Carly's visit....a loooong time ago, with apologies

So, Carly visited way way way back in February, around the same time that I stopped blogging completely for personal reasons mainly involving laziness and a fear of posting so many Eiffel Tower photos that everyone would get sick of it and not want to read anyway. She sent me tons of beautiful photos she'd taken shortly after her visit, and here is a selection of the first half. I hope to post some from the second half before too long. I'm sorry Carly!!! **I just checked back and see that all of my captions are off...I can't figure out how to fix it but you'll get the idea I hope.

Here's Lisa in her corner on the radiator, and a curious movie poster... it's Hasselhoff!!!

The name of this street translates to "road of the cat who fishes." Then there's Carly with her first real French baguette!!!

Carly with the Louvre pyramid. Then marks made along the Seine to show different flood heights. Ha, look, someone put "catsup '04." That is hilarious if you ask me.

Just a few of the many steps from hell in my neighborhood.

Carly with the Tower and Carly being jaunty.

Interesting piece of art and a really gorgeous photo of the Tower taken from the esplanade on the far side that I don't go to very much.

We took a tour bus all around town and it was really fun even if it was awfully cold sometimes riding on top.

Optician ads with monkeys.
















Thank you for visiting Carly! Love you!!!

more from the beach in no particular order

So, I had all these nice comments written but they came out in the wrong order so I will just write everything here. So we stayed in this town called Deauville. There is an American film festival there in late summer or fall each year. On the boardwalk there are little huts with names of actors and directors. Eric is standing by Burt Reynolds because I requested it, and I'm standing by John Waters because I'm from Baltimore. There are also photos of nice seafood we had, including sea snails which I was not aware that people ate, fancy bread shaped like an alligator, a really nice hot chocolate with 4 little desserts I had, and breakfast we had in our hotel room. There are also nice posters from the beach. One is of a dirty bird who is acting exactly how you shouldn't on the beach, one is of a dog telling his owner not to forget the leash while the owner tells the dog to be clean on the beach, and one is showing dog poo and someone put sand on top of the dog poo on the sign which made it look like real poo almost and it was funny. Also there are horses running on the beach because there's a racetrack in town and that's where they exercise. We also spent a lot of time in the little town next door called Trouville. It was less like a tourist place and more like a year-round place. Most of the restaurants we went to were there. There is also a mouse in a bag and a mouse with a hat on. Oh yes, and Eric with his favorite guy Flaubert, and a bird on Flaubert's head. Also Eric in his cute new fisherman's knit hat. Oh, and also this truck picking up a recycling thing. It was so cool. See, on the sidewalk, it just looks like a regular garbage can. But then it's attached to this big box that's hidden underneath the ground so it holds a lot, and the truck comes along and picks the whole thing up to dump it. Awesome! Which reminds me, when we first got there we saw a horse pulling a wagon with a bunch of glass bottles in it, so I guess they recycle that way too. Huh.

A