Musee d’orsay - hour long line outside
Dad starts genius trend of using map for sun protection
Liana curious how name labels get established, eg Chanel, Ralph Lauren

Impressionism exhibit is amazing. Van gogh, gaugin, degas, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Matisse, pissaro, cezanne, seraut.
Museum shutting down because of missing bag.

I purchased an Eiffel tower in construction magnet for my boss.

Lunch at cafe l’horizon. This cafe is close to the garden luxembourg. I had a sandwich and a hoegaarten. It was delicious. Liana had nutella crepes and was very pleased. Dad had panini and a Stella Artois. Mom had water.

Luxembourg gardens
Very peaceful and pleasant. Mom had some passion fruit ice cream.

After we had a rest back at the hotel. Around 8:00 we left for the evening’s activities.

Mont parnasse
Very bohemian. Reminds me of upper east side. I love it here. Lots of street art and artists. Mont parnasse is Up on a mountain. Mont = mountain. Photos of the sacre coeur. Bought a beret for Jenn and coasters for turner. Bought myself a paper panama hat, like most of the kids seem to be wearing.

Dinner at la boheme. I had a tasty salad and water. Liana had steak and fries. Dad ordered crepes. Mom is splitting liana’s dinner. Our waiter has a thick accent and a big personality. He has family in Harlem.

In the elevator going down to the metro station at abbesess, I grabbed a photo of an image of Obama scratched on the side of the elevator.

I have diacovered aomething about the parisian metro; you have to push the button to open the door on the Paris subway. I was almost trapped a couple of times.

Today, we visited the Eiffel tower. I got many images of it from many angles, and some images of the family in front of it as well. The tower is pretty impressive in person.

From the tower we walked to take a river tour on the Siene. The sky was bright, and the sun is intense. It was also really hot. I became dehydrated and cranky, so I bought a bottle of water and covered up with sunblock.

We took the Bateaux Mouches siene river tour. Before getting on the boat, I taught Liana the photo fundamentals of street photography.

Finally we got on the boat. After staying at the head of the line, we secured a spot at the front of the top deck. We were accompanied by a swarm of very old Asian tourists, complete with cameras they appeared not to know how to use. There was one gentleman in particular, who must have taken about 2,000 images. And managed to keep both his elbows out the entire time, making it incredibly difficult to photograph around him. He also managed to irritate dad by standing in front if him the entire time.

After the boar tour was over, we walked Gallerie Lafayette shopping center. It is one massive department store occupying several buildings. It has a really cool rooftop terrace, and is located near the madeline section of Paris. From the gallerie we walked around and looked for a restaurant. On the way, Liana, who had been wearing a dress, managed to blindly walk over am exhaust vent for the metro, and pulled a Marilyn Monroe. It was pretty entertaining. We ate dinner at Chez papa. Fantastic food. Southwestern French cooking is the stuff that can warm your soul. Liana and I split a massive salad. It was incredible.

After our delectable dinner, we walked through the garden in front of the louvre. Eventually we reached it, and I snapped some photos of the three glass pyramids in front of the Louvre.

From there we stopped at a Flea market near louvre, where I bought a really cool tan flat cap. From there we went back to the hotel for a little siesta.

Later in the evening, we went back to the eiffel tower for the night show. Our vantage point was across the river and to the right of the bridge. The show is for 5 minutes and starts at the top of the hour. The tower is covered in strives and they flash in different patterns. The tower looks as if it is sparkling. I also Taught dad the joy of long exposure photos. He thought the light shimmering off the water was really cool.

Midnight beer at cafe. Edelweiss beer. Very tasty

Easy drive from luxembourg. No traffic. Gps fail. Again. Found hotel by luck. Learned that Parisian drivers are utterly nuts. The Hotel room is really tiny. Ate dinner in the Latin quarter. Walked past the notre dame. At the restaurant, we experienced our first shitty waiter (to me he shall remain nameless) and our first really cool multilingual waiter Eric. After dinner, we walked past a famous left bank (of the Siene) bookstore (Shakespeare). Apparently they housed people there during WWII.
After that, we walked back to the hotel. Today was kind of uneventful.

Heidelberg is a pretty town in a valley along the river Neckar. I could see myself returning. The town is part old and part new. Our hotel was in the old part. There are streets lined with little cafes and biergardens. The people seem to enjoy a relaxed pace. The town is home to a very old university which I did not get the name.

We walked around Heidelberg a bit more and bought another schneeballen. Afterwards, we took the tram up to the schloss. The schloss is a very old castle, and schloss is the German word for castle. While the castle has not been used for a very long time, it now houses a museum of pharmacy history, tracing the history back several hundred years. I took many pictures. The view from the castle was breathtaking. I have some images of the whole town.

After the castle, we left for Luxembourg. Dad was in a big rush to get there. On the way we stopped in a small town named trier. It was quaint and we had pizza at a small cafe. Dad was in a big rush to get back on the autobahn.

We finally arrived in Luxembourg a few hours later. I slept most of the way. Our hotel was some 10 minutes outside the city. I should take pause to note that Luxembourg is the name of both the nation and the city. For the most part, Luxembourg looked like what we had seen in Germany, with the major difference being that in luxembourgers speak French. The hotel room was small and the wifi did not work. Also, no air conditiner, which bothered mom. This frustrated me, because I have been trying to make plans to meet up with a friend who is doing a summer seminar in giessen, in Paris, where we will be going tomorrow we plan to meet up.

Later in the evening we drove into Luxembourg. My father, behaving like a stereotypical american (in almost all respects, he is not, but in this instance, he was) decided it would be brilliant to drive around the city, and look for a parking spot. However, my dad was not examining a map and not looking for street names very carefully. As a result, we spent the next hour and a half circling through Luxembourg like a bunch of clueless tourists. At one point, we were nearly cut in two by a city bus making a blind turn.

After we parked, we happened upon a Brazilian restaurant. The owner was really nice, and points out some interesting areas to visit. We went down into the valley by way of an elevator. In the valley, there were some nice restaurants, and we ate dinner.

Left this afternoon at 1. No traffic to o’hare. Parked the car at a hotel. Short lines at the airport, but the gate was hot and not air-conditioned. The plane arrived on time. I sat behind the rest of the family, next to a statistics professor from the university of Chicago. He was really nice, and we had w great conversation.

The flight was about 8 hours, and I barely slept.

We arrived in Frankfurt at about 10:30am local time, got out car and drove an hour to Heidelberg. The gps is not the most accurate and we missed the exit to the hotel three times. When we finally arrived, the hotel was really nice.

We spent the afternoon exploring the old part of the city. After touring around, we had dinner at a small cafe. I had a local beer. They make Weiss beers in that part of germany. We were sitting outside when it started to really pour. After having a special kind of cold cut salad, we walked around some more. we took some photos at the main bridge in the city.

We passed a small bakery and my mom bought a special kind of pastry called a schneeballen. It is basically a baked ball of pie crust trimmings with sugar and cinnamon. Very tasty.

After a while it started to sleet and hail, so we hid in a gift shop. Once it let up, we ran back to the hotel.

Later, we stopped at a cafe and had a beer. We met a nice young man from Nuremberg. He was eating a flat meatball dish, that mom was curious about. She ordered one but the restaurant had run out, so we ate the schneeballen instead. He said he worked doing it, and was in town for training. He spoke his English and German with no accent. It was nice to talk to him.

After having been up for some 30 hours, I really enjoyed my sleep

today started out shitty, and then things took a turn towards left field and into the looney bin. I started out this morning, waking up to an email from the girl i’ve been dating the past 2 weeks, telling me that she does not think a relationship is going to work. so, basically, before i even get out of bed this morning, i’ve been dumped.

This turns out to be the second highest point of my day.

i get into work on time, and as soon as i log in, and before i get settled, my boss starts peppering me with a zillion and one things to do and she wants them all done yesterday.

as soon as i get all these things written down i get a phone call from the front desk, the deputy director from the transit system is here, unannounced and without a meeting scheduled, and he wants to meet with my boss, who is not there, so he decides he wants to talk to me. as soon as this is complete, the director of DPW pulls the same stunt, and then after that, the highways manager decides to do the same thing

finally after a morning of pointless meetings, which could have been handled in a rather brief series of e-mails, i get back to my desk

only to find out my boss has had a media request for all emails regarding a few things, so the chief of staff’s assistant is on my computer searching through a bunch of emails. It does not help that she is kinda nosey and it stresses me out having her in my office on my computer

as she is doing this i get a phone call from a guy who is not in my district telling me how he thinks the county should restructure itself around public transportation, outlining the same structure that it basically already has, and telling me that we ought to do what “otto von bismarck did, when he unified germany” (otto von bismark, if you do not know, fought several wars for german unification about the same time as the american civil war), thus when i pressed him on this further, his whole thing fell apart

then finally, my boss shows up, with her youngest stepdaughter who is like 6, cute, and does not speak english. Her husband is from uruguay and the daughter comes up here for her summer, which is our winter

my co-workers, being the nosey individuals they are start finding excuses to knock on my door and stop in. all. morning.long. Consequently,this puts me behind on things

and then things start to get weird

i get a call from my counterpart at the county exec’s office that a large heavyset man stopped in looking for my boss. According to my friend, he was holding a belly dancing book and said that gwen stefani told him to find her and give her this book. my friend said my boss worked in a different office and sent him down to our lobby, but called me to give me a head’s up.

I had our receptionist stall for a few minutes while i told my boss to hide. and i finally go out to the lobby to meet him.

he said that nick nolte told him that gwen stefani told him to confront marina, my boss, about a possible copyright infringement, and wanted to know if my boss was the girl on the cover of this book. this guy musta been about 6 feet tall and heavy set and did not seem to be entirely there; he had sort of an out of focus kind of gaze. he wanted to know if my boss was the same as the girl on the cover of this book, and told me he thought my boss was pretty. 

i informed him that the girl on the book was not my boss and he just leaves.

and i’m just left there standing in complete and utter shock, because all of this happened in the span of like 4 hours.

anyway, the afternoon rolls around, my boss gets out of committee and leaves

the chief’s assistant gets done with her scan

and people finally get out of my hair

and i leave early

and go home

and open my mailbox

only to find a small bubble-wrapped package

it’s from my good friend emily, who lives in portland. we had gone to college together and stay in contact

she decided at random to mail me some cookies

and i nearly fell on my knees and cried.