Dateline France, 23 December 1990 Report 30 I guess 30 is a round number to end these reports on. Thanks to all of you who suggested I become a travel writer (unless the implication was I'd do better there than at my current job). It would be wonderful to keep writing about my trips (like the "Jul Wave", a Christmas tradition in the making I recently witnessed in Norway), but the time is not there anymore (witnessed by the delay in finishing these reports). First, various short items collected in the last few months before leaving. -In Grenoble, there are reader boards around town giving the current number of available places in the parking lots around town. -A new law was passed in France that will phase out the sale of alcohol in service stations (which are usually well-stocked with beer, wine and hard liquor). -The last time I went to a supermarket, there was a self-service scale for fruits and vegetables that printed labels for the bar-code scanner. -In the last weeks at INRIA, there was a lot of excitement over lunch tickets at the cantine. Increases in rates were proposed to cover budget shortfalls, with lots of accusations of people using the wrong class of tickets and subsidized tickets being used by outsiders. -Lots of school teachers seemed to be gone from school--so many in fact, that substitutes were not generally available. Hence some classes were just cancelled. Luke forgot to tell us that is French class was cancelled one day, and spent the morning in the Swedish class. It seemed to be a combination of them being called upon to proctor exams and scheduling elective surgery so it would conflict with vacation time. -The graffiti on walls and subway cars seemed to get worse in the time we were in France. -We saw a great new TV show that started before we left, called the Keys of Fort Broyard. Fort Broyard was built under Napoleon, and is perched on a rock off the Atlantic coast somewhere. A team confronts challenges in various rooms of the fort, which involve skill, strength, cunning or sheer willpower (drinking a cup of oil, followed by a cup of vinegar, followed by eating a bunch of red peppers). Think of "Rambo meets Beat the Clock." The team wins keys, which can be used to unlock strongboxes and scoop out money, until the tigers are released. -I saw another one-shot television show filmed in Le Vesinet. I recognized a house that was about four blocks from our apartment. -Luke's French got to the point at the end where he could make jokes in French. While playing with a rambunctuous neighber girl, he asked her mother if her name was Claire or Eclair (lightning). ------------------ In the last days before we left, I offered to look after the kids while Kaye had an overnight trip on her own down to Chartres. The kids and I went into Paris, to visit the Jardin des Plantes, near the Seine. The Natural History Museum is there, and we visited the parts on minerology and palentology. There was a special exhibit on giant crystals from Brazil (some approaching the size of refrigerators) and others on precious crystals and on agates. Plus we looked at the regular exhibits on minerals, shells and fossils. We saw the shells of Xenophorae, a genus of snails that embed other shells into there own symmetrically. (You try to build anything with no thumbs and all your muscles in your stomach!) The park also is extensively planted in gardens and flowers. There is a zoo, which had a white peacock, and also specialized in owls. The French have two words for owl, to distinguish the horned ones from the others. The residents of Paris dined on animals from this zoo during the siege of 1870-71. A day or two later saw a trip to the Jardin d'Acclimation in the Bois de Boulogne. It's mostly an amusement park, but you seldom see amusement parks this well landscaped in the US. The rides are all surrounded by flowers and shrubs. There is a small zoo, archery, rides (after seeing the fiendish intensity of Sarah on the bumper cars, I've decided she's not driving until she's 25), miniature train, boat rides, radio control boats, go-carts, playground, miniature golf and a bowling alley (not a big pastime in France). There is also the Musee en Herbe, which is a children's museum. The first part of it is about the five senses in the forest. The second part is a variety of musical instruments, which can be played by striking, spinning, stomping and so on. Adjoining the park is the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions. I thought it was an exceptional museum, and was sad to have left it to so late in the day, when we had to hurry through before closing. The first part talked about tasks of daily life through the centuries: beekeeping, horses, pottery, fishing, growing and processing grain, breadmaking, pottery, and iron work, among other things. The other part was the artifacts of daily life: good luck charms, parade costumes, games, village life, houseware, furniture, musical instruments. All the sections contained modern items as well. High on my list of museums to go back to. One Monday night before we left I went into Paris to visit the Louvre during evening hours. (We became members of the Louvre, so we could make several short visits instead of a few long ones. Plus, the cards give you reductions at museums all over France.) There were only four people standing in front of the Mona Lisa, as compared to 30 on up during the day when tour groups are coming through. I spent some time in "The Gallery of Awesomely Large Paintings," done by David, Reni, Gros, Delacroix, Ingres. Rubens had a whole room just for 19 enormous paintings he did for Catherine di Medici. I also visited "The Room of the Fancy Frames": all carved, all gilt. I saw "Le Radeau de la Medusa" by Cericault, which is immortalized in the Grevin wax museum. I also noticed a family of painters from Frankfort on Main named Van Valckenborgh (similar to my wife's name): Lucas, Frederick and Gilles. After that, it was my pleasure to get to drive the car up to Antwerp to have it shipped home. The taxi driver through a scare into me on the way from the drop-off place to the train station, claiming there was a strike on all international trains. Not amusing to hear the morning before your flight leaves, when you are in the wrong city. He was wrong it turns out, and I wonder if he was trying to scare me into booking his taxi all the way to Paris. Once back, the rest of the time was spent cleaning and packing, and not much sleeping. The kids were excellent on the plane back. Kaye and I fell asleep on each others' shoulders for several hours at one point, and they kept themselves entertained. As we cleared customs in France, a women came up and told them in French how much she enjoyed talking to them on the flight. Apparently they were busy making friends while we slept. While we had times of stress and aggravation in France, those memories are fading quickly, and the multitude of adventures and good times come to occupy our recollections. A couple days before we left, I asked Sarah, "After we get back to Oregon, and get back to our house and go to sleep and get up the next morning, what is the first thing you are going to ask for?" She shot back: "Can we go to France?"