May, the month of Insanity

Lordy! This has been one hell of a month. For four weeks straight, I have either been enjoying house guests or traveling. I joked today that I need a vacation from other people's vacations! But, it has been tons o' fun. I'll give the breakdown of who, what, and where:

Three Houstons in the House

Sarah came at the beginning of May to visit us and to finally see the Eiffel Tower (the girl has been dreaming of the thing since she was a wee mite). She got a whole lot more out of this trip than she bargained for, I think. Despite cold and rainy weather during her first week here, she put on her walking shoes and saw the town. Here we are doing the quintessential cafe meal at a little place right across from Notre Dame:

After a week in Paris, I spirited Sar away to the south of France for a little girls' rendez-vous with the McCombs women, Karen and Jamie. We left the filthy and foul Paris weather for a little Aix-en-Provence sunshine and enjoyed pastis, rosé and our nice hotel patio for three days of heaven.


After one night back in Paris, all three Houstons left for a four day trip through the Loire Valley. We rented a car and drove around to the castles. We had GORGEOUS weather and a lot of excitement, including getting the car stuck in the mud and having a tractor pull us out! Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of that, but I do have some other nice shots.



Santorini, i.e. HEAVEN

Two days after Sarah left, we left too-- headed this time to meet up with the Harmons and the Kavaileros in Greece. Dimitri and Sara arranged the whole trip, and we could not have had a better time. Santorini is absolutely beautiful. We watched the sunset every night from our balcony overlooking the Aegean sea. We chartered a boat for an afternoon of sailing, swimming, and sunning. We laid on the black sand beaches and drank mojitos made by the very nice and very competent, Dionysos. In short, it was the best vacation I think I've ever been on. When do we go back?







Bauchieros in Paris

Two days after returning from our Grecian holiday, Kerry and Ryan Bauchiero came to visit. We had a lot of fun exploring Paris together, including a chocolate tour of the Right Bank's lesser known yet completely delicious chocolatiers. Let's just say that was definitely the perfect way to start their visit. Ryan and Kerry are such sports, they even agreed to ride the Velib-- Paris's rent-a-bikes. There's nothing like risking your life in Paris traffic to get the blood pumping or to get a real Parisian experience.





So, the guests are gone and I'm tired! It was a great month, not the least reason being that Jon found out yesterday that he's going to be completing his internship at the Ritz! That's right-- the Ritz hotel in Paris! I am so proud of him and all he's accomplished in the six months we've been here. I certainly can't wait to see what the next six hold for us.

A Visit to Venice…In London

Last weekend, I escaped my crazy apartment life to enjoy the British bank holiday (i.e. Steve had a free day off) with the newly wedded Harmons. Along with their friends (nicely, now my friends), Tamara and Kris, we trooped over to Paddington on Saturday to a part of London known as “Little Venice. The moniker comes from the obvious similarity it shares with the original city—canals. Before the days of roads and rails, the Thames was the major means of goods transportation to and from the capital city. Accordingly, a complex system of levees and canals developed. The best remaining example of this once great system is Little Venice. Saturday was the area’s annual canal boat cavalcade and festival. The lure of sunshine and street meat was too strong for us to resist, so off we went to join in the fun.

The weather was gorgeous and the setting very pretty. All the trees and plants were new and fresh—the weeping willows hanging over the lovely stone bridges that crisscrossed their way across the canals made for an almost storybook atmosphere. We wandered for a while up and down the canals—touring a few of the narrow boats (thus named because of their small size, necessary to travel up and down the canals without getting stuck) and checking out the vendors. After a while, the call to eat, drink, and be merry overcame us, so we found a place on the banks to park ourselves and decided to let the action come to us.

From the our excellent vantage point, we could watch the boat parade, examine the amazing amount of dogs out for a stroll, and pity the poor parents pushing strollers full of hot and whiny kids through the crowds. We were also able to get some sun (a phenomenon I had disparaged of ever having the chance to do again) and enjoy sausages, fresh cider (which had a decidedly barnyard quality for which I did not much care), and white wine.

As if street meat and cool drinks weren’t enough to make our day, the onslaught of a troupe of Morris dancers surely sealed the deal. I have no idea of the history behind Morris dancing. What I do know is that we derived great pleasure from watching these beribboned and black-hatted men prance around in front of us with bells on whilst trying to whack each other with sticks. They even had a jester who interspersed yelling things at the audience with joining in the dance. It was obvious that these men were having a great deal of fun, not mainly because they were all imbibing freely from the pewter tankards each man carried. After their performance, more than one member of the audience spotted them a round. Not us, though—we’d already spent all our money on rounds of our own.