The rest of Paris and Rome Italy

So, its been since Versailles since we’ve written. The day after Versailles was a beautiful day by comparison to the day before. We woke up and headed off to San Sulpice to listen to the Sunday organ recital. We haven’t been great about getting up really early and this day was no exception. By the time we got there the recital was nearly over. But we did get to climb up to see the organ and speak a couple of minutes with the organist. Who, due to speaking with countless tourists such as us now is fluent in 5 languages. After San Sulpice we headed off to the Orsay museum. The weather was perfect, it was warm and sunny and made for a really pleasant walk there. We got there at about 2pm and the museum closed at 6pm so we had 4 hours there. It truly is a monumental museum with a superior collection of Impressionist paintings. Seeing a Van Gogh never gets old. The paint is laid on so thick in places that it becomes a 3-D experience. After the museum we crossed the Seine to stroll the Tuileries gardens. The sun was out and it was an ideal temperature. It made for a perfect ending to a great day. Course, anything tops a day at the hospital in Versailles. Finished with dinner at an Italian restaurant in Rue Cler.



Sophie at the Eiffel Tower

Monday started off clear and sunny and the plan was to leave early to get to the Eiffel tower to climb to the top. Early proved to be 11am. We’ve proven we can’t do early. We got to the tower and it is immense. It’s so hard to appreciate just how big it is until you’re standing beneath one of the massive pillars. We got in line to buy our tickets to go all the way to the top, much to Dad’s chegrine, when they closed to the top due to too many people up there. So we went ahead and bought tickets to the second level. It’s only half as high as the upper most level but the view is no less impressive. With the wind blowing up there it was a little cool. I hung Sophie over the edge a la Michael Jackson and his baby to give the crowds below a chance at a photo of her. Didn’t drop her or anything. I mean, it is a long way down so I wasn’t going to do that. Despite his fear of heights Dad did great and really enjoyed taking in the expanse of the city below.



We descended and headed off to the Louvre. I wish I could say we spent all day there but in reality we got there at 3pm and had a scant 3 hours to take in what many would call the greatest art museum in the world. We advised Mom and Dad to head straight over to the Mona Lisa so that they could at least see it, be underwhelmed by it, check it off the list and move on. Despite having almost no time to take in the miles of corridors we all had a good time. You could spend months there exploring every nook and cranny so it was a bit of a shame to have only three hours but its all there was. How do you trade seeing and climbing the Eiffel tower for seeing things at the Louvre.



Sophie at the Louvre with "Napoleans Coronation"





By the time we left the Louvre we had to rush over to try to get into Notre Dame. When we got there they had just closed the entry doors. I wasn’t about to let Mom and Dad get to the threshold of so great a site only to see it from the outside. So, I went to the exit door and pled with the exit guy to let us in. He was really gracious and said, “How many?” “Four” I replied and he waved us in. Mass was going on at that moment so we sat in the back and listened to the organ play. It was a very short visit but enough for all us to see the great windows with the sounds of the music resonating all around. Many spend hours there on a visit. Not unlike other places we’d been, we didn’t have but about 45 minutes inside.



Sophie at Notre Dame






After we left we it was overcast and quite cool so we hustled off to the Latin Quarter to find some dinner. Found a little Italian place nearby and slipped inside. Dad struck up a conversation with the New Zealanders sitting at the table next to us about the American presidential election. It was amazing to hear how much disdain they have for the current administration and how much concern they have about the next one and the hope that it isn’t anything like the present. It was amazing to understand the impact that others around the world feel regarding our politics. You get the sense that if foreigners could vote for our president it would be a landslide in favor of whoever is farthest away in ideology and policy from “W”. We got back to the apartment late again and all crashed hard knowing that that was our last night in Paris and that we had to get up at 4:30 in the morning for our ride to the airport and our 7am flight to Rome.

Rome - Sept 16

Tuesday started dang early. I didn’t actually sleep at all. I didn’t dare take an Ambien for fear of not being able to get up when the alarm went off at 4:30. So, I just laid in bed. We all got up early, took a crazy ride out to the airport with Sophie in my lap and a seatbelt around the both of us since they didn’t have a car seat for us unlike our ride in to Paris when the car service came with a car seat. So, it was tense. The driver drove like a mad man and you just hoped nothing would happen. I was grateful to get there and get out. We recommend traveling with an infant in Europe if possible. You get escorted to the front of lines and give royal treatment when you have one. Sophie has been quite an asset in that department. I bet I could make little blow up, life sized Sophie dolls and sell them to business travelers who could inflate them just prior to getting to the terminal in order to go in and get all this preferential treatment in order to blitz through all sorts of lines. Then just deflate prior to boarding and realize huge savings in time and hassle. We landed in Rome to much warmer temperatures.

Holy crap is Rome chaotic. I don’t remember it being so jam packed. Of course despite this being my fifth time in Rome I’ve never been on the roads there. So I was amazed at just how totally crazy it is to drive there. And we were in a bus from the airport into Termini, the central train station. The streets are basically lawless. There’s motorscooters buzzing all around weaving in and out of traffic like gnats swirling around you head on a summer night. We got to the hotel at around 10am am and napped for a couple of hours before heading out for an evening historic walk past such landmarks as the Spanish steps (location of the best McDonalds French fries in the world) the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and finishing in Camp de Fiori where we searched out and found a little family run restaurant that Anneka and I had been to three years ago. The walk was enjoyable as much for the sites as for the warmer weather. It was just a perfect temperature. The Pantheon proved again to be an amazing thing to behold. It is argued to be the oldest continually inhabited or used building in the world. It began as a Roman temple to the gods in AD 27 and became a Christian church hundreds of years later and due to that status it has been preserved and used up until today. We hopped a cab back to the hotel to save our legs. Best 10 Euros I spent on the trip. If I’m tired at night Mom and Dad must be even more so but you wouldn’t know it. They’re hanging tough. We got back to the hotel late again and crashed hard.





Sophie, by the way, has been simply amazing! She travels incredibly well. As long as she’s fed and watered she just sleeps peacefully dangling in Mom’s front pack or in her stroller or she just stares out at all the people smiling back at her. I hoped she’d be good and she’s been better than good she’s been absolutely amazing.


Wednesday Sept 17th
Today we went to the Coliseum and to the Forum. We didn’t get out of the hotel very early but it wasn’t too big a deal since the hotel is only about 500 yards from the coliseum. It’s amazing to see so large a building still standing after 2000 years. Only one side is essentially the same size as when built. That side was built on a base of stone. The other side is missing its outer most, and highest section of wall, and appears only half as large as the more complete side. Apparently that side which is missing so much was built largely on sand and there was a strong earthquake that struck in 1349 which toppled a great deal of the monuments and buildings of ancient Rome.





Sophie got a lot of looks while there. Course she’s gotten a lot of looks everywhere we’ve taken her. After the coliseum we went back to the neighborhood near our hotel which has a bread shop that has the best pizza bianco, or foccacia anywhere. It has just the right texture, amount of salt and oil and has a great flavor. We got some pizza Bianca and some drinks and I got these awesome little pig in a blanket hot dog things. WE chased all the food down with a gelato then headed back to go to the forum. Wandered the forum’s ruins until closing at 6pm.





From there it was off to diner. Anneka and I ate at this particular place when we were last in Rome in 2005 and thought we’d go back since I thought the pizza I had back then was the best I’d ever had. Well, Dad got some lamb and hated it. It was nothing but bones and fat he said. I had to lean my head away from the table as I ate so as not to catch a whiff of the lamb and activate my gag reflex. I don’t know what it is but Lamb is the gamiest, most pungent and horrible smelling food I can think of. Mom got a bowl of vegetable soup hoping it would be as good as the vegetable soup that Dad had had the night before. It wasn’t. She hated it. I got a pizza and while it was good, it wasn’t the powerhouse that I’d remembered the last on to be from three years earlier. Anneka got pasta in tomato sauce and it was OK as well but nothing to blog about. Anyways, that proved to be a bit of a let down which was a bummer as I’d hoped we’d have knock out good meals every day in Italy. After dinner it was a leisurely stroll back to the hotel and to bed.



Thursday Sept 18

Today we went to the Vatican museum and to St. Peters. Sophie worked her magic and we bypassed all the crowds at security. The line to get into the actual museum wasn’t too bad at all. I’ve seen it in years past where it is a mile long and can take 2 hours or longer to make it all the way through. Anyways, we got in and in the tangled mass of people extruding themselves through the halls toward the Sistine chapel I got separated from Anneka. I had the backpack on with all Sophie’s gear in it including her food. Well, I started trying to find them and looked at some things along the way. I happened to be down a particular section of the Egyptian section and I could hear Sophies cry coming towards me. I knew it was her, I knew I had all the gear, I knew Anneka would be panicked and I knew that I should RUN towards the sound. When I got to her I knew I was in trouble so I just avoided making any eye contact with Anneka and just quickly made Sophie a bottle and started to feed her. Anneka was panicked and rightly so. She had no idea where I was nor how she’d find me when Sophie started to have here little hunger related freak-out. We’ll, once Sophie was being fed Anneka was fine and we were able to chuckle about the experience. We stuck together the rest of our time for the sanity of all of us. The Vatican museum is set up like a one way street. Everyone starts in the same spot and everyone gets channeled down the same corridors and everyone ends up deposited in the Sistine chapel. Mind you the Sistine chapel is a great place to be deposited in. We’d gotten separated from Mom and Dad at the beginning of the museum and told them to meet after the Sistine chapel. When we got there we didn’t know if they were in front of us or behind us so when we showed up we found a comfortable place to sit, to soak up the single greatest piece of art ever produced by the hand of man and to wait for Mom and Dad to pop into the chapel. We waited for as long as we could trying to balance are they in front of us or behind us? Ends up they were in front of us and were actually sitting outside waiting for us. So, reunited again, and hungry, we decided to pull off the tourist path and get something to eat. We stopped at the first restaurant we saw and actually had a really tasty meal. Normally I would shy away from touristy restaurants since they often have crappy food. But we were really surprised. After eating we continued our walk over to St. Peters basilica.




That place is simply massive. I don’t think Mom and Dad could really believe it was as big as it was. We were only in there for about an hour before they closed and missed the opportunity to climb to the top of the dome. You take a lift to the roof of the church and then have to hoof it up to the top of the dome but we just ran out of time. I’m not sure our legs could have handled such a hike anyways so we were all sort of secretly relieved that we’d legitimately run out of time and can use that as an excuse as to why we didn’t make it to the top. After being shuttled out of the building we caught a cab back to the hotel. After getting Sophie showered and to bed I took off and went wandering. I ended up going over to the coliseum and taking some night pictures of it all lit up. It was and amazing conclusion to an amazing day.
I’m days late on the blog and am going to stay days late since it is late now and we need to get up earlier tomorrow to kick off our site seeing earlier.
More later.

We arrived - A post from Chris

Well, we made it. And Sophie did great. We made it to the airport in perfect time. The plane left on time and we were airborne basically on time. Things really only got difficult when the reality settled in that Anneka and I were going to be Sophie’s bed for the night. If you ever want to know what it is like to be a bed just sit in a chair and hold still for 10 hours with a 12 pound potential noise maker on your lap. My right butt cheek was so asleep you could have cut it off with a spoon and I wouldn’t have felt it. It was so dead that other parts of my body hurt just to make up for it. It’s a good thing I didn’t need it for anything other than sitting on or I would have had no idea what it was doing.
The flight went quite well and in fact seemed, well, and was shorter than any other we’d ever taken. But I’d trade a longer flight with the ability to more around over a shorter flight were you’re a bed any time.
We landed at around 11am local time and Anneka had arranged a car to pick us up at the airport and take us to our apartment. If ever you balk at the money your wife wants to spend on something so frivolous as a “car service” for when you land all jet lagged and have to drive into one of the most twisted and congested metropolitan areas in the world, just stop. Don’t complain. When you’re actually in that car and falling asleep (your butt cheek will be waking up at that time) and someone else is fighting the traffic, you’ll be grateful for your wife and her exceptional planning.
Our little apartment, while certainly strange feeling initially, already feels like home. WE are right off a metro stop in a really quiet area just a couple of blocks away from the famous Parisian landmark church called Sacre Cour. After taking a nap for much of the afternoon we awoke to head out and explore. We started our adventure with a metro ride over to the Eiffel tower.
It was as fantastic to see this time as it was the first time. It is always larger than you imagined it and it was especially beautiful since it was covered in dazzling lights that twinkle like the mother of all Christmas tree light strands for about 5 minutes every hour. We got there right before they turned on and it was jaw dropping when they lit up.
Sadly, dad’s batteries on his camera died right at that moment. So he befriended an Australian couple there and they lent him their batteries so he could take some pictures. You can imagine the weirdness of the exchange that later ensued when dad thought they gave him the batteries when in reality they’d only lent them to him. Oops.


We wandered beneath the tower and marveled at its size. It really is amazingly large.
From there we needed to find something to eat and it was getting very late. Of course you all know what restaurant is open late? You guessed it – McDonald’s. Now I’m not proud of us kicking off our European vacation and having our first meal be McDonald’s, but there really is a rational point in each day where you know you’re either going there or your going hungry.
I had a “Canadian Wild” hamburger and thought it was great. See, they mix it up here with new and novel menu items. So, it’s like eating in a real restaurant. We eventually made it back to our place for the first night.
Sophie did great on the plane and terrible in the apartment. She basically fussed all night long and would only settle down if she could lay close to her mom in bed. So, we laid her between us and I’m not a big guy but I do weigh enough to create a little crater in the mattress. Sophie is like a little ball-bearing that roles down into that crater over the course of a couple of hours. So before you know it I’m on the edge of the bed being pushed off by a 22” long 12 pound girl. So, I moved to laying on the floor next to the bed before settling on a couch out in the living room. Needless to say neither Anneka or I got much sleep that first night.
The neighborhood is great with lots of nifty little shops and places to buy food and such. We’ve already found a shop with great baguettes and Anneka’s favorite – chocolate éclairs.

One of the few remaining Art Neveau metro stops in Paris



Anyways, enough for now. More later.

Day 2 of our European trip got off to a really slow start. Mom and Dad caught up on their sleep and Anneka tried to catch up on her’s. Sophie didn’t sleep great again, but better than the night before. So, I went and did what I do best – wander. The sun was out, it was still cool out but definitely still nice weather. So I dinked around Sacre Cour for a couple of hours while the others slept. We’d planned to go to Notre Dame but would start our day with a short walk down Rue Cler – a street we’d wanted to visit in the past for it’s assortment of shops that make even hard core fast food junkies think they should take up “eating fresh and healthy”. After Rue Cler we’d determined our appropriate next metro stop to take in order to get to Notre Dame only to have the train not stop at the station. When you hear a conductor speaking on a train its probably not a good thing. Well the conductor got on the loud speaker and said something in French as we drifted through the station. So, we got off at the next stop and got to street level only to encounter waves of people lining the streets.

Sophie chillin' at Sacre Cour



The dang Pope was in town and his Pope-mo-cade just passed by about a minute before we got there. To make a long story short the Pope screwed up the plans. At that moment he was speaking to some assembly and when done he would be doing something over at Notre Dame. We could hardly cross the street to get 25 feet closer to Notre Dame let alone actually get in Notre Dame. So, we grabbed a sandwich from a vendor and copped a squat on the sidewalk to let the commotion die down a bit before deciding to go somewhere else.

Mom and Sophie waiting while Dad's off taking pictures



We hadn’t planned on going to the Pompidou museum of modern art but decided it would be a worthwhile side trip instead of our original plans.

The Pompideu is so weird it was moving, not me



A couple of thoughts regarding the Pompidou:
If you take three 6 foot by 6 foot canvases and paint them white, or are even too cheap or untalented to paint them and hence just leave them totally white, then hang them next to each other, you have modern art worthy of a place in the Pompidou.
If Salvador Dali expressed himself in words rather than with paint he’d likely be in an insane asylum. That dude did some wacky stuff.
Sophie’s drool mechanism flows at a rate 10 times normal when you have her head placed over your arm and she’s board. She doesn’t cry. She just drools.
We finished there and headed off to find dinner, again too late to really find something that would make everyone happy so we settled on a KFC near the museum. It felt great to get off our feet.
If digital cameras didn’t exist Dad would go bankrupt buying film.

He's a picture takin' foo'



I know I get called a picture takin’ foo’ by Anneka all the time. But Dad has me beat by a long shot. We’ll be walking along together all of us and then look around and suddenly Dad is missing. He stopped to take a picture of something. He truly does find beauty in even the most unassuming places and that is evident thus far.
Anyways, we got back late again and all just fell asleep.

Sophie at the top of our metro station



Sophie at the bottom of our metro station



Day three - Versailles.
So, I set an alarm to try to get up a little earlier today and get a more timely start to the day since we’d planned to spend basically all day at Versailles. WE didn’t get up till ten and by the time we had breakfast and got out the door it was noon or shortly thereafter. So we hope on the metro and decide which stop to go to and for some reason the train, again, failed to stop there so we could make the necessary transfer to a larger train for the trip out to the palace. I can’t imagine the Pope was at that mundane metro stop like he was at the one the day before that screwed everything up then. So, we went a couple of stops further and took a different route to the right station to depart. We get to Versailles and the sun is out with only a couple of broken clouds and its setting up to be a great day. It’s about 1pm by the time we get there but no one is worrying since we think we’ll have plenty of time to see the palace interior then escape to the gardens to see the famed fountains shooting streams of water in all their glory. We’re waiting in a decent little line kind of shuffling closer and closer to some steps that lead up to the ticket room in a wing of one of the buildings. We just get inside the building and Dad starts feeling faint. Mom kind of catches him and then I see what is going on and I get under his other arm and he basically passes out right there. He went all rigid and unresponsive and a palace worker in an adjacent room saw what was happening and quickly asked if we needed help. I asked for a chair and she brought it over. We basically had to force dad into the chair as by that time he’s somewhat revived but was not responsive. This woman that noticed us spoke fluent English and basically called for paramedics as all this was going on. So, Dad drinks some water and starts to get his color back and totally revives and it’s as if nothing ever happened. But by then the ball was rolling. The ambulance pulls up and three paramedics come in. I start providing all the information I can to the gal that spoke English who then relays it to the paramedics. Of course there are charts and questionnaires being filled out and in the meantime they haul Dad off to see if he can use the bathroom. I thought that was strange but maybe there is something in someone physiology that is confirmed when they go to the bathroom. And, Dad did actually have to go so that made it seem OK. After about 10 minutes he came back and was all thumbs up and the paramedics made a call to the hospital. The doctor their recommended that due to his age and diabetes and other factors he should go to the hospital for some cardio work. So, another ambulance comes and Dad and I are loaded into that one were they take his blood pressure again and get some further details. Of course I’m kind of wigging out inside and can only imagine what Mom and Anneka are feeling since all could do was tell them we’d be back in a couple of hours and to meet us at that same place at 4:30. Seeing that Dad was chipper and feeling great again I was hopeful we could get back in time to still get in to see the palace and gardens and left Mom and Anneka there to go ahead and go in.
And with sirens blaring in that distinctive Euro siren sound, we were off. The ride there was about 5 minutes or so. I’d never been in the back of an ambulance before and never anticipated it would be in a French one carrying Dad from the ticket office of the Palace of Versailles to the hospital ER in Versailles. It was truly crazy. We pull up and Dad’s all wanting’ to hop out of the back of the ambulance and this like 6 foot 7 inch tall EMT is gesturing for him to sit down and let them take him in with a wheel chair. Thank goodness he’d only fainted and he wasn’t bleeding or anything really critical cuz’ we waited for about 2 hours in a little room with Dad all disrobed wearing only one of those really indiscreet cloth shirt/dress thingies. He had his blood pressure taken and they hooked up a machine to chart his heart function and what not and eventually the doctor came in to give him the word. He was totally fine and they didn’t have any medical explanation for what had happened other than he might have had a vaso vagal response meaning a simple constriction of the blood vessels and that caused the light headedness and the brief little fainting spell.
Of course we were relieved at the news that it was nothing serious. So, we took the electrodes off his body and he started pasting them on his head and I was popping off pictures. It was probably too irreverent a thing to do so soon after such a wacky and worrisome event as watching a 76 year old man turn all pale, go rigid and faint in the ticket line at Versailles.
We were allowed to go and in my best French I asked for a cab. I don’t speak French, so who knows what I really asked for. But I was able to communicate that my wife and mother were back at Versailles and we needed to get back there as soon as possible. It was straight up 4:30 at that moment and I thought we’d get back just a couple of minutes later. After waiting for like 15 minutes a cab pulled up and this couple that I’d noticed in the ER with us went to it, hopped in and took off. I was a bit miffed but how did I know that they didn’t perhaps order a cab too? And, that dude was in bad shape. He looked like he was in agony so I was able to relinquish the anger of the cab theft rather quickly. So, we waited some more. No cab came. So, I asked again, in my best French, “ C’est vous un Taxi avec moi sil vous please?” Of course I don’t know if even the word Taxi was recognizable given the substantial butchering of their language that accompanied every other sound that came out of my mouth in that same sentence. Somehow they understood and said they’d call another taxi. That one plain never showed up. By now 45 minutes had elapsed and still nothing. We walked to the main entrance of the hospital from the ER where I accosted yet another French person with my horrific petition for a cab only this time I used the time tested word “urgente” as a way of somehow saying, “I’ve been stiffed twice on this cab thing and I’m gettin’ miffed, can you get me a freakin’ taxi?” The lady called and said in five minutes it would be at this lower level round about to pick us up.
Five minutes in France translates to 25 minutes every where else. Eventually, after waiting over an hour for a cab, and now and hour later than we told the girls we’d be back, we finally hopped in a cab. It was nice one though. A big black Mercedes. Maybe he was the guy that came originally because when I got in the meter was already at 10 Euros, so he must have dropped the flag some time before. The cab ride was like 3 miles and cost 20 Euros (30 bucks) but in the grand scheme of things it didn’t matter. Dad was totally fine and we wanted to hurry and relieve the girls of worry since the last time they saw us Dad was getting loaded into an ambulance and being hauled off and all we could do was say we’ll meet you back here at 4:30, “Go enjoy the palace!” Like how would that be possible? To make matters worse, we all have phones that would have allowed us to communicate with each other but they were safe and sound on the dining room tumble in the apartment. If we’d had them we could have called the girls back and said we’d be late, go see the gardens and the fountains and what not. Instead they waited for us out front with all the tour buses and African dudes hawking those crappy Chinese made plastic Eiffel Towers on a key chain. So, they did go in the palace, I’ll have to have them tell about it tomorrow. But for the most part Versailles was a bust. But again, we’re just glad Dad was OK. In fact he started snapping pictures of the courtyard there practically the second he’d stepped out of the cab. I was fine with that as it proved Dad really was OK. WE
We ended up going to McDonalds to eat as by then, me and Dad were starving and it was getting stormy and cold. We got back here at like ten PM and watched some news and I started writing this, Anneka’s doing some laundry and Mom and Dad went to bed.
I’m sure tomorrow and the rest of the trip will be fine but that was WAAAAY more drama than any of us want for a long time. We just have to get Mom and Dad to eat more snacks and drink more water to have the energy to go places and do things. I really think this was just a bad reaction Dad had to some pain pills he’d taken in the morning because his foot was aching the night before. So, we’ll keep an eye on him and make sure he looks and feels at the top of his game. Course, he looked and felt that way this morning for the most part before all this happened. So, we told him to let us know in advance if he’d going to faint again so we can make arrangements…

Where's little miss Sophie?



Here I am as a bed, again



Sophie meet Vince, Vince, Sophie




More later. Good night for now.

All of us soaking up the sun, finally, near the Loover



A couple of star struck lovers we spotted in the Tuileries near the Louvre

Sophie's blessing day

Last Sunday we finally got around to blessing Sophie, afterwards we had all the family over for lunch, it's a tight squeeze to fit 45 people inside my kitchen, luckily the kids hung outside. Thanks to everyone who came. For more pictures you can look at Kami's blog. I didn't take many.

Call me Crazy

So in one week we leave for Europe this time taking Sophie with us as well as Chris's parents. We are hitting the big 3... Paris, Rome and London. Everyone says we're crazy to take a baby on such a long flight. We did get reservations on the new SLC - Paris direct flight but it is 11 hours long. I just hope Sophie sleeps in my lap as we didn't get a seat for her or hopefully there will be an empty seat they can put us in. I know we will mess up her sleeping schedule which is now a pretty decent 6-7 hours at night but it's an adventure right? We are teaching her to be a good traveler. She even has her own passport! We had lots of offers from family to watch her at home but we can't leave her for 2 weeks. We will keep you posted on how it all goes. The adventure begins Sept 10th.