Sunday, October 25, 2009

If you get a chance to visit Paris with a personal interpreter, go for it.


My daughter is spending a semester studying French at the Sorbonne. She's renting a room on the Left Bank, a couple blocks from the Louvre, from "Madame". I went over to visit. We ate snails and duck gizzards at sidewalk cafes. Took in historical sites ranging from the Roman Empire to the Reign of Terror. Watched the Eiffel Tower's new light show. Walked Madame's dog along the Seine, and were then invited in for tea. Madame's house and almost everything in it look to be older than the United States. The dude with the 'do and the armor in the painting was some ancestor of hers. A couple others were on Lafayette's staff and were present at the battle of Yorktown. She was eleven years old when Germany invaded France during WWII. Her parent's house was looted and burned, and she rode out the rest of the war in Morocco. She told us about a friend who is "an old lady" who smuggled downed Allied pilots from Belgium to Spain for the Resistance.

1 comment:

-Humongous said...

Man- now that's a cool trip. My brother went to Paris. He told me that it was a real pain in the butt to get up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Something like they had to wait forever and a day to climb the second set of stairs.