Deborah and Jennifer on location
Clark and his father Ferg, part of a large, wonderful family from Toronto, CanadaParisians are like New Yorkers in their love for their city. They think, "What else would you need? We've got it all." They mean their beautiful opera house, the largest museum in the world, the restaurants. They show this through their devotion to preservation. We discovered this and more on a three hour bus tour of the city. We didn't see an ugly building, which didn't surprise us. The French revere architecture as long as it's not too modern. Skyscrapers exist only in the suburbs.
Parisian monuments are a bit heavy on Napoleon and the military. Our reaction after being reminded of France's three revolutions (Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the Reign of Terror, Napoleon the imperialist dictator, and then King Charles) - didn't the French people learn from their own history, and did they forget all the negatives that accompany having a king?
The cruise director who communicates with us over the ship's intercom sounds like the woman's voice from the television series V. "Bon Appetit. We are at peace always." And speaking of V, we've fallen in love with a 9th grade boy from Canada named Clark; we've never met any other earthling child like him. He has bright, wide eyes and a broad smile (See picture above.) He's fully engaged with the world and the people around him. We ate dinner with him and his father our first night on the ship, and he is one of our preferred dining companions.
Parisian monuments are a bit heavy on Napoleon and the military. Our reaction after being reminded of France's three revolutions (Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the Reign of Terror, Napoleon the imperialist dictator, and then King Charles) - didn't the French people learn from their own history, and did they forget all the negatives that accompany having a king?
The cruise director who communicates with us over the ship's intercom sounds like the woman's voice from the television series V. "Bon Appetit. We are at peace always." And speaking of V, we've fallen in love with a 9th grade boy from Canada named Clark; we've never met any other earthling child like him. He has bright, wide eyes and a broad smile (See picture above.) He's fully engaged with the world and the people around him. We ate dinner with him and his father our first night on the ship, and he is one of our preferred dining companions.
We realize we're on a cruise filled with patriotic Americans on their way to Normandy, but you'd be shocked (or maybe not) by some of them and their conservative parochialism. Here we are soaking up the French culture on a Swiss ship stunned into silence by one woman asking Deborah, "Are there any Americans left in Miami?" She changed the subject after Deborah responded, "What do you mean by Americans?" At breakfast another man denounced Mexican immigrants, illegal and otherwise, and cheered the "high-profile(ing)Arizona law. We recommend he watch the film A Day Without a Mexican.
Can't get away from it even in France! Stick with Clark.
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