Anybody out there?

Saturday Afternoon Walk

After over a year, there is still fun and new things to discover walking around our neighbourhood, on a Saturday afternoon

P & D play amongst the Velib bikes. Velib is a public bike rental programme in Paris. There are over 20,000 bicycles and 1,450 stations, roughly one station every 300 metres throughout the city centre, making Vélib’ the largest system of its kind in the world. The bikes are free for the first half hour, with a nominal rental fee after that. Our late night/early morning attempts to use the bikes have yet to be successful unfortunately. When we finally figure it out, it will our late night journies home, a whole lot easier.

Bridge girls
The kissing Bandit strikes again

Our monthly ET shot

Playing in the leaves outside the Palais du Tokyo.


D plays hide and seek among the exhibits at Photoquai. Photoquai is an outdoor photo exhibit, held on the banks of the Seine at the Musée du quai Branly. The exhibit shows the work of 50 contemporary photographers from around the world, little known photographic talents in European terms, who come from the major geographical areas represented in the collections of the musée du quai Branly : South America and Latin America, North America, Asia, Oceania, Africa and the Near and Middle East. It's a pretty cool exhibit. This was my second visit and I will probably go back before it closes.
http://www.photoquai.fr/en/

The girls join a Peruvian gang at Photoquai

P moves in closer to determine if the subject is actually living. The girls are still at odds with their conclusions.

Malta

To kick off the first of our many school holidays this year, The BC family headed off to Malta, a small island, just south of Sicily. Our primary motivation in choosing Malta was that Rupert’s great grandfather, General Sir Charles Bonham-Carter, was governor of Malta before WWII. With the country’s location being only a two hour flight from Paris, now seemed like the perfect time to go and uncover some BC history.

Not much bigger than Amherst Island, Malta is jammed packed with forts, stunning churches, ancient ruins, medieval towns and friendly people. As well as hitting the island's top attractions, we had fun playing detective and tracking down where Great Grandfather BC lived, worked and entertained.

Coincidentally, P’s best friend in Paris, also has a family connection in Malta and they (the Kingston family) were also visiting while we were there. We had a great time together, and Mike's knowledge and enthusiasm of Maltese history was a big bonus and very helpful.

We spent our Sunday morning with the Kingston’s at the local market at Marsaxlokk. The market itself hugs the shoreline of a beautiful bay, filled with the traditional multicoloured Maltese boats called luzzus. Absolutely the most beautiful location for a market I have ever seen!

P, happy as a clam to be sitting with her BFF and enjoying the bay full of boats in Marsaxlokk.

D & P with P's BFF in front of a Luzzu near the market

Rupert, P&D walking in the footsteps of Sir Charles in front on St.John's Co-Cathedral.

Inside St.John's

Rupert finds Great Grandad's name in the list of British Govenors, at the Grand Masters Palace, Malta's house of government located in Valetta.

Rupert and the girls in front of Hagar Qim, one of the ancient temples of Malta. The Maltese temples are the oldest standing stone structures which remain to us from ancient times. The temples date from 4000 - 2500 BC. They are older than Stonehenge, and the Pyramids.

P outside St Anton’s Palace, former residence of Sir Charles and current residence of the President of Malta.

Outside the gates to the gardens of San Anton's Palace.

Marketing

....Hmmmmm.....How can I take a tiny pumpkin and sell it for $8 instead of $1?

I know, put it in a box and sell on the streets of Paris, to expats desparate for a Jack-o-latern.

Brilliant!

La Poésie

Today P had to recite her first of many poems this year, to her entire class. La poésie is a staple in French education, we've heard that schools start this practice as young as age 4. Our little 6 year old orator ended up with an A-, apparently a point was deducted for lack of volume.

We asked her to do a rendition for her online fans. Here is it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsEnJDdWCjw. Bravo P!

Ecole Camou

Our summer in France ended quite eventfully and full of visitors. A trek down to the South West of France to visit friends, followed by house guests The McGeachie family, Munroe's and then John Bonham-Carter was a great way to end the summer.

The school year is in now full swing and full of new challenges.

This year, after months of tortured contemplation over school selection, we decided to put D back in her old bilingual Montessori and P into our local French public school. D is happy as a clam, to be with all her old friends and teachers. Her return to school has been met with nothing but smiles.

I wish I could say the same for P. She is faced with a new big school, big class, no friends, a rigid structure, the loss of her Montessori freedom and she doesn’t speak the language. She hates school and dreads going everyday.

A case of pneumonia two weeks into the school year didn’t help matters much. Now, after a week and half off from school, she is finally better and back facing her demons.
I had heard so many negative stories about the archaic French education system (according to expats), I figured how bad could it be? I know kids who go and they seem just fine. It’s not like we live in a rough neighbourhood. Most of it was untrue, thank goodness and there are lots of pluses to the French system, the focus on art and music for example.

Some of the old fashion education values do linger. The children call their teacher Maitress (which means master), they are not allowed to go to the bathroom during class time under any circumstances, their very adult lunch is served to them and they must eat everything on their plate and then, there is P’s Friday teacher.

P has a Maitress 4 days a week who seems to be quite lovely, not at all the corporal punishment type that I was warned about. But Fridays is a different story. Severe, very strict, yells all the time, including when the kids do their work incorrectly (Non French speaking kids included).

P’s biggest obstacle though seems to be making friends. Friends are the most important thing to P and she is usually quite good at making them. But I guess when “princess” is the game du jour in the school yard, a lack of the local language does seem to pose a problem. When your six year old tells you that she walks around the school yard by herself every lunch recess (which is an hour and half), and is peppered with another little girl punching her, I don’t know who is more tortured, the little girl or her mother hearing the story.

Am I having doubts over our decision to send P to French public school? Yes. Some kids handle these things better than others and you don’t know until you try.

She’ll get there.

Hang in there P, we love you and it's going to get easier!

La Parisienne

My first international road race - what a day! Over 15 000 woman took to the streets of Paris today, to take part in La Parisienne 6k. The European running moms; Vanessa, Andrea and myself ran like a still wind and soaked up the fun and spectacle of the most entertaining road race I have ever ran.

Live music was a-plenty with bands seranading us starting well before the start line and throughout the entire race. The music of the day was mostly african drummers, which I highly recommend if you want to get your groove on, while your running the streets of Paris.

Ottawa running moms, you would have fit in just fine here with your tutus. I wish you could have been here to join in on the fun.

Check our our little of vid of the race on youtube. Vanessa is the blond, Andrea with the smile. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLhuRt4oJv0

Tuscany

Any vision of Tuscany, I have ever had, included rolling hills, vineyards, rustic villas, olive groves and medieval towns on top of mountains. Well, I was right.

We stayed at the Villa Vigmaggio, hotel, vineyard, olive grove, the place where Mona Lisa grew up and the Movie “Much a do about Nothing” was filmed. It was great!! Each of our mornings was spent site seeing in a nearby town followed by hours by the pool, playing tennis or tasting some of the establishment's lovely Chianti. The location was perfect for us. It was our idyllic country break from the city, but within a 45min drive from Florence, Siena, and San Gimignano.

Our pool with a view

A feature of each of our eight days in Tuscany included amazing drives up and down, through the winding, steep roads of the Tuscan hills. The roads themselves were full of cyclists, all geared up in bright colors, with an occasional fat guy in an undershirt. We saw at least 100 each day, the majority who appeared to be over fifty years old. How they endured the 100 degree heat doing this excrutiating exercise, is beyond me.

San Gimignano
The beautiful small medieval town of San Gimignano was a lovely stop for a morning walk and lunch. We toured the rustic streets, listened to street peformance and like the rest of the tourists hopped from one side of the street to other, to catch some shade. The great thing about medieval towns is that high density and narrow streets = lots of shade, cause it was hot!!!!

Rupert in San Gimingnano, with his daily fix of gelato.

Florence
Since Florence was less than a half hour away from our villa, we spent two of our days visiting the grand cathedrals, Palazzos, admiring the numerous statues (including Michealango's David), walking the back streets and eating gelato. Our first trip was on a public holiday so the streets we dead. "Wow" we thought, we can take this opportunity and actually drive around Florence on completely empty streets. Little did we know there was more than one reason the streets of Florence were void of vehicles. Entrance to the city centre in a car requires a permit which is enforced by cameras. Each time a car passes the perimeter the car is fined a 100 Euros. We have no idea how many times we wove in and out of the perimetre, we are still waiting for the bill from the car rental co - OUCH!

The girls in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

Girls in front of the Duomo, Florence

Pisa

Last stop Pisa, to see the tower.

Quick Visit

We are a bit behind on our posts, but every visitor must appear on the blog, so this one is worth posting late.

Our nieces from Canada were in Paris for a couple of days and we we fortunate enough to steal away one from them, while they were here. Thanks for squeezing us in, it was great to see you!

Rup with P&D and their cousins the Goose & N. outside of our apartment

Tuscany finally booked!!

Mary Jo’s 40th birthday present was a trip to Tuscany, but until this week, we had not been able to get it booked. On Aug 13th we take EasyJet flights from Paris Orly to Pisa where we pick up a car and head for the Chianti region in the heart of Tuscany near Greve for the week. We are staying at the Villa Vignamaggio which dates back to the 14th century. http://www.vignamaggio.com/index.html It seems perfect, and is rated #2 of 19 in the Trip Advisor Popularity Index.

The Italian chapter for the adventure is only 11 days away -- woo hoo!!