Jungle Golf

Because we have an oceanfront, we obviously have mini-golf. Lots of it. But the best one by far is Jungle Golf. (I've taken friends there for two of my last four birthdays.) And we just so happened to have three free passes. (Fiance is an EMT and they saved the owner's... mom? I think?... so he gave them free game cards as a token of thanks.) So Cassy and Karen and I polished off our day at the beach with mini-golf!

Clyde helpfully goes after my ball...

Holding on to Cassy's ball while she waits for her turn

Hanging out with a hippo

Riding the lion

Cassy won (she was only one over par, which is 36) and Karen came in second. I got a 42 though, so I was still pretty happy.

Beach Day!

My friends Cassy and Karen came to visit this weekend, and we went to the beach for several hours, until it started to look like the storms promised by the weatherman were actually coming in. (They didn't for several more hours, but that was okay.)

Cassy and Karen love Clyde! He made two new friends :)

Clyde and my flip-flops in the sand

Clyde and the ocean
(We had pretty big waves - for Virginia Beach - since there was a storm coming)

I got some pretty killer sunburn on my back. (I thought I had done my back, but I got distracted chatting and completely forgot about it... and I was sitting with my back to the sun most of the time we were there.) Ouch!

Iceland

And after France, we went to Iceland! We flew into Keflavik, drove to Reykjavik, and stayed for two days, mostly wandering around Reykjavik. It was a brisk 55* F (a welcome change from the 80s F of Paris, and definitely better than the 90-100 F friends were getting at home!)

I'm 95% sure that's the Arctic Ocean. (It's not like they labelled it for us.)

Coca-Cola has this thing in other countries right now where they
put "share a Coca-Cola with" and names. Also, Coke in other countries
is made with real sugar, not HFCS. YUM.

Delicious sandwich for lunch. It was Thai-style, with chicken,
peanut sauce, cilantro, and mango.

Clyde and some krona, the currency of Iceland. (They accept Euro and
dollars in most places though.)

Pretty lava sculpture near the water.

Bike-shaped gate to keep cars out of this street.

I got myself a new little friend: a puffin! He joined Clyde in my bag
on the way home.

So that was our trip! We had a great time, but it's always good to be home.

Paris (Part IV)

And just a little bit more...

We went up to the Sacre Coeur for Bastille Day fireworks. It's not the Eiffel Tower spectacle, but I'm so glad we made that decision. People IN THE AUDIENCE had the handheld versions of the big-time fireworks, and they burst just overhead. It was the first time I can remember being IMPRESSED by fireworks. (I usually think it's just a really expensive way to annoy dogs, scare children, and create large crowds at otherwise pleasant parks.)

Coming up next... Iceland!

Paris (Part III)

And more!

Fiance's mom, sister, and sister's boyfriend went to a macaron-making class!
They were SO DELICIOUS! This one has blueberry filling.

The Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens. Do you see Clyde?

At the Montmartre Cemetery

Also at the Montmartre Cemetery (do you see Clyde?)

At the Moulin Rouge, right around the corner from our apartment

The bells of Notre Daaaaaaaaame!

At the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde

At Pere Lachaise (huge, famous cemetery)

At the columbarium of Pere Lachaise

Pont de l'Archeveche, with love locks!

Sainte-Chappelle and its LOVELY stained glass

We ordered sushi. It was amazing.

Paris (Part II)

More photos!

On the balcony to our apartment

Looking off the balcony toward the Cafe les Deux Moulins
(the cafe from Amelie)

On the balcony, seen from the kitchen

Trying on Fiance's beret... looking snazzy, Clyde!

It took a few tries to get it right...

This doesn't seem right either...

Maybe we should try again later, Clyde.

This is the market from Amelie, where M. Collignon works.
We stumbled across it on our way back from the Bastille Day fireworks!

In the women's yard at the Conciergerie (the prison where - among many others -
Marie Antoinette was held before her beheading)

CREPES. Literally the best food in the world. We ate several. This one
happens to be miel (honey).

Eiffel Tower from Trocadero

The most... ahem... family-friendly photo I took at the
Musee de l'Erotisme. Clyde was scandalized.
(Not by the wire corset sculpture. By... the rest.)

Mmmm, strawberries, raspberries, melon. The freshest, most delicious
fruits I've ever eaten. They don't put waxes and sprays and whatnot
on their produce to make it look nice for a week. You just have to eat it
within two or three days, and you would anyway, because YUM.

Louvre!

Closeup at the Louvre

 More to come!

Paris (Part I)

I finally finished posting all of my vacation photos to my other blog (Quoi29Alex) so now I can put up Clyde's photos of the trip, too! I'm going to do several posts, to spread out the photos a little, and they're in no particular order. (Actually, that's a lie; they're alphabetical by the file names I gave them, because it's easier to make sure I don't leave any out that way.)

With Fiance at the base of the Louvre Pyramid

With me, looking at the Eiffel Tower from Trocadero Gardens (across the Seine)

Also from Trocadero

We found the Louvre!

With me at the base of the Louvre Pyramid

On one of Paris's dozens of bridges, looking at the Musee d'Orsay

With me at the Obelisk in Place de la Concorde

 More to come...

Clyde in ICELAND

And now we're in Iceland! I wasn't feeling so hot this morning so I (& Clyde) missed out on going to the Golden Circle but we're still seeing Reykjavik. We ate WHALE! Tomorrow we should be going on a whale watching excursion before going to the airport to return home (where I promise to post a bunch of photos within the week!)

French Food

I promise to post more about France when we get home... I'm taking more photos than I'm posting, I swear! But I wanted to stop in and make a note of the food here, because that's one of the things we were most looking forward to.

We just had sushi for dinner. It was delicious. I know... not French. But delicious. It's a lot like the sushi at home, but with better produce and a different kind of tuna (so it was a color you don't want your tuna to be at home, generally).

 

 

Other people in our group (not myself) went to a class to learn how to make macarons! Lucky for us, they brought back the fruits of their labor and generously shared the deliciousness!

 

 

There are more food photos to come when I do big posts when we get home, but that's it for now!