If yesterday was our "extra day" in Paris, today was a Bonus Day in France. It really hadn't occurred to us that we would have yet another day in France, I kept thinking of it as a day at my brothers house.

Marie-Christine and Naomi both took the day off from school so that they could show us around. They live only about 10 miles from Versailles, the alternate Palace of Louis the something or other back in the 1600's. I probably have that all wrong but as Naomi, who, like her father is a wonderful tour guide, was telling us all about the palace all I could think about was, "wow, when I was her age the only thing I knew about with as much accuracy and passion was, who did what on each episode of Gilligan's Island." She is a VERY impressive little girl and I kept telling her that she should get a summer job doing tours around the palace which she would probably do really well at because she could do it in French, English or Spanish. 13 years old... sure made me feel stupid.

Marie-Christine and Naomi, our personal Versailles Experts and Tour Guides!

Both of them were really intent on taking us to various portions of the gardens but neither of them could read a map to save their lives. It was really funny to watch, eventually I had to take over and just say, "tell me where you want to go and I'll take you there."

The first stop was the "Queen's Garden". It was a display of, among other things, how the French could conquer nature, everything in it was fake, well there were real plants and rocks, but everything was meticulously positioned and groomed. You could see the seams in the rocks where they had piled up slabs of stone and then carved them into the shapes that they wanted to see.

An example of the French trying to "conquer nature".

We had tried to eat lunch there but a guard kicked us out. Apparently they have been fighting a litter problem.

The back of the palace from halfway down the garden.

Front courtyard of the Palace.

The King's Wing looking out on the front courtyard.

For several years, at least since 1999, the last time I had been here, the French have been combatting the effects of pollution on the stone work. Back in 1999 Kevin had told me that many of the buildings were actually almost black and that they were systematically cleaning them block by block. Much of Versailles had already been cleaned and I have to tell you, to me, it looked ugly. What they do is sand blast the exterior stones to get off all the effects of the pollution. However, in the process, they are getting down to a very "naked", and porous version of the rock. I can't imagine that in the near future, say 10 to 20 years, they are going to realize that the current wave of restoration will turn out to be even worse then just leaving things be.

This poor child, forced to live a life without TV.
Maybe I would be a better reader if we hadn't had TV when I was a kid.

The front of Kevin's house.

Kevin says this is the first stone layed during the construction of his house.
If so, what is under it?

So many people try to recreate the old beam look... this is dead on authentic.

We had planned on leaving the house at 6PM but, as usual we got into a tiny bit of discussion about "stuff" with Kevin. This time he had wanted us to listen to an angry French rapper that was rapping about some beef he had with the French Riot Police. Kevin had said, "you wont be able to hear this anywhere else in the world". Why Kevin actually owned it was beyond me. Maybe it belonged to one of the boys who were both away. The funny part was that Naomi was just sitting there rolling her eyes like a 13 year old girl would do if her parents wanted to listen to classical music, which, by the way, they say is HER favorite music.

6PM, turned into 6:15 and we all realized, oh crap, we have to leave to catch our train. Kevin is like me, he would much rather get there early and relax but apparently he wasn't fully taking into account the extent of the rush hour Paris traffic.

Marie-Christine and Naomi got into the back of the mini van, Beth sat in the middle row and I sat up in the front. Kevin told a story about how the French government was now re-evaluating many of their tunnels based on a recent accident where some people died in a tunnel. This got Marie-Christine going and every time we entered into another tunnel, Marie-Christine would say, "Oh, Kevin, I REALLY don't want to be in another tunnel", and Kevin would respond with, "this is the last one". Of course, it wasn't the last one and it went on and on. I don't say this as a complaint but it was just sort of funny to see it unfold. It was more like a Laurel and Hardy routine then a Honeymooners episode.

Then we got to the STOP portion of the "stop and go" traffic so we started doing calculations. Again something that Kevin and I probably learned, either by practice or through genetics, from our father. He kept saying that the train station was only 2000 meters away but I had a map and while I was recalculating off of that, Kevin was applying a little known fact that the "ring road" that ran around Paris was 38 Kilometers so he was trying to figure out the diameter. When you start applying pi (3.14159) and you are late for a train, you know you are with a Fenwick.

We made it to the station and quickly parked the car and ran in. Yes we were on time, but we had hoped to sit down and relax a little bit and visit, that didn't happen. In moments they were posting our track information and we had to head out to our train.

Saying good bye to the French Fenwick's as we walked away from them at the Bercy train depot.
The last thing I said was, "take one more Beth, Naomi was looking away".

As we said goodbye, I leaned down and did the little two cheek French Kiss thing with Marie-Christine and that made her smile, I think it showed that, however superficially, I had embraced some of her culture. I then said good bye to Naomi in the same fashion, we had offered our second room to her when ever they wanted to send her to California. I then said goodbye to my brother in the same way, scruffy face and all. That may take some getting use to. Kevin also made Beth do the same thing.

Phew... we made it!

We got to our car, the FIRST car (furthest from the entry) behind the engine in a long train and settled in. We had paid a little extra to have a private room on the train. It's a little bit sketchy traveling with so much stuff, cameras and computer and we want to feel secure.

As we settled in we started to regret only one thing about Paris. We should not have turned down Marie-Christines offer to cook us some steaks before we left the house. This train had a dinning car, 26 Euro for a meal we certainly would not fully enjoy, and NO snack services at all. Even the train from Morlaix to Paris had vending machines. To combat the gnawing desire to eat something... we went to bed early. Tomorrow would be a whole new country and a whole new set of adventures.