Vive la France

We got back from Paris a couple days ago. As cities go, Paris was, you know, ok.

I am lying my ass off, of course. It is amazing. As beautiful as you imagine it is going to be, and with a bunch that you couldn't have imagined.

For those of you who kept track of international events while we were gone, the Mick & Cory-specific headlines are:


We were not involved in the bomb threat at the Eiffel Tower, although we were at the Eiffel Tower the day before. Whew!

We were indeed involved with the Transit Strike/national protest of the proposal to raise the French retirement age to 62. These days French strikes would appear to be more for show than for real shut-down, but the fervor and popular involvement is impressive. [As election day approaches staggeringly quickly, I crave some of this passion here in les Etats-Unis. Seriously. Please do not consider not voting this November. And maybe do a little more than vote. Don't make me start whipping out the reasons why it's important not to cave to racist, hate-filled fear mongers.] What this meant to us was that we had to do some extra work getting from the airport to our hotel in the Latin Quarter. We'd done some advance homework, so were fairly prepared - made a train transfer that wouldn't have been needed on a non-strike day, which sent us to a different station that was a little farther away. And when we approached the location of our hotel, we saw a mass of people up on Boulvevard St. Michel. Like - a BIG mass of people. It soon became clear that the demonstration going on pretty much surrounded the place we were staying. We had a perplexed-tourist moment, noses in the map, trying to figure out how to get around it, when a very friendly student asked us (in English, no less) if we needed help. I said, something to the effect of "well, we need to get to Rue Sommerard, and we're trying to figure out how to get around the demo," and her smiling response was "just go through it." So we did. I have yet to go through most of the photos I took, but here's this shot I snagged with a phone camera of the scene:



Lots more to come...