July 23- Paris

We didn’t get breakfast in the hotel because we had to pay extra for it and, judging from the room, we didn’t expect it to amount to much. We took a little extra time getting up this morning because we were all tired, but once we got up we went to the nearby McDonald’s for breakfast. Then we relied on the kindness of strangers to help us find the train station and get us to the historic Ile de Cité part of Paris.

We had Rick Steves as a guide on our mp3 players again, and Julie and Scott were following his “Historic Paris Walk” tour. It starts at Notre Dame cathedral, and it was not hard to find once the Metro dropped us off. Mr. Steves’s narration told how the cathedral itself took 200 years to build and asked us to imagine how a tiny medieval village could muster the resources to devote to building such a structure. We examined many of the exterior details on the façade, including the gargoyles, before we ventured inside. Like Milan, the interior of the cathedral strikes our modern eyes as being very dark. The grey stone of the exterior is continued throughout the interior. However, to look at it through medieval eyes in the days before electricity, it probably looked very bright. The large stained glass windows of gothic architecture were an innovation for the time, allowing much more light into the interior of a church. Certainly the enormous space had to be impressive to medieval eyes. The arches of the ceiling are ten stories high. You can climb to the level of the gargoyles for a view of Paris that the hunchback would have enjoyed, but the line was too long to wait in. Perhaps we’ll see Quasimodo’s view some other time.

After a stroll through Notre Dame, we had lunch in a little restaurant on the Left Bank. …OK, it was a Subway, but that’s not the point. It was in fact a little restaurant on the Left Bank, so there. We returned to the cathedral and continued our stroll around it. The Deportation Memorial at the end of the island remembers the 200,000 French who were taken away by the Nazis, never to return. Unfortunately it was closed when we were there. Instead, we followed Mr. Steves back over the Seine to the Left Bank again. Anna bought several more scarves and she and Emma both bought little clocks with “Paris” on them. The pretty French girl who waited on them gave them both little Eiffel towers on key chains.

We were finishing a stroll through the Latin Quarter and were looking for the Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore, when we heard someone yell, “Scott!” It turned out to be George Olmsted who is a social studies teacher at West Seneca West Middle School, our sister school. He and his wife are just starting a month in Europe. As it turns out, they were following the Rick Steves tour too. We traded stories for a few minutes and we each took some pictures to remember the chance meeting on the Left Bank.

The three girls got some sorbet and ate it by the large statue of the angel Michael killing a devil at Place St. Michael. From there, we continued back across the Seine. Scott was a little disappointed that we didn’t see the inside of Sainte-Chapelle because the stained glass and light is supposed to be amazing. We started to wait in line but it was enormously long, and we couldn’t see that it was moving at all. The church shares the space with the French Supreme Court, and the gendarmes moved the line because it had gotten so long it was blocking their traffic gate. In the move, we lost space as people jostled ahead and we still didn’t see that the line was actually moving, so we decided to press on. On the far side of the building we sat in the little park called Place Dauphine and watched while a judge or a lawyer got his portrait taken in his robes on the steps and while someone else was interviewed for TV news. We crossed the Seine to the Right Bank at Pont Neuf, the “New Bridge” that is now actually the oldest bridge in Paris. We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Louvre.

As we’ve been scurrying through Europe over the past few weeks, we’ve occasionally wondered not at the things were pausing to see, but at the things we were flying past and skipping. In our efforts to see the “Greatest Hits” of what Europe has to offer, we’re certainly aware that we are driving past an enormous number of sites. Why aren’t we stopping to see them? We pick and we choose trying to see the highlights that we can. If we’re ignoring something that’s older than America itself, it’s partly because there are so many of those buildings to choose from. Some stand out in our American consciousness. The vast sea of other potentially interesting sites haven’t been pointed out as interesting too, or more likely, in our ignorance, we miss things that we should have seen. If any of these individual sites were anyplace else on its own, we’d probably stop and gawk and take pictures just like we do at the most famous sites. But we just plain don’t have the time to see everything. The Louvre is like a microcosm of that experience, distilled and intensified. Like so many other tourists visiting for the first time we have to fly by masterpieces without even a glance and ignore entire wings of the gigantic museum because there’s just no other way to do it. Rick Steves helped guide us to a few of the Greatest Hits of the Louvre, but it was really the tip of an iceberg that we could hardly begin to chip at.

We walked through the courtyards of the huge building from the back, and proceeded to the big glass pyramids at the front of the building where everyone enters. Julie appreciated being able to check our day bag for a while and free up her arms. No sooner had she done that than Emma fell asleep, and Mom had to carry her around for much of the Louvre instead. Rick Steves’s tour starts with some of the Greek art, but it seems that this wing is being re-done, so it was a confusing start for us. We certainly caught up with his tour in time to see the Venus di Milo. Like all of the highlights we visited, she was so surrounded by tourists that she was hard to get close to. Not only that but it was hard to move away from her without walking in front of someone trying to frame a photograph. Flash photography is forbidden, but other than that picture taking is allowed. Scott certainly enjoyed that and took a lot of video as a result, but it does seem that there was never a pathway that didn’t cut in front of someone trying to take a picture. We continued through the ancient Classical world to the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Even headless and broken, it’s a dramatic statue, made even more-so because of its placement at the top of a grand staircase. This position also gave more people a chance to photograph it.

After a few other stops, which included seeing the French crown jewels in the Apollo Gallery, and some medieval masterpieces, we entered the Grand Gallery. This gallery contains works from the Italian Renaissance, and it is off of this gallery that the Mona Lisa is displayed. We werenall so glad that Emma woke up by that point. We were anxious to see how she would react. A few months ago, she was awake when the beginning of “The Da Vinci Code” was on TV. The murder takes place in the Grand Gallery, and one of the clues is written across the Mona Lisa. Since then, she has associated her face with something scary and foreboding. For a while she was really freaked out by it. We couldn’t resist teasing her how we were going to see the real Mona Lisa when we were in Paris, but we actually were helping desensitize her to it. When we passed copies of it for sale on the streets of Paris, she would just scream for a comic effect. Her reaction to the real painting was the same that many tourists seem to have-- she was under-whelmed by it. Actually, we’ve read and heard about how so many people are surprised at how small it is, that we were actually surprised at how large it is. We had come to expect something the size of a postage stamp. It is behind glass, which causes a bit of a glare, and one is tempted to just check her off the list of required sites, but Rick Steves’s commentary coaxes a little more from her. “Mona doesn’t knock your socks off,” he says, “but she winks at the patient viewer.”

We worked our way through other Italian masterpieces, and into the French wing. Then we called it a day. In less than two hours, we had gone to many of the stops on the highlights tour, but even then, we got lost on some and skipped others, while noticing a few gems on our own along the way. That’s the Louvre for you. That’s Europe for us.

We had a long way to go back to the hotel, and we had done a lot of walking. Scott’s feet in particular were causing problems, and he had a hard time keeping up with the others as we crossed the roads. We found our way back to the Metro, made our transfer to the trains and back to the suburbs where our tiny closet of a hotel room is. We had Kentucky Fried Chicken along the way. Yes, on our first day in Paris, we ate McDonald’s, Subway, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. It may be Scott’s way of avoiding eating snails like the girls expect him to.

July 22- Disney Studios Park- Paris

The girls really enjoyed the hotel last night, and even more this morning. Even though the outside of the hotel is very bland and generic looking, the circus theme is carried throughout the interior of the hotel (though not as gaudily as Circus Circus in Las Vegas). Our breakfast was attended by a giant monkey. Anna and Emma got their picture taken with him, then went swimming in a really cool pool. The kids’ pool had a slide in it, and Anna and Emma had the entire pool area to themselves for the time they were there.

But there were bigger plans for the day. Disneyland Paris is bigger than it was when we went to it in 2001. The original Disneyland Paris park is like the Magic Kingdom in Florida. Most significant to us, there is another whole park that has been added to it-- Disney Studios Park, which is analogous to the Disney-MGM Park in Florida. The new park was our destination for today, partly because it closes at 6:00 and we have reservations in a different hotel for the next four nights that we have to find.

For a while there were news stories about how “Euro Disney” was very poorly attended. Never fear. Whatever problems it may have once had seem to have been solved. There were crowds of people there today. The new Disney Studios Park is a bit different from the Disneyland Paris park in its design, and that might add to the crowd problems. For example, in the original Disneyland Paris park, there are no less than 44 attractions listed on the park map. The Disney Studios Park only has 14 attractions on the same map. On the surface, we thought this would be a very quick park for us to see. However, a large number of those 14 attractions are shows that start at a certain time, only let a fixed number of people in, and are only given a small number of times during the day. To complicate matters, some of the shows have times that they are performed in French and some times that they are performed in English, and some that they are performed in other languages. There are very few of the traditional rides that have a continuous flow of people through them. The result is that there are very long lines for those attractions, and the general flow of people in the park is not up to Disney’s usual standards. As it was we were there from shortly after the park opened at 10:00 and until shortly before they closed at 6:00 and there were still several things we didn’t see.

At previous visits to Disneyland in California, Anna collected autographs of the various characters that she met, and apparently she liked doing that. She wanted to do it again. So, the first thing that we did when we entered the park was to visit the gift shop to buy one of the special photo albums/autograph books for today for the girls to share. Minnie Mouse was already out by her limousine, and the girls stood in line to see her. Sulley, from Monsters Inc., was around the corner. The girls got their picture taken with him, but his paws were too big to hold a pen.

We also had to get our family picture taken. One little Frenchman tried took our picture on the way in, and we expected him to give us a ticket to see it and possibly purchase it later. Instead, he was carrying a printer in the sack he had around his shoulder and wanted to print some for us right there. We walked away from him. (We were also surprised to see peddlers at the same spot outside the park gates on our way out. They were selling decidedly non-Disney junk. Disney Parks in California and Florida wouldn’t allow this on their property.) Anyway, we asked a family if they would take our picture and we returned the favor for them.

The Disney Studio is the first building that you enter and it acts as a gateway to the park. Inside the large building is décor that is supposed to evoke old Hollywood landmarks. Really, it is just a large gift shop and restaurant, but while that’s not fundamentally different than the Main Street USA concept for the Magic Kingdom, it doesn’t seem to be as well executed.

The first real attraction that we went to was a show called Animagique. This is a live action show with Disney characters performing songs from several Disney films. It is framed by a story about Mickey and Donald drawing cartoons. Donald enters the animation vaults, where he meets the Pink Elephants on parade from Dumbo, King Louie and Baloo form the Jungle Book, and Sebastian and other sea creatures from the Little Mermaid. All this is done under black lights, making parts of the characters glow fluorescently. While Julie and the girls enjoyed it, it doesn’t really seem up to Disney standards. (Plus Dad got in trouble with an usher when he started to tape the show.)

We started in line for “Crush’s Coaster,” (from “Finding Nemo”) but the signs said it would be a wait of about an hour and a half. We decided to skip it then and come back to it later (though we never actually did ride it). We went to the Flying Carpets over Agrabah which, like the original Dumbo ride, has carpets that circle while Aladdin’s genie looks on. There are similar versions of this ride in other parks we’ve seen.

By then it was time for lunch. We had a some quick ham sandwiches, and looked for more to do. After waiting more than a half hour in for the flying carpets, we knew we had to be smarter. We got FastPasses for the Tower of Terror, which assigned us the specific time of 4:25 to return. Emma saw Cruella de Vile along the way and got her to sign the autograph book. We then took the Studio Tram Tour, which mimics the original tram ride at Universal Studios in California. It tries to take the best of similar tram rides at other Disney Parks, and has the big disaster scenes with fire and explosions and tons of water. However, this park is not really an active studio like the other Disney Parks and Universal Studios are, so there really isn’t any backlot to see. There are a few cars and props from productions that were done elsewhere. Anastasia liked the Dinotopia sets. But the trip was far shorter and not as intriguing as the other studio tours. Emma didn’t care. She fell asleep in her mom’s arms while we were waiting in line and slept all the way through the ride.

One of the best shows of the day was the Stitch Live show, which features the mischievous blue alien from “Lilo and Stitch.” He really is “live” and he talks to the host and picks on specific people in the audience. It was probably the favorite attraction for the family today, and certainly had us laughing. It was certainly worth waiting for the English language performance of this, and we had Mickey Mouse shaped doughnuts filled with Nuttella, apparently, while we waited. When the Stitch show let out, the Playhouse Disney Live performance next door was seating it’s English language performance so we walked right into that. In the past, at other parks, this show was hosted by Bear from “Bear in the Big Blue House” and his real-person friend “Jaime” (who could be either a boy or a girl). The show has been updated to feature more recent programs from the Disney Channel. It is now host hosted by the real person “Sammy” (or is it “Sammi”?) and her friends from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. They have stories from “Handy Manny”, “Little Einsteins” and “My Friends, Tigger and Pooh.”

The “Rockin’ Roller Coaster” was shut down for some reason, so Anna and Mom were disappointed by that. We tried the “Armageddon” Special Effects show, based on the movie. The people are pretending to be extras in the filming of the movie as a meteor is crashing into their space station. The set-up for this is all in French, however, and the space station area is realistic and loud. Emma and Dad were both not liking the experience. When we saw a father take his little boy out the chicken exit, we all followed.

The three girls used their fast passes to go on the Tower of Terror. Scott chose to stay behind. The tower is basically the same as at other parks, and drops you down an elevator shaft several times. Anna loves this ride from other parks and enjoyed this one the most. Emma hated it, apparently. Mostly, she didn’t like the ghosts that make up the story that you see before the drop. After that, the family tried to ride spinning ride based on the movie “Cars”, but because families were splitting up when they entered the ride, Dad was left without a seat, and watched the others on this ride too.

When we were driving through Paris last night, right after we saw the Eiffel Tower, and everyone knew where we were, Emma said she was looking for Ratatouille’s restaurant. We were all excited to see that his restaurant is actually at the Disney Studios Park and if you eat there, the little chef will come to your table to greet you. We knew that if we went there, it would mean not seeing other things, but after thinking about it and taking a vote, we decided to dine there. We were all disappointed when we got there and the doors were locked for the day. Emma said, “They are closed because they have rats. Actually, one rat.” Instead, we ate at “Annette’s” in the Disney Village. It is a 50s style diner and at least a few of the staff were actually on roller skates.

We left the park to look for our hotel. Anna couldn’t get over how “cheap” it is compared to last night’s four star hotel. It’s…. utilitarian. We’ve always said that all we need is a place to flop. This is a place to flop. It reminds Scott of dorm rooms before the students put posters on the walls, except that it’s much smaller. There’s a double bed for the adults and a single bunk bed over the top of it for the kids, except that the kids wanted to sleep with Mom. Scott didn’t trust the upper bed to hold his weight, so we took the mattress off of that and laid it by the door, the only spot on the floor big enough for it.

July 21- Omaha Beach and Mont-Saint-Michel

We ate a quick breakfast of croissants and crêpes and drove the very short distance to Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach is one of the five beaches that were the focus of the landings on D-Day, and the worst of the two that the Americans attacked. The US landing at Utah Beach went relatively easily, but the fighting at Omaha Beach was hard and casualties were high. At one point, General Omar Bradley considered pulling the troops out of this area because they didn’t seem to be able to advance further, but he left them in to continue to fight.

Today, Omaha Beach is… well, a beach. It was very peaceful when we got there. We had the beach almost to ourselves when we arrived, except for a few scattered local people walking their dog or jogging. The girls had worn their bathing suits and went into the English Channel’s water. They enjoyed the thick sand and the chance to swim. Meanwhile, Scott walked down the beach, listening to an audio book about D-Day on his mp3 player and trying to picture what had happened there 65 years ago. It was not easy. The peace and tranquility of the beach seemed so jarringly different than the carnage and hell that the soldiers experienced. Only the few monuments on the cliffs and the American flag that could be seen in the cemetery up above the beach seemed to hint that the beach was ever any thing different. In many ways, seeing the first half hour of “Saving Private Ryan” does more to help you picture this battle than this serene beach does. Still, Scott appreciated the walk and the moments alone with his thoughts and the girls appreciated the chance to play.

We knew that we wanted to go to one of the several D-Day museums in the area after we went to the beach, but we didn’t know which one. We went for a stop at the American cemetery first, and discovered that the visitor’s center there, run by the U.S. government, actually does a fine job of illuminating the events of that day. A short film called, “Letters,” puts faces and stories to a few of the thousands of names in the cemetery. A good museum display follows which uses many film clips from the time and some artifacts to tell more of the story. It tells about the planning and preparation for D-Day, the execution of Operation Overlord itself, and the following fight into Europe. All through the exhibit, the emphasis remains on remembering the individuals who gave their lives in these fights. You leave the museum section through a stark, grey tunnel where the names of all of the soldiers in the cemetery are read off slowly and continuously. You then enter a large, white, oval-shaped room that is very quiet. In the center, behind a box shaped divider and lit by a skylight which creates a world of its own, is a soldier’s rifle fixed with a bayonet. The bayonet is stuck into a pile of stones that appear to be from the nearby beaches, and hanging from the standing rifle is a soldier’s helmet. If you might not know, it doesn’t take much to guess that this is the symbolic way to mark a soldier’s battlefield grave. After this museum, there did not seem to be anything more that other museums could say.

When you exit into the cemetery itself, you get a feeling of tranquility. The meticulous landscaping captures your attention first. As you wind through the path, you have a view from the cliffs of the same Omaha Beach that we visited earlier this morning. Continuing on, the large memorial with its soaring figure is on your left, and a tranquil reflecting pool is on your right. Beyond that are the rows and rows of crosses marking the graves themselves. There are many people taking pictures but none are talking loudly. Julie said that the trip to Dachau is sad in a very depressing, disturbing kind of way, but the trip here is sad in a teary kind of way. Scott agreed.

We got into the car and drove to our next stop. After a lunch at McDonalds and a bit of a drive we came to Mount-Saint-Michel. The abbey can be seen from a long way off and its profile is unmistakable. The church’s gothic spires reach to the sky from the top of an enormous rock that juts out from the bay. People in the Middle Ages saw Mont-Saint-Michel as the way the New Jerusalem will look, as heaven on earth. The abbey is old enough to have been pictured on the nearly 1000 year old Bayeux Tapestry that we saw yesterday. Because of the rocks that it is built upon, it was also an impregnable fortress.

While we arrived at Omaha Beach early enough to have it almost to ourselves, we must have hit Mount-Saint-Michel at the time when every tour bus in Normandy was there. The streets around the mount were packed with people. As you approach the mount, you walk down a long cause way. It was low-tide, so the causeway and rock are surrounded not by water but by a slick, slippery mud. In spite of the signs warning of the dangers of venturing out on the mud, many tourists were exploring out there. Julie and Anna joined them. Both of them slipped, though only Anna went down, and the thick mud stuck to her hands and ankles. She was lucky that she didn’t get dirtier, but even so we had to find a place for her to clean up.

We immediately began climbing stairs, because there is no other way to move on the island. No flight of stairs is very long on its own, but they wind up and around the rock in maze-like patterns to take you to the level of the abbey. Just below the abbey, we stood in line and paid admission. We were tired, but after climbing that high, we weren’t going to leave without seeing inside. The church is not decorated as ornately as some we have been in. The gothic windows at the front are not stained glass, but because of that they add a lightness to the stone building. A small garden is surrounded by a meditative walkway, where the monks who lived here could travel from building to building. We explored the complex, and then descended different sets of stairs then we had used at the beginning. The final obstacle is the gauntlet of tourist shops that pack the medieval buildings that crowd the lower part of the island and the throngs of tourists that pack the street in front of them. We expect that Mont-Saint-Michel is better appreciated when you stay at one of the hotels on the rock. Like in Rothenberg ob der Tauber, that would allow you to explore the island in a more solitary way in the early morning or late evening instead of among the crowds tourists. This time, however, we were four of those tourists elbowing our way over the rock.

We were tempted to stay and watch the famous tides roll in, as they are supposed to be some of the fastest and most dramatic in the world. There were already people being forced to leave one of the parking lots because of the impending water. However, we had already booked a hotel quite a ways away for tonight, all of us were tired and one or two of us were grumpy. So we decided to press onward. We grabbed a disappointing dinner at a rest stop. We arrived in Paris late enough to catch an interesting glimpse of the illuminated Eiffel Tower. We zipped around the city, passing many neon lights and tall buildings. “They’re freaking me out!” Emma said, trying to describe how excited they made her.

Perhaps we were a little giddy with the ability to have Wi-fi Internet in our room this morning, but we booked a hotel for tonight through it. We arrived at our circus themed hotel quite late. The girls have a bunk bed that has curtains around it that resemble a circus tent. When they close it, they have their own TV in there too. They are finishing their journals together now, then we’re all going to sleep.
We ate a quick breakfast of croissants and crêpes and drove the very short distance to Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach is one of the five beaches that were the focus of the landings on D-Day, and the worst of the two that the Americans attacked. The US landing at Utah Beach went relatively easily, but the fighting at Omaha Beach was hard and casualties were high. At one point, General Omar Bradley considered pulling the troops out of this area because they didn’t seem to be able to advance further, but he left them in to continue to fight.

Today, Omaha Beach is… well, a beach. It was very peaceful when we got there. We had the beach almost to ourselves when we arrived, except for a few scattered local people walking their dog or jogging. The girls had worn their bathing suits and went into the English Channel’s water. They enjoyed the thick sand and the chance to swim. Meanwhile, Scott walked down the beach, listening to an audio book about D-Day on his mp3 player and trying to picture what had happened there 65 years ago. It was not easy. The peace and tranquility of the beach seemed so jarringly different than the carnage and hell that the soldiers experienced. Only the few monuments on the cliffs and the American flag that could be seen in the cemetery up above the beach seemed to hint that the beach was ever any thing different. In many ways, seeing the first half hour of “Saving Private Ryan” does more to help you picture this battle than this serene beach does. Still, Scott appreciated the walk and the moments alone with his thoughts and the girls appreciated the chance to play.

We knew that we wanted to go to one of the several D-Day museums in the area after we went to the beach, but we didn’t know which one. We went for a stop at the American cemetery first, and discovered that the visitor’s center there, run by the U.S. government, actually does a fine job of illuminating the events of that day. A short film called, “Letters,” puts faces and stories to a few of the thousands of names in the cemetery. A good museum display follows which uses many film clips from the time and some artifacts to tell more of the story. It tells about the planning and preparation for D-Day, the execution of Operation Overlord itself, and the following fight into Europe. All through the exhibit, the emphasis remains on remembering the individuals who gave their lives in these fights. You leave the museum section through a stark, grey tunnel where the names of all of the soldiers in the cemetery are read off slowly and continuously. You then enter a large, white, oval-shaped room that is very quiet. In the center, behind a box shaped divider and lit by a skylight which creates a world of its own, is a soldier’s rifle fixed with a bayonet. The bayonet is stuck into a pile of stones that appear to be from the nearby beaches, and hanging from the standing rifle is a soldier’s helmet. If you might not know, it doesn’t take much to guess that this is the symbolic way to mark a soldier’s battlefield grave. After this museum, there did not seem to be anything more that other museums could say.

When you exit into the cemetery itself, you get a feeling of tranquility. The meticulous landscaping captures your attention first. As you wind through the path, you have a view from the cliffs of the same Omaha Beach that we visited earlier this morning. Continuing on, the large memorial with its soaring figure is on your left, and a tranquil reflecting pool is on your right. Beyond that are the rows and rows of crosses marking the graves themselves. There are many people taking pictures but none are talking loudly. Julie said that the trip to Dachau is sad in a very depressing, disturbing kind of way, but the trip here is sad in a teary kind of way. Scott agreed.

We got into the car and drove to our next stop. After a lunch at McDonalds and a bit of a drive we came to Mount-Saint-Michel. The abbey can be seen from a long way off and its profile is unmistakable. The church’s gothic spires reach to the sky from the top of an enormous rock that juts out from the bay. People in the Middle Ages saw Mont-Saint-Michel as the way the New Jerusalem will look, as heaven on earth. The abbey is old enough to have been pictured on the nearly 1000 year old Bayeux Tapestry that we saw yesterday. Because of the rocks that it is built upon, it was also an impregnable fortress.

While we arrived at Omaha Beach early enough to have it almost to ourselves, we must have hit Mount-Saint-Michel at the time when every tour bus in Normandy was there. The streets around the mount were packed with people. As you approach the mount, you walk down a long cause way. It was low-tide, so the causeway and rock are surrounded not by water but by a slick, slippery mud. In spite of the signs warning of the dangers of venturing out on the mud, many tourists were exploring out there. Julie and Anna joined them. Both of them slipped, though only Anna went down, and the thick mud stuck to her hands and ankles. She was lucky that she didn’t get dirtier, but even so we had to find a place for her to clean up.

We immediately began climbing stairs, because there is no other way to move on the island. No flight of stairs is very long on its own, but they wind up and around the rock in maze-like patterns to take you to the level of the abbey. Just below the abbey, we stood in line and paid admission. We were tired, but after climbing that high, we weren’t going to leave without seeing inside. The church is not decorated as ornately as some we have been in. The gothic windows at the front are not stained glass, but because of that they add a lightness to the stone building. A small garden is surrounded by a meditative walkway, where the monks who lived here could travel from building to building. We explored the complex, and then descended different sets of stairs then we had used at the beginning. The final obstacle is the gauntlet of tourist shops that pack the medieval buildings that crowd the lower part of the island and the throngs of tourists that pack the street in front of them. We expect that Mont-Saint-Michel is better appreciated when you stay at one of the hotels on the rock. Like in Rothenberg ob der Tauber, that would allow you to explore the island in a more solitary way in the early morning or late evening instead of among the crowds tourists. This time, however, we were four of those tourists elbowing our way over the rock.

We were tempted to stay and watch the famous tides roll in, as they are supposed to be some of the fastest and most dramatic in the world. There were already people being forced to leave one of the parking lots because of the impending water. However, we had already booked a hotel quite a ways away for tonight, all of us were tired and one or two of us were grumpy. So we decided to press onward. We grabbed a disappointing dinner at a rest stop. We arrived in Paris late enough to catch an interesting glimpse of the illuminated Eiffel Tower. We zipped around the city, passing many neon lights and tall buildings. “They’re freaking me out!” Emma said, trying to describe how excited they made her.

Perhaps we were a little giddy with the ability to have Wi-fi Internet in our room this morning, but we booked a hotel for tonight through it. We arrived at our circus themed hotel quite late. The girls have a bunk bed that has curtains around it that resemble a circus tent. When they close it, they have their own TV in there too. They are finishing their journals together now, then we’re all going to sleep.