPS must have changed everything in London. Many streets are discontinuous or only a few blocks tucked behind something else. Sometimes you have to drive through an arch in a building to get to the street or lane behind. No wonder the people who laid out prairie towns were such fans of long straight roads.

The watermelon creation was 7.50 GBP which is about 13 CAD – definitely the most expensive ice cream I’ve ever bought. It was a hollowed-out slide of watermelon, dotted with chocolate and filled with watermelon sorbet, called what-a-melon. The thing that I thought was the oddest, however, was that there was a surcharge for eating in. Her dessert was about 1.50 GBP extra for eating in instead of taking out. My already hyper-expensive lemonade was an extra pound for drinking it there instead of take-out. Hard to understand that logic.

Our plan was to go to Harrod’s next but when we got there E was highly disappointed; she thought it was going to be an interesting store like Shoppers Drug Mart. I’ve always found it fascinating in a slightly bizarre manner. Quite ordinary looking people buying cuts of the most expensive beef I’ve ever seen, 24 GBP (36 CAD for a small box tea bags). I have always wondered if the people buying groceries are actually cooks or housekeepers for rich people?

We went to a pharmacy to get some ibuprofen, but after I asked the pharmacist for some, she wouldn’t sell me the pills because they were only for people 12 and over. The liquid for the under-twelves was strawberry flavoured; E didn’t think she could swallow it, and I didn’t think I could make her. When I asked for ibuprofen for myself, she still wouldn’t sell it to me because she knew I was just going to give it to the child. No other solution than to go back to the hotel.

After a nap and some ibuprofen, everything seemed improved, so we decided to go out for dinner. The closest restaurant was Indian, so we decided to try that because mango lassi is one of E’s favourites. No lassi; according to the waiter, the lassi was “no longer nice”. After we ate, she decided that she was recovered enough to eat some ice cream, and ordered chocolate samosas with ice cream. “Oh no”, said the waiter, “we don’t have that anymore.” Not to be defeated, we walked down the street to the corner store and got ice cream.

As we were walking around today, it was interesting to notice things that seem odd to our way of thinking. Sometimes in one building there are two hotels, or a hotel and some apartments. Figuring out the property taxes must be quite an are. The underground is wonderfully diverse – well dressed people in suits and briefcases sitting next to punk rockers. Everyone understands the body language of how much space is appropriate to use up. I think we haven’t had the LRT in Edmonton for long enough to have developed the subway culture.

We visited a public library, but I found it very depressing – it looked like someone who hadn’t been to a library in my lifetime might expect it to look. I interviewed the librarian and that was even more depressing. The non-fiction is arranged on a mezzanine reached by a very steep staircase with a closed gate at the bottom. People are allowed to go up there but only if they are adults and have a serious reason. Since the gate is behind the desk, you would have to be intrepid to attempt it. London public libraries don’t recognize library cards from across the city – they only accept the ones from their borough which is like a riding in the city. A couple of the libraries are bravely experimenting with card recognition with the borough next door. Oh, the things we take for granted…

I am always amazed to think of the number of people sheltering down in the “tube” during the war, and how frightening it must have been to not know what was going on up at ground level. E is completely uninterested in that, and has only the vaguest understanding of what a war is. That is an amazing thing, for a child to grow up without any experience of war or what it does to people. I hope that is true for the rest of her life.

Aug 8, 2019

When I was much younger and knew everything, I could not have imagined voluntarily going on a bus tour, which is exactly what we did today. The idea of a preplanned day with other people (who would not be like me, and who I probably wouldn’t like) was an anathema. An older, and clearly much smarter, me chose a bus trip for today so that E could sleep if she was still jet lagged. Off we went into the country-side, to a couple of my favourite places in the country. While other people took care of the driving, the parking and tickets so we could skip the lines, E slept and I watched the world go by.

Our guide, Rob, was great. A former engineer who specialized in restoration, he told us lots of good stories and lots of trivia: Windsor Castle is the oldest and largest continuously occupied castle in the world. George IV was England’s largest ever monarch. He weighed about 280 pounds and had a 56-inch waist, and is buried at Windsor. He is the source of the nursery rhyme, “Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie…” Rob also pointed out Alfred Hitchcock’s house; E asked “Grandma, do you know him?”, and the London Pride brewery and pub where Shakespeare reputedly drank. If nothing else, this trip is a good reminder that children lack a great deal of general knowledge. E thought that Shakespeare was a singer…

The trip took us up into the Cotswolds. It is the part of England that you often see pictures of in calendars – rolling green hills divided by stone walls and dotted with sheep. 75% of the land surface in England is still agricultural, but it is an activity that occupies only about 2% of the population. Sheep farming is still a major industry, with about 2 sheep for every person in the UK. One of the reasons that Britain became so famous for sheep and wool in medieval times was that they had hunted wolves to extinction, so the sheep grew bigger and produced more wool. 50% of the exports in medieval times were wool, traded to Europe for oil and wine, spices and other things that wouldn’t grow here.

Our first stop was the City of Bath, my favourite city in England, and possibly in the world. According to the story, around 800BC, Prince Bladud went travelling to Athens, where he got leprosy. When he came home, his father had him locked up. He escaped and became swineherd. One day he noticed his pigs rolling in the mud, and he couldn’t get them out, even though he tempted them with acorns…A little more investigation revealed that the reason they wouldn’t get out was that the mud was warm and made their skin problems heal up. In he hopped, his leprosy was cured, and the rest is history.
We had a wander around, skipped visiting the Roman baths, and ate ice cream.

On the way into town we passed a herd of particularly pretty cows who were peering over the fence at us, and watching the world go by. They belonged to Marshfield Dairy, which makes ice cream. Therefore, our mission was to search out a source for this ice cream. It was pretty amazing, since, as E pointed out, we had practically met the cows that made it. I had rhubarb flavour, so now I’m wondering why, in a country where rhubarb grows everywhere, we don’t have rhubarb ice cream. (BTW, did you know that Roman baths had a special room for armpit hair plucking…apparently no Roman soldier of any consequence wanted to be seen in polite company with hairy armpits.)

In Bath you can see where buildings were repaired after the WWII bombings that damaged much of the town. The Luftwaffe had a plan to bomb all of the towns identified by the Baedeker guides as rating 3 stars or above for cultural or historical importance – a kind of tourism in reverse, intended to wipe out cultural history. As they worked their way through the list, though, they spared Salisbury because the spire was so useful for navigation.
Off we went to Salisbury, where you can look at one of the four remaining copies of the original Magna Carta. We didn’t…it doesn’t have much meaning when you don’t have any context. I’ve seen it before, so we looked for things that would interest an 11-year-old. At the top of the spire, the tallest in western Europe, there is a red light to stop planes from hitting it because it is much higher than anything else around. The light bulb needs to be changed, however, and near the top there is a little door where a man climbs out and climbs to the top to change the lightbulb. This led to lots of questions: how did he get this job, what does he do the rest of time when he’s not changing lightbulbs and how much money does he make. According to the trusty Rob, you can look on the website for a video of him changing the lightbulbs.

We had a traditional afternoon tea at the Cathedral = amazingly delicious. One of the major debates depending on which part of the country you come from is whether you put the cream or the jam on the scone first. I do it the way my mother did…cream first, then jam. E invented her own method by swirling them together.

Last stop for the day: Stonehenge. E really liked it, and judged it to be so pretty – the part that continues to fascinate me is the question of why they did it. The motivation must have been huge to distract that many people from their daily lives of farming and getting by to move a bunch of big things around and stand them up. There are now quite good theories of how it was done, but any discussion of the purpose is simply speculation. Nonetheless, about 1.5 million people visit it each year; 15-20 thousand of them for the solstice.

When the Romans got here, they had a policy of trying to adapt local culture to the changes they were making. They consistently named things with local names. The Celts, who were living here at the time, didn’t have the practice of naming things, so whenever a roman arrived at a river and asked the name of it, he was told Avon, which is the Celt word for river. The Roman politely recorded the name of the river as Avon, which is why there are so many Avon rivers in Britain…good intentions, but flawed implementation.

Back to London and time to look for dinner. Fish and chips was on our list of things to do, so we went to a pub. What sensible drinking laws…children can go in and eat, they just can’t drink until they are 18. Apparently children here aren`t damaged by seeing people drink.