France and Belgium!

Question: why doesn't Paris smell like pee anymore? Answer: Because they have ingeniously instituted free, public washrooms. I guess that's our way of saying, we began this summer vacation in Paris. For those of you who don't know, we kyboshed our plan to go to Israel for obvious, but nonetheless sombre, reasons.

Our arrival and departure to and from Paris were fraught with unanticipated costs. We were told there would be traffic, what we didn't expect was that we'd be zipping along at an average rate of 5 km an hour for about two hours with the metre running. Eventually, our cabbie, who'd missed his son's speech pathology appointment for this, took pity on us and stopped the meter.

Our way out of Paris was no less harrowing. We rented a car to drive us to Normandy, and parked near our apartment and ran in for two minutes to grab our bags...Okay maybe those two minutes were more like forty five. When we came out with all our bags we could've sworn we'd misplaced the car. We should've known better- this is the second time our car has been towed in France. A shop-owner saw a tow-truck take our car moments earlier, and directed us to a pound claiming he was "1000% sure it's there". As Aviva said: "never trust someone who is 10 times more certain than the maximum amount possible". As we now know, in Paris they'll tow your car away for just about anything, they'll tow your bicycle away, they'll tow YOU away if you're not careful.

Paris itself was lovely as always. Still the smells of cigarettes and espressos; still the scenes of wine and cheese at the seine; still vendors with questionable permits selling mini Eiffel Tower key chains; still the police chasing them into the metro. We ate beautiful meals and did another fat tire bicycle tour of the city. It became evident to our tour guide that Aaron, our resident history buff was quite knowledgeable about French history, and he ended up turning to him as his "fact-checker".

When in Paris, we decided to do shopping, because quoi d'autre? Aaron tried to find jeans, and the shortest length he could find was 38 inches length, with a 24 waist. This would be appropriate if Aaron was an anorexic basketball player.

We finally made it to Versailles, a place none of us had been to before. The palace is ornate, massive, and truly breathtaking. It's amazing the scale of what you can build when you're using the peasants' taxes. But the gardens are a very pleasant public park now, though that was unlikely Louis XIV's idea.

For the most part, our waiters have defied the "snooty Parisian" stereotype, but for our waiter in a cafe in Versailles. It's not customary to tip waiters in France. After our waiter made it eminently clear that we were nothing more than irritants throughout the meal, this was the only waiter who felt it necessary to explicitly say that we CAN leave a tip simply by leaving it for him in cash.

In Paris, shocking amounts of: graffiti, begging, and homelessness. There seemed to be a small impoverished village living underneath a highway overpass. And...guerrilla subway performances where mediocre musician enters subway car and subjects captive audience to an impromptu concert. These were highly variable performances, followed by the expectation of money in the hat.

After retrieving our towed car from the pound, we drove west to the beaches of Normandy. We stayed in a small coastal village, Luc sur mer. There we went to the newish Canadian museum at Juno Beach that gives a Canadian perspective on the events of D-day.

We got an excellent tour of the beach and the German bunkers by a co-op student from university of Waterloo! He really knew his stuff (and he figures he knows somebody who knows somebody who knows our nephew/cousin, Andrew).
The next bit is actually kind of upsetting. We had a picnic lunch outside the museum and while we were there we witnessed a family doing some pretty abusive stuff with their young child. Actually it was the grandmother who was being abusive and the parents didn't intervene. She actually said to the father, "why do you keep asking me questions? What are you, the FBI?" Aviva went to the museum employees to try to advocate, but soon after that the family had left.

On a couple of occasions in Luc sur mer, Rob went to buy stuff for our breakfasts and lunches. He saw these amazing sausages with signs that said, "Duck", "Rabbit", "Bison" & "donkey" - yes, donkey sausage, you can actually buy that in Normandy; yum. When Rob dared to ask whether any of these were free of pork, he got a lecture on how all sausage is made with pork, otherwise it isn't sausage, no exceptions! Needless to say, we passed on the donkey/pork sausages.
Another time Rob and Aviva inquired in a fruit stand about where we could get some fromage (cheese). They were point blank told, "There is no fromage in Luc Sur mer!" Dumbfounded, they replied, "No fromage in the whole town?!" The fruit seller pointed to be fromage sitting on a shelf in his shop and humbly said, "Well there's that fromage over there, I can sell you" - which turned out to be absolutely awesome.....as has been the other food here:

On from Normandy we took a train to Brussels where we took another bike tour. We thought we were supposed to meet the group in front of the Beer Temple. Not surprisingly, that turned out to be the meeting place for the beer tour! And so we had a mad dash to meet our group around the corner.

Later that day we did make it to a lambic brewing company (the beer is naturally inoculated with yeasts that are in the air. It makes for a very sour beer, Aviva and Aaron actually liked (especially the stuff flavoured with raspberries or sour cherries). Ironically, Rob, who loves beer, hated the stuff, while Diane said, "I hate beer, but I don't mind this one.

In Brussels we learned about the EU and the Eurocrats who make decisions in Brussels and then have to travel to Strassbourg in order to vote on them. We saw the sites – it’s a bit of a dirtier city, but also a very playful one. After all, this is the home of Tintin, the Smurfs and Manneken-Pis (the little boy fountain/statue who is peeing water - and twice a year he pees beer).

Here’s our section on cultural differences we’ve observed. WAY more B.O. here. Like seriously smelly people on the subway that are very nice and reasonably well-dressed. Oh, and the other day we saw a fine-upstanding looking grandma clutching her 2-3 year-old grandchild as he made a very large bowel movement, right there in the middle of a park. It gives “doggy bag” a whole new meaning!




We went to Bruges and biked around that way-too-pictoresque city

and finally had Belgian waffles…YUM! Now we're reunited with Noah, after his adventures on the Missinabi River. He flew over to Europe and we've headed off to Holland for more adventure.....

More updates to follow love,

RANAD