Super Size Me!

What a night!  Last night we had one of those French dinners I’ve heard tell of!  We left at 7:15 and got home around 12:15/30.  I was ready to lay my face on that plate of stinky cheese and sleep somewhere around 11:00.  It was a lovely night and I enjoyed meeting all the people that were there.  I never quite did figure out who did what or where they worked, at those things it’s always amusing because they assume you do what they do, but I don’t.  J  So there is an assumed knowledge right off the bat that makes for some baffling conversations, once we got thru those parts tho it was great fun.  Heard some funny stories and had an altogether lovely evening.  SO, dinner went like this.  When we got there there were h'orderves (canopies of all sorts), next there was the entrée (which in France is the second h’orderves – crab w/ whip cream or fois gras) then there was the main course (scallops w/ saffron and rice or lamb and ratatloie ), then there was the next thing… can’t remember if it has an official name, but it was different cheeses (I really hate to admit it, but they were all beyond nasty – the smell was horrific and the taste was even worse… so sue me), then there was desert (chocolate cake or strawberry mint soup) and then there was coffee, and then there were desert h’orderves.  It was quite the goings on, I tell ya.  I looked at the menu and thought – 2 hours minimum… well, not quite, 4 hours was more like it.  J  The building was AMAZING.  Art deco and crazy neat.  Built in 1906 and as someone pointed out, probably the oldest building I’ve sat and ate food in.  It’s interesting, they have so much history here.  The gentleman I was talking with this about is British and he was married in a church from the 10^th century… I think I have that century right…  Fascinating.  Also, Nancy's Christian Loubitons made it to the mother land, a moment of silence please:

Speaking of fascinating, on the way to dinner we drove past the presidents home!  It was awesome! And interesting because it was on a street with high end shops on the other side.  You definitely wouldn’t expect it to be what it is if you didn’t know what it was… hmmm… that’s a sentence.  It was a fanatabulous area.  I couldn’t have purchased a Kleenex on that street.  Amazing.  Oh yeah, and Paris has twice annual sales – kind of like Victoria Secret or Holly’s shop for men.  The peeps get all excited.  As well they should, it’s the two times out of the year you might be able to afford something there.

We finally got home, the streets of Paris were packed.  Every street you went down at midnight, was filled with people eating and chatting and smoking.  We made it back and headed to the room where I started packing for the next day!  Had to get all my liquids in one bag so I could take them with me and an outfit and tickets and passport.  It always makes me nervous, AM I GOING TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING?!  So, got that done, finished up the blog and headed to bed!

This AM started and headed out to the car to be whisked away to the air show.  The guy who was driving (Quincy) is awesome.  We jibbed and jabbed the entire way.  He’s American, but you wouldn’t know it from his accent.  His father was in the military.  He was born in Palo Alto, CA and was dying for some beef jerky!   Lol.  He talked about it numerous times.  I was trying to talk him into making it himself, but I think he’d rather just have the real stuff.  He invited Nick and I to come stay w/ him the “next” time I come!  J  Giverny (Monet’s gardens) are his back yard, so he might regret making the offer.  J  He’s lived everywhere on God’s green earth (Houston, Dallas, Hollywood – FL, Costa Mesa, Germany, Africa, Paris to name a few), so he was fascinating to chat w/.  The person I am traveling with had work to do so we stopped out here for his meetings, which was great.   I did the conference room scheduling for the show so it was nice to see what I had worked on and it was nice to meet people that I have worked with for years in person it was also nice to see old friends from my sales days that I only get to see every great once-in-a-while.   So, from there we made our way to the airport to head to AMS!  It was a short flight from Paris to Amsterdam, but I was pretty tired.  I closed my eyes for a few min, they gave us a Pepsi and a cookie and we were there.

It was evident when we got there that the Dutch are very tall people – especially coming from Paris where people are very petite.  And from there it became even more evident that the Netherlands is super sized!  There were cows that appeared to stand a foot or two taller then any cow I’ve ever seen.  In the field w/ the super sized cows there was a rabbit.  Jan-Marie kept clarifying that it was a “hare.”  It really looked more like a pig w/ pointy ears it was so ginormo.  It was very bizarre.  So we’re driving around the super sized farm animal area and there is a dilapidated castle.  I’ve seen castles in books and never thought much about them, but it was utterly amazing to see in person.   I wasn’t expecting it to be so interesting.

Unfortunately you can't really tell here how big the cows are. 

Jan-Marie and I continued on to her home w/ her stopping every so often for me to take pictures of this or that.  Poor girl pulling over on the side of the road all the time. 

We got home and dropped a few things off and then headed out the door for a bike ride.  To clarify, it turned out to be a 13 mile bike ride.  Yowaza!  I wasn’t expecting that.  But it was awesome.  We went biking thru the dunes in Bloomberg (I think that’s the name).  So we’re biking and biking and what do we see… a snail crossing the road… and guess what… It’s HUGENORMOUS!  So, we’re biking and biking (did I mention it’s a 13 mile bike ride??) and she says, “oh yeah, there are wild dogs out here, see them over there”?  Ummmm… no… so we bike a little longer, “how about now, they have fluffy faces”?  Well… I see some brown things…  “Yes!  Those are it.”  What I could see of the things I saw looked like those lion statues they have as pillars or decorations on either side of a gate, but real and very tall and not moving at all…  The wind was blowing pretty strongly and so I rode up closer to her and said something to the effect of, what do these wild dogs eat out here… (OMG, I’m cracking up myself right now)… She looked at me strangely and said, “they graze on the grass”?  So now I’m sure she’s crazy.  I felt the need to clarify, so these wild dogs out here eat grass?  I’ve never heard of such a thing.   Blank look.  “What wild dogs”?  The ones up there… they have fluffy faces… “No!  I said wild steer.”  Well…. That clarified a few things.  I was also less concerned about being eaten alive by a pack of vegetarian cows that were twice the size of the cows we had just seen.  Oh yeah, did I mention how much larger things are here. 

The wild dogs:

So we continue on our trail and on and on and on. And then we round a bend and there we are and it was beyond worth it. As soon as I saw the water I misted up. I couldn’t help it. It was so beautiful. The sand was beautiful, the water was beautiful, the sky was beautiful. It was heaven. I kicked off my shoes and headed for the beach. And with teary eyes took a bunch of photographs. Some things are so moving a camera won’t do them justice, but I wanted to share a glimpse of what it was. Jan-Marie is originally from New Zealand, so it wasn’t as impressive to her as it was for me. She said she forgot I was “kind of inland.” That made me burst out laughing when she said, yes, kind of indeed. So we got back on our bikes and headed into town. Grabbed a bite at her home and sorted the rest of the evening out and here we are now. J

Going to do a canal boat ride tomorrow I believe and see this and that and then back to Pari! 

Side note, I found out on this car ride why the homeless in Paris have dogs.  They have to.  They can’t sit and beg there if they don’t have a dog. Not all of the people begging had dogs, so, it must only be in certain locations. 

This is a thatch windmill.   The thatch is made out of hay.  A few of them homes have this type of roof as well.  Apparently fewer and fewer tho because they're a fire hazzard and expensive to insure, but people like them because they are like insultation and provide better heat.

Jan-Marie was telling me it was some sort of annual event that for four days students from all the schools come together and walk for different causes.  There were people trotting everywhere.

Also, everywhere: