A strange evening in Lyon

I had not expected anything interesting to happen in the hours since the last post, but in fact plenty did.

We decided to meet Jenafer, Marty, and Nano for dinner. Since they don't know the city very well, we decided to meet them at their hotel, which as you will recall is right near the Part Dieu train station. We took the bus to get there. On the way, we were controlled; that is, transit agents inspected every passenger's tickets or passes. There were about eight agents on this control detail, all of whom were tough-looking men of above-average size. Two people on our bus did not have anything entitling them to travel, so they were taken off. If that happens to you, you can pay a large fine on the spot or an even larger fine later. Anyway, the two people pulled off were a tiny white girl and a skinny black man, so it was especially comical seeing them surrounded by the big agents.

I didn't take any pictures because you never, ever photograph French law enforcement officials at work. The law does not permit distribution of such images, mostly because of a justified fear of personal reprisals against officers doing their jobs.

Anyway, we got to the hotel. We decided not to go very far and ended up at the shopping mall on the other side of the train station from the hotel. We ate at Bistro Romain, which is the French equivalent of The Olive Garden. Now keep in mind that it's in France (where food tends to be better than in America) and that the cuisine is Italian (which French people do well), so it's better than The Olive Garden, but still, it's not the type of restaurant we frequent. But it does serve at all hours and is pretty accommodating of the young and old. So we had a good meal.

I didn't take any pictures because French law (la loi Potemkin, to be precise) prohibits publicizing that there are malls and chain restaurants in France.

We left before dessert because it was getting late for Eli and we wanted to pick up some groceries. We stopped at an independent supermarket on the Presqu'île. (I might talk about geography later.) There Ally ran into her friend Zoë. Zoë and Ally taught English at the Université de Lyon II--Paul Lumière during the 1999-2000 school year. They had lost track of each other since. Zoë lives in Lyon now; she's originally from the north of England. It was just such a coincidence to run into her. If we'd been a few minutes earlier or later, we would not have. We are going to try to meet up with her later this week.

I didn't take any pictures because Ally and Zoë wouldn't let me.

Back to Lyon

Today we moved out of our apartment in Aix. Jenafer and Ally did the bulk of the cleaning while Marty and I entertained Eli. They must have done a good job, because the landlady returned our entire deposit. We went out to the TGV station by taxi--the same taxi that had brought us into town. (We had called because of the driver's excellent service.) The train arrived about half an hour late, turning a comfortable margin into a pointless and dispiriting wait.

Eli had fun on the train. He mostly sat in a seat. We rode first class, our visitors having purchased a first-class rail pass, so the seat was huge.

Eli ate some of Ally's pan bagnat (tuna sandwich, basically a salade niçoise on bread). We had bought sandwiches in the station to eat on board. There are sandwiches and hot food aboard, but it's pretty expensive. Ally noticed that a smoothie and a shot of Ricard pastis cost the same (€ 3.90), which made us wonder if they would go well together. We decided not to try it.

The cheapest drink on the menu was a glass of vin de cépage--wine so undistinguished that it is known only by the variety of grape from which it is made, as in, "I'll have a glass of merlot." Quelle horreur! It used to be that the lowest grade of wine was vin de pays ("wine of country"), but varietals are truly wine of no country! (Look, I do not care what kind of grape the vintner used. That is a technical detail beneath my notice. Rhapsodize all you want about your pinots. I care where the wine came from, because that is the true measure of its character.)

We also had some of the bleu d'Auvergne, which I really thought Christopher had finished. If I am lucky I will get to go the Auvergne this week, maybe Le Puy-en-Velay. We will see. The countryside zipped by as we passed from Provence into Burgundy, and soon we were braking for Lyon.



Marty, Jenafer, and Nano have decided to spend two nights in Lyon before going up to Paris. They are at a hotel near the train station, to which they walked. We are back in our apartment on the Saône, which we reached by taxi. During the ride, Ally and I were remarking on how much better the weather seemed to be in Lyon than in Aix, where it had been hot and rainy. Here it was mild and clearing. We went into the Tunnel de la Croix Rousse and emerged in a downpour! So much for better weather.

At the apartment, the landlady, Stéphanie, saved the few things we left behind--tea, sugar, and other staples we hoped to use again. She is so thoughtful. We also brought a few items from Aix, so we can eat for a day or so without doing any shopping. Eli had fallen asleep in the cab and we managed to get him to nap in his bed once it was set up.

We think we will venture back into town to dine with Ally's family and perhaps buy some groceries. We're really looking forward to the arrival of Vic and Candie, my father and his wife, tomorrow.

Last day in Aix

Today was our last full day in Aix. We relocate to Lyon tomorrow.

Eli went to Aix's natural history museum today. Vic and Candie probably remember going there with us when they visited. The museum features fossils from all over Provence. Eli came home for lunch and napped while Jenafer, Marty, and Nano had crepes for lunch. He would probably have liked that, but he liked sleeping even more. After he got up, Eli and I bought diapers, then went with Jenafer and Marty to say goodbye to the boar fountain. Eli picked up the word "bo" almost immediately. I would really like to bring him back someday.

We ate out tonight at a restaurant on the Cours Mirabeau. Some highlights of the meal include Nano's assiete napoli, which was a sampler of Italianate favorites such as melon and prosciutto and eggplant parmesan; Marty's mojito sorbet; and the raspberry coulis that accompanied my fondant au chocolat (brownie). Eli got hold of a long spoon and, while no one was looking, managed to scoop up some of the coulis. When we get Jenafer's pictures, I'll add one to this post showing just what an accomplishment it was.

Tonight we will start cleaning the apartment so we can give it back in good condition tomorrow. We will really miss Aix and especially our apartment.

More rain in Aix

Eli got to ride on a train today, although it was just the petit train touristique. He, Jenafer, Marty, and Nano rode the full circuit, which included not only many of the streets of old Aix that we have been walking, but a ride up to Cézanne's studio.

For lunch, the four of them went to an Italian restaurant on the Cours Mirabeau. Eli did not like gnocchi, although it's unclear whether that was because of the sauce or the gnocchi itself. We will report more on this story as it develops.

Some of you may be wondering why I write so much about food. Well, in part it's because we are eating better than you are. That's not a taunt or boast; it's just the truth. We did not study the First Amendment in my Constitutional Law class, but I'm pretty sure it says you have the right to say anything you want as long as it's true. If you try to stop me, then that's called prior restraint, which means that whichever of us is the first to force the other person into one of the prescribed positions then has the right to force the other person to say "Uncle" or any other word the victor chooses. We alternate specifying the time, place, and manner of the contest. In the landmark case New York Times v. Sullivan, an Irishman named Sullivan was foolish enough to challenge the New York Times newspaper to such a contest and received such a drubbing at the hands of the Old Gray Lady that the Supreme Court declared newspapers can print whatever they want. 376 U.S. 254 (1964). Or something like that. Actual con law scholars should feel free to write in.

But the main reason is that my mom probably appreciates it. Mary and I went to Europe in the summers of 1999 and 2000. After the 1999 trip, Mom wanted to know about all the good things we had eaten. So in 2000 we kept a journal that focused mainly on food. (Mary's a nutritionist now--see the connection?)

In that vein, for dinner we had chicken cordon bleu, gratin dauphinois, and green beans with shallots. The first two we picked up premade from a boucherie-charcuterie (butcher-delicatessen); the third Ally made. Eli had some of the vegetables and another one of his meat-substitute patties. (We weren't sure how nutritious the cordon bleu would be.)

Here we are on our way to go shopping. That building behind is the Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs des Carmes, right on the end of our street. The Penitents were kicked out during the Revolution and it eventually became an art school. Since 1951, it's been an empty building. It is currently being rehabilitated for use as a multifunction performance and exhibition space.

Pictures

You might be wondering why there have been so few pictures of Eli lately. He's been spending most of the time with Jenafer, Marty, and Nano. Jenafer has a compact Olympus digital camera. It uses xD cards, which my computer can't read. No one brought a cable to connect it to a computer, either. So I'll have to add those pictures later.

Ally uses her Canon to take pictures at the archive. I brought our Panasonic mini-DV camcorder. Both of these use SD cards, which my computer can read.

As advertised, last night Ally and I saw "Sex and the City: Le Film." If you liked the show, you will like the movie. We went to the movie after having dinner with everyone else. Ally wanted Vietnamese food, but the timing just wasn't going to work. You can't usually be seated for dinner before seven. Eli needs to go to bed by eight, preferably by seven-thirty. And we had our movie at nine, and wanted to be early. So we ended up getting food à emporter (to go) from a traiteur. It was pretty good. We also tried the Mont Ste.-Victoire cake we'd been seeing at a nearby bakery. It's kind of like a loaf-shaped fruitcake featuring blueberries and wrapped in almond paste--kind of like marzipan but less sweet than we were expecting. It, too, was pretty good. Marty, who as some of you know used to work at a state liquor store in Utah, has been into this wine store lately. The owner has been picking out good wines for him.

Here's the little guy playing in the apartment. As I mentioned earlier, we brought his blocks. He really likes playing with them. Marty is sitting on the couch, which turns into a bed. If you like the household furnishings, you can get them all at Ikea.

Sex and the City: Le film

I just bought the tickets, so tonight Ally and I are going to see the "Sex and the City" movie--or as they call it here, "Sex and the City: Le Film." It's a good thing they put that French word in the title or audiences would have been confused.

When I bought the tickets, the receptionist made sure I knew the film would be in French. This is called version française (VF). Apparently a few theaters--none of which are in Aix--are showing it in English with French subtitles, which is version originale (VO). A movie is more likely to be shown in VO if it is serious, dramatic, or in some sense a classic. It may surprise you to learn that, among mass-appeal pictures, action films are more likely to be shown in VO than comedies are; I think it's because comedy audiences want to understand the dialogue whereas action audiences care more about the explosions. (Whatever the reason, we were able to see the Lord of the Rings, Matrix, and Star Wars movies in VO. For Harry Potter in VO, we had to go to Monaco, but there aren't many movie theaters in Nice anyway.)

"SATC" is, let's face it, a fluffy comedy spun off from a television series. In our country there is a dim memory that the series was first shown on HBO alongside such weighty fare as "The Sopranos" and "The Wire" and earned many awards before it was bowdlerized and put in endless repetition on TBS. In France, "SATC" went straight to late-night television. Needless to say, on television it was dubbed. Of course, this being France, they could show everything. So the audience expects to hear Carrie and the gang speaking French. The bottom line is that the movie will make more money being shown in VF. Some big city theaters will have it in VO, so we might see it again.

The film enters general release in France today, but Americans won't see it in their multiplexes until Friday. Why? In France, films premiere on Wednesdays--Wednesday is the French film industry's Friday.

In Aix with new faces

Eli got to spend the day in Aix with his new friends, Jenafer, Marty, and Nano. Eli doesn't really have names for anyone besides me ("da-da") and Ally ("ma-ma" or, recently, "mba-ba"). He learned to point to Aunt Mary and Uncle Chris, though, so maybe he'll get that far with more people.

Today Eli got up at seven and went to the market. Then he went around and had lunch with his visitors from Utah. I got to see him a little bit for his midday nap. Then we went shopping for dinner supplies. I put together a roast chicken, asparagus, and mashed potatoes for dinner. Marty, Eli, and I went to Crêpes-a-Go-Go to get everyone dessert.



This apartment has a shower only, so we bathe Eli in the kitchen sink. At first he liked this, then we made the mistake of draining some water while he was in the sink. That really freaked him out, and he hated going in the sink after that. Tonight Ally and Jenafer made the sink into a bubble bath. That distracted the little guy, and he lost his bathing anxiety. Eli's favorite part of bedtime is still brushing his teeth. He really gets into it.

Tomorrow's plans include the tourist train around Aix.

Transition

I didn't take any pictures today!

Mary and Christopher had to catch their flight home from Marseille today. The taxi came for them at four-fifteen in the morning. We imagine they got back okay and hope they'll let us know. Eli went looking for them when he got up at eight and was pretty disappointed not to see them. The weather was pretty foul in the morning but got better later on.

Ally went to work and I got to play with Eli all day. We went to the big Monop' again for groceries. The grocery department is on the lower floor, and there's no elevator, so it was a bit of an adventure for me and Eli. I got him some new foods that I hope he'll like. He enjoyed the meat-substitute patty I served him for lunch, and took to the baby biscuits as well. I treated myself to an old favorite: Sodebo refrigerator pizza. (French grocers know that not all apartment-dwellers have good freezers, so there are lots of foods that are meant to be refrigerated whereas in America we would only have a freezer version. That's not to say that frozen foods aren't also available in France; quite the contrary.)

Mary and Christopher left, but replacing them are Ally's mother Jenafer; her boyfriend Marty; and her mother Patricia, whom everyone calls "Nano." That's what Ally called her when she was a toddler, and the name stuck. They came down from Dijon today and will be with us in Aix until Saturday, when we leave, too.

We met our visitors at the Hotel Negrocoste, where Nano is staying, and brought them over for dinner. I made pasta with our lardon sauce. We've been making this since 2002. Ally reminded me tonight that we actually got it from the "Produce Pete" segment on the midday news when we lived in Nice. If there were lardons in America, we'd make it there. (You could dice rashers of bacon to get the same effect, but my Publix does not stock rashers.)

Tomorrow I will probably show Ally's relatives around Aix, including of course the Tuesday market, then work on my project.

Today is not Memorial Day in France. It is just a regular Monday.

Culinary roundup

Tonight for dinner, Ally made salade niçoise, as she has been threatening to do for weeks. We have learned that some of you haven't enjoyed this wonderful dish or are not familiar with its ingredients. It's like a chef's salad that includes--besides salad greens--tuna, green beans, hard-boiled eggs, boiled potatoes, and of course black niçois olives. The latter can be found in specialty food stores in the States, or virtually anywhere in France. Without the tuna and olives, you have made some sort of German-style salad--yuck! Who can resist throwing in some tomatoes as well? The dressing is usually the standard French thin mustardy dressing. French salads do not usually "star" the dressing as some of ours (caesar salad, anything with ranch or raspberry vinaigrette, etc.) do. We should note that the sweet tomato-based dressing called "French" in our country is not attested in actual French cooking. Having a choice of dressings is unheard of in France. Anyway, it is pretty good if you like those ingredients.

Eli does not, so he had a spinach omelette. French people eat omelettes for lunch and dinner, but never for breakfast. Cooked eggs for breakfast? Sacre bleu! Actually, we have seen that some cafés are offering breakfasts that include eggs and even bacon. They often call this "brunch." So you could come in at, let's say, eight, and ask for "petit déjeuner" (En. breakfast) to get bread and pastries; or you could ask for "brunch" (En., umm, brunch?) and you would get what we anglophones know as breakfast. You could do the same thing at ten in the morning, with the same result. I thought we had the G8 to prevent this sort of thing happening.

Eli also had strawberries. He demanded to have all the strawberries he could see put on his tray before he would eat any.

Many Provençal dishes include herbes de Provence. This is a spice mix first marketed in the 1970s that includes marjoram, rosemary, basil, bay leaf, thyme, and lavender. These are all grown in the region; lavender, in particular, is a major product of Provence. Just about any dish is improved by a dash of herbes de Provence. You can buy it anywhere in Provence, even at furniture stores and locksmiths.

If Rick Steves ever offers you herbes de provence or any other plant material, just say no.

Saturday in Provence: A Retrospective

As you know, yesterday we rented a car and drove north to the Luberon. That's the part of Provence made famous by Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence (1989) and several sequels by the same author. Provence is such a big area of France (cf. California) that it's hard to know what people are expecting when they say they are going there on vacation, but if they want the Provence of small towns, fresh fruit, and dramatic hill-and-valley terrain, then they want the Luberon, or more generally the department of the Vaucluse.

Our rental was a Renault Scénic, which is one of those small-format family hatchbacks that has become popular lately. (We rented a similar Dodge Caliber to get from our home to the airport.) Ally liked driving it, and it was comfortable enough, particularly if you were not in the back seat as these luckless individuals were. On the way out of Aix, we stopped at the Géant Casino, a "hypermarket" which is much bigger than any Wal-Mart or Target you may be imagining. Don't let the movies or the quaint markets you've visited fool you; real French people actually do their shopping in huge stores, where they get everything in bulk.

Our first tourist stop was Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, called the Venice of the Luberon because it has rivers and canals running through it. Europeans are fond of calling any city, town, or village "the Venice of X" on the slimmest pretense. Why, I wonder? I associate Venice with being lost, paying high prices, and wondering what you were thinking when you got on the train. Isle-sur-la-Sorgue has a better claim to fame, though. Most people know that Jim Morrison died in Paris, but they are probably not aware that a Doors song was inspired by Morrison's visit to Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, which translates literally to "Island on the Sorgue." (The lyrics were changed to make the song more marketable.) Ally and I spent most of the day singing "Island on the Sorgue" to each other. The joke never got old.

It was lunch time when we got to Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, so we pulled out the lunches we had made. Yes, we packed lunches back in Aix: sandwiches made with a horrible-looking, and therefore exquisite, purple tomato and mozzarella accompanied by fresh fruit which most likely came from the region we were visiting. It was happy to be home! We discovered that Eli is fully capable of --and very enthused about--biting into apricots and pears, so let him eat that way. His tiny bite marks are so cute when they're on fruit.

We had our picnic in a park on the Sorgue. Also eating there were some people from town, other vacationers, and the town's vagabonds with their dogs. This one guy very purposefully walked over to a garbage can, pulled out a can of beer, and drank from it, as if he'd left it there for later. He went on to pull out a bunch more and do the same thing, then moved on to the other poubelles, making me wonder the first beer actually had been his. I did not know about this way of finding beverages. It was not in the Rick Steves guide, which is surprising considering that he insists you can eat for free in Europe by sitting in restaurants and demanding free bread in the local tongue. (Again, not a practice we recommend.)



We bought ice cream cones for dessert, then drove on to Gordes, passing through bright fields of poppies along the way. This part of France is noted for cultivation of fruit, particularly cherries, apricots, peaches, and strawberries. Grapes from this region are used to make wines with the appellation Côtes du Luberon (mostly reds). We saw many vineyards and orchards during our drive. We didn't stop to taste any wine or buy any fruit, since we can get this stuff in stores and markets and, more important, we wanted to get our car back to the agency promptly. We think we will go winetasting near Lyon, where there are more prestigious vineyards.



Gordes is a magnificent hilltop village offering spectacular views across the valley to the north. We took Eli up and down some grades that exceeded thirty percent. Besides the vista--which alone justifies visiting the town--there is a cute church, a war memorial (who could have imagined?), and a café with the curious name "Cercle Républicain." The last is what the illegal social democratic organizations of this region were called in the 1840s, the last decade of the July Monarchy.

In Gordes we started noticing lots of American tourists. I guess we're not the only Americans willing to brave the poor exchange rate, high airfares, and France's renowned hatred of liberty. We have been surprised so far by the low incidence of American students in Aix. Lots of universities have summer programs here, but the students seem to be staying away from downtown.

We continued to Roussillon, which sits atop a huge deposit of ocher, as the photograph indicates. (Roussillon is not to be confused with a larger Roussillon in French Catalonia. So just don't.) After driving up to the town, braving some tiny streets, and parking, we wandered around. Christopher bought some ocher that he plans to turn into paint. Roussillon is supposed to have the world's best ocher; the fact that it's located in an area that artists frequent certainly can't have hurt the brisk business done by the town's ocher merchants.

Isn't this photograph great? It's part of a series Mary has been shooting so that he will have a supply of author photos in case he writes a book. "Christopher Dye, MFA, splits his time between Manhattan and Provence. Besides the subject of this book, he is interested in sustainable agriculture, world dairy products, music that will become uncool if you start listening to it, and his nephew, Eli." This is about the least cheesy of the pictures.



It was getting late and we were supposed to have the car back by six. The rain had also begun to come down. We took what looked to us like a shortcut through Apt. Yes, that's the name of the town, not just what Lisa's analogy between the Whore of Babylon and the First Church of Springfield was. Apt is kind of bigger than we'd been hoping. It might be a nice place to find a hotel, but has no place on a driving itinerary. Eli decided to sleep around three. He had been up since five-thirty!

We drove south through a picturesque gorge. That meant the road was kind of adventurous. Ally, as you may know, does not remember much of our trip to Ireland because she was morning sick the whole time. I have periodically tried to relate to her the horror of driving on Irish roads; however, driving in the Luberon was much more challenging. I always feel safe with her at the wheel and this was no exception.



Crossing the Durance, we returned to the outskirts of Aix and the Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence wine region (rosés and reds). The rain was falling and there was a surprising amount of traffic for a Saturday afternoon. Mother's Day travelers, perhaps?

We tried our best but we got back to Aix a little late. We had a twenty-four-hour rental, but the downtown agency was going to be closed Sunday, so we'd have to return the car to the TGV station and take a shuttlebus back. Fortunately, there were still people at the agency at six-twenty and they were willing to accept the car even though they didn't have to. Then we came back home and did things I've already told you about.

Bonne fête, maman!

Today is Mother's Day. Eli gave Ally a bouquet of flowers from the market on the Place des Précheurs. Even better, he had decided to sleep until eight and was being pretty good all morning.

It's rainy today, so there is not much for him to do. Lately he's enjoyed dancing to music, lining things up to make a "guh-guh," and playing peekaboo with Uncle Christopher.

I know you are thinking that Mother's Day is the second Sunday in May, but that's not the case everywhere. In France, it's the last Sunday in May, unless that's Pentecost, which pushes Mother's Day to the first Sunday in June.



French Mother's Day, the Fête des Mères, has a fairly unique history, inasmuch as it was introduced by the Vichy Regime (the fascist collaborators who ruled France 1940-44) but has been preserved. Practically everything else Vichy did or stood for--you know, murdering Jews, sending French workers to Germany, and briefly fighting against the Allies--has been repudiated or denied. Vichy broadened an existing day honoring mothers of large families (itself rooted in recognition of the suffering of mothers who lost their sons and husbands in the First World War) into a holiday celebrating motherhood in generally. This fit in with the Vichy goal of reaffirming traditional gender roles, with women at home raising large families of future soldiers and workers. Vichy called the reordering of French society along traditional lines the National Revolution.

At some level, this is troubling even to committed antifascists such as myself. Could the Vichyites have been completely evil if they loved their mothers and encouraged everyone else to do so? Should Sting's Rule color our judgment of men who were traitors and collaborationists?



Vichy is gone and the National Revolution abandoned, but Mother's Day remains on the date and under the name Vichy adopted. Indeed, to the extent that the French government takes an interest in women, particularly women as mothers, it is working on the same problem the Vichy government did; however, the goals and methods of postwar French governments have been quite different. Rather than chasing women out of the workforce to force them into marriage and motherhood, as Vichy did, current policy is to make working marriage motherhood an appealing choice for French women. You get good support during pregnancy and childrearing, daycare, and guarantees that you can't lose your job or be knocked off your career path because you take maternity leave. Among Western European countries, France has both a high birth rate and high participation of women in the workforce.

I thought I would give you a translation of the wordy Vichy poster:

Mother's Day, 25 May 1941.

Your mother has done so much for you--THE MARSHAL [Vichy leader Philippe Pétain] asks you to thank her for it nicely.

GIVE HER FLOWERS that you have grown.
OR AN OBJECT made just for her.
DRAW HER A PICTURE as pretty as you can.
TRY HARD IN CLASS so you can show her good grades.
DON'T ARGUE with your brothers and sisters.
GO DO THE CHORES she asked you to do.
HELP AROUND THE HOUSE with a smile.
LEARN A PLEASANT RECITATION.

WORK--FAMILY--COUNTRY [Vichy motto around the fasces.]

You should certainly imagine that the seven children on the poster are meant to be the children of one mother. (The average at this time was about 2.5 children per French family.)

Luberon

We did indeed rent a car and drove to the Luberon, visting Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Gordes, Rousillon, and Apt. We're still sorting though our photos, so I'll write about it tomorrow.

I will tell you about Eli and some happenings in Aix. This morning he decided to get up at five-thirty. If he keeps this up, in a few weeks he'll be waking up about bedtime. Ally and I tried to convince him to go back to sleep, but he would not. So I took him on a morning stroll through Aix until almost eight. We got to see the Sunday markets get set up.

When we got back from our trip, we went out to dinner at a Tunisian restaurant. On the way back, Mary and Christopher wanted to check out a dance and gymnastics program on--predictably--the Cours Mirabeau. Ally and I wanted to get Eli to bed, as it was nine. Back in the apartment, we were very surprised to see the back half of a cat disappearing into the closet. Why was there a cat in our apartment and how had it got there? Had it been living with us for days or weeks? Also, where had it gone? For we could not find it in the closet. We were mystified by this, and a bit worried that the cat was hiding somewhere in the house. Had the cat been there all along? After looking around the apartment, we realized that a bathroom window was open, and we saw the cat outside it. So that solved the mystery.

We were relieved not only that the cat was safe and had not, in fact, been in the house long, but also that it really existed. In 2002, while Ally and I were sitting in her tiny apartment in Paris, I rustled some papers. Ally blurted out excitedly, "It's a kitty!" I guess she really wanted a cat.

Speaking of cats, Mary noticed I omitted an interesting incident that occurred yesterday at Cézanne's studio. Eli found a cat there. Apparently the cat is very lethargic, because Eli was able to dump handfuls of gravel on the cat's back without getting any reaction. Veterans of Spain will certainly be reminded of the Cats of the Alhambra.

Cézanne

Eli is waking earlier and earlier. Today, he got Ally and me up at six. We played in bed for a while, then took him out to breakfast. We wish he would sleep later, but the time together in the mornings is nice. Unfortunately, there is almost nothing open before eight or eight-thirty. At home, Eli's early schedule lets us get things like grocery shopping done by nine. That's not quite possible here.

We bought some amazing strawberries at a produce stand. They were very expensive but well worth it. Mary and Christopher said they can get strawberries about this good at the Union Square Market, but Ally and I are pretty sure there's nothing like this in Tuscaloosa.



Ally went to work. Mary, Christopher, and I took Eli to another park. It looked better on the map than it did in real life. There was a playground, but it didn't have much equipment and had a gravel surface. So Eli mostly wandered around. He actually liked walking on the grass in the rest of the park. He wandered over to some French adolescents who were smoking, listening to music, and playing some sort of game that involved tossing rings at beer bottles. I am pretty sure none of the activities are allowed. Anyway, Eli started dancing to the music. I don't think they noticed them because they were pretty intent on their game. French adolescents are pretty worthless in general.



We got tired of the park. Mary and Christopher wanted to return to Cézanne's studio so they could see it in conditions other than a tempest. I went home to run some errands, do some housework, and read more cases. Eli went with them and apparently enjoyed the studio.

When they came back home, Eli was asleep. This time I put him in his bed so he could have a proper nap. We made excellent tomato and mozzarella sandwiches. After Eli got up, we played with blocks. He can identify many of them, about ten. I ask him to give me the rabbit, and he looks around until he finds the block with the rabbit in it. Then I ask for the duck. Etc.

Ally wanted to make risotto tonight, so she got to work on that when she got home. Ally makes risotto that is excellent every time. I really think we had the best dinner of anyone on our block.

We talked about getting out of town tomorrow, and we decided to do it. There aren't that many trains or buses to places we want to go, and fares for four add up. So we're renting a car for the day. We think we'll go into the Luberon region, probably to Isle-sur-la-Sorgue or Rousillon. We'll let you know how that turns out.

Paella

Eli again got up early: six-forty. He tried to rouse Aunt Mary and Uncle Chris, with limited success. He then did something very cute at breakfast. Eli loves pain d'épice, which is a honey spice cake kind of like gingerbread. We gave him some torn-up pieces at breakfast. He arranged them in a line and said "Guh-guh! Guh-guh!" Yes, he had made a train!

It was still too early for Ally to go to work, and not everyone was awake, so Ally and I took Eli to the Place des Précheurs, where the Thursday market was just getting started. Nothing really happens before nine. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are the biggest market days in Aix. Today's market included just about everything. Ally, Eli, and I watched as the produce stands were set up and bought some madeleines. Eli loves madeleines; he grabs bags of them off the shelf in grocery stores. So we thought he ought to have some fresh ones.

Ally then went off to the archive. You can read about her work below. Mary and Christopher got up and we went back to the market. I bought some excellent cheese: morbier and bleu d'Auvergne for snacking. Mary and Christopher bought things for dinner, including a lot of pistou (basically, Provençal pesto).



For lunch, Mary and Christopher locked onto a big vat of paella. They asked for it with prawns and mussels but without sausage, chicken, or rabbit. I thought the server was joking about rabbit but that's just what was in it. Anyway, they got a huge serving and took Eli to a park to eat. Eli turns out to love paella, although all he ate was the rice. He does not officially eat shellfish. By now he's been exposed to just about every allergen under the sun, so we aren't worried. He's even been inside a Five Guys, so we can be reasonably sure he doesn't have any peanut issues.

I went home to do some work, which usually includes dishes and laundry. I also read a bunch of interesting Texas cases and learned about the dirty tricks car dealers sometimes play on customers. Fascinating stuff.

When Eli came back from the park, he was asleep in his stroller. Unfortunately, some workers were jackhammering in the alley behind our apartment, so I decided we should leave him in the stroller so that he might stay asleep. He ended up sleeping for an hour and a half while parked in the stroller in the middle of the living room. That was surprising, even for him.



For dinner, Mary and Christopher made tagliatelle with asparagus, sundried tomatoes, and mozzarella, using the pistou rouge from the market as a base. It was very good. We are eating so well, particularly when I'm not the one making dinner.

I am very happy here in Aix. I'm meeting all my personal goals: working on my project, relaxing, spending time with family, and drinking wine every single day.

My two cents...

I have sat back and let Abe do most of the work on this blog... until now. Oh, who am I kidding? He'll still do most of the work. But I thought I would take a minute to update you all on what I am doing during the day while Eli gallivants around France.

I have been working for the past few days in the Archives of the Ministery of the Navy and Colonies, which are housed here in Aix-en-Provence. They used to be attached to the National Archives in Paris, but when many of the colonial archives were repatriated, they created this separate institution to house all documents pertaining to the French empire. Since I work on French imperialism, I spend a lot of time here. Not so bad, eh?

Here I am working hard at the archives. I thought about putting up an image from one of the documents I've been working with, but I think that would violate some law.

Anyway, I am primarily working on fleshing out some of the sections of my manuscript - which is merely adapted from my dissertation. The last few days, for example, I've been checking out any ministerial correspondence I could get my hands on pertaining to the Marquesas Islands between 1844 and 1854. In one of my chapters, I tell about how three men were deported from Lyon to the Marquesas Islands in 1851 for conspiracy against the state. These men brought their wives and children with them to this practically deserted island (Nuka Hiva was the site of the second season of the American TV show, Survivor). What I am now trying to do is find more evidence about what conditions were like on the eve of their arrival. In Lyon, I hope to consult the archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which should have information from some Catholic missionaries living on Nuka Hiva when my deportees arrived. I hope they will tell me more about what life was like for the deportees and the French officials responsible for watching over them.

I've pretty much finished up with the Marquesas now. From French Polynesia, I'm now moving to the Indian Ocean and looking for correspondence records from the Seychelles Islands and from the Islands of Réunion (formerly Ile de Bourbon) and Mauritius (formerly Ile de France).

Today I also looked at a dissertation written in 1901 - and evidently deposited unread into the archives. I had to ask the archivists to cut the pages open. The diss was printed on the cheap, four sheets to a page, then folded and bound. Consequently, every few pages, either the right edge or the top edge needs to be cut so that the pages will open normally. That took awhile. When she was done, I just photographed the entire book.

That is the main method of research here. The archive allows digital photography, as long as you don't use a flash and none of the information is protected under French law. Since all of my work is from the nineteenth century, I'm free to click click click away. So I stand at the table and photograph endless pages of nineteenth century scribbling that will have to be deciphered back home when I'm not in such a hurry to make the most of precious moments in the archives.

So, that's that for now.

I hope you all enjoy(ed) the post Abe is writing about Eli's big day and big vat of paella! Here's the happy boy I came home to (jealous, much?)!

Picnic

Today Eli got up early, so he and I walked Ally to work. The Archives d'Outremer is about fifteen minutes from our apartment. It's in the university area west of the old center of town. French university campuses are uniformly awful. The buildings are ugly, in part because they were built cheaply in the sixties and seventies. The only French campuses I've seen that are at all pretty are the Sorbonne (Université de Paris IV) and the original rue d'Ulm campus of the École Normale Supérieure, both in Paris. That's it! Everything else looks, at best, like a very ugly high school or community college. Besides the bad architecture, there's the graffiti and posters. French campuses always seem run down. You just don't get the vibe of youthful potential that an American campus gives off; it's more like, again, a high school where no one wants to be. I hope Eli gets to go to France a lot but I would never want him to really grow up or go to school here, except possibly to follow his parents to Normale Sup'.



Mary and Christopher took Eli to a park north of town for a picnic. He loves going around with them. He really seemed to like the fresh air. He also loved eating fruit. From their picnic spot they could the Mount Ste.-Victoire, the mountain Cézanne painted like a zillion times.



Ally and I got to work on our projects for much of the day. For dinner I made pasta.

Avignon

Mary and Christopher took Eli to Avignon, seat of the late medieval popes. During the 75 minute bus ride, Eli enjoyed pointing at cars and looking at picture books. He then got to play in a park, where he saw ducks, waved at old people, and was pulled around in a horse-drawn carriage. I hope he appreciated the dramatic view of the Rhône and the papal palace, but I have a feeling he was more interested in trains. In Eli's language, train is "guh-guh," from English "chugga," which he got from his favorite bedtime book, Kevin Lewis, Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo (2001). (He also likes the book you gave him; it's his second-favorite.) He will correct you if you use the word train: "Eli, is that a train?" "Guh-guh!" "Train?" "Guh-guh!" Anything that could possibly be considered a train, Eli points to and says "guh-guh." This is great in southern France, where every town has a petit train touristique.

Besides the park, Eli got to tour the northern part of Avignon, near the papal palace. He had a yummy lunch and delighted passers-by with his toddler antics. Ally and I were worried that he would not get a chance to nap, but we are told he caught a few winks on his uncle's shoulder and in the stroller. Today was sunny and bright, but there was a stiff breeze in the heights of Avignon. Mary and Christopher judged that the wind made venturing onto the famous Pont d'Avignon too perilous to risk with baby and stroller. The bridge goes nowhere, so not much was missed.



We were pleased that Eli had such a good day with his aunt and uncle. This is the kind of experience we really want him to have with our visitors. Ally had another good day at the archive and I got a lot done on my project.

For dinner, Mary made a sort of frittata, which was excellent. We got the vegetables from a really good produce stand near our apartment. We walked over to Ally's favorite creperie for dessert. It's in an unlikely spot: an underground passage near the Rotonde. But it's excellent. Eli had his first bites of dessert crepe and loved it! He was pretty fussy at bedtime but, when the time actually came, he went off to sleep pretty easily.

Eli tours Aix

Today was our first real day of working vacation. That is, Ally went to the archive and I worked on my summer project. Mary and Christopher ended up taking Eli around Aix some more. Some highlights included St.-Sauveur and the Cours Mirabeau. Eli saw lots of dogs and was walked around by an elderly French woman. No one quite understands why.

There was a very violent thunderstorm in the afternoon, so Ally got soaked on her way back from the archive. Mary and Christopher had it even worse: they had planned to go to Cézanne's studio, which is a little outside town. They got drenched waiting for the bus and, thanks to Rick Steves, saw it pass by the stop. Rick had them waiting in the wrong place, although to be fair a brochure and the studio's website also contained the error. Anyway, it was a less than ideal day to visit the studio of the original "painter of light."

For dinner we made couscous with vegetables and, for the carnivores, chicken. We used a bag of frozen vegetables selected especially for couscous. Ally and I are very good at reading instructions in French; however, this one had us arguing as to how we could possibly fulfill the instructions and create something edible. The instructions had us dumping the frozen vegetables and (frozen) sauce into a pot of boiling water. You have probably already spotted the problem. This is a very dodgy way to make a sauce, since you absolutely need to know how much water is going to be introduced. And since the sauce seemed to be merely frozen, not dehydrated, the correct amount is probably close to zero and would probably be made up by the ice in the bag. If you followed the instructions as written, you would get a thin vegetable soup. The right way to do this, as frequenters of the singles aisle at American grocery stores know, is to include packets of frozen sauce with the vegetables, and thaw those packets separately. We conclude that this product is flawed in theory and unworkable in practice, and therefore will not be buying it again. Nonetheless, we came up with a pretty good meal.

This reminds me of a French couple in Nice who befriended us. They were educated professionals who had us over for dinner a couple of times. Their cooking was quite accomplished. But they confessed that they did not like to make pasta, and thus did not serve it, because it was so difficult. What was so difficult? Boiling the noodles to the correct firmness. Yes, the mysteries of hot water defeated them. For that matter, it seems to us that French people normally boil and drain rice instead of cooking by the absorption method. So perhaps there is actually less to boiling than we think, and French home chefs simply accept inferior results.

Sunday in Aix

After a big breakfast, we went to mass at St.-Jean-de-Malte, a big church near our apartment. Ally used to go to mass at this church when she lived here in summer 2006. I love going to mass in France. The mean quality of liturgy is higher than in the States, certainly much higher than in southern dioceses. Singing in French is fun, because for once you get to pronounce all the syllables. So that final "e" you've been leaving out since you started studying French finally gets a voice. Eli probably wasn't impressed by any of that, but he did seem to like walking around in the church.



We then went to the Sunday produce market at the Place de la Hôtel de Ville. We got some cheese, some cured ham, and a lot of vegetables for dinner--on which more later. We also picked up some fougasse (sort of like Provençal calzone) for lunch. Plus fruit: strawberries and excellent melon. The melon you get in France is so good that I just don't eat cantaloupe or honeydew in the States except to be polite. (I guess that's over now.) Ally was very happy to be getting cheese. Last time she was here she was pregnant and sticking to pasteurized dairy products. Unfortunately, very little of the good cheese in France is made with pasteurized milk. For that matter, a lot of not-so-special French cheese is unpasteurized. As I type this, Ally, Mary, and Christopher are snacking on tomme de brebis (a sheep's milk cheese) from the market and watching The Hills on mtv.com.

In the late afternoon, we took Eli on a strolling tour of Aix, including the tourist market on Cours Mirabeau, a bunch of places we'd already been, and the cathedral, St.-Sauveur. Eli had a great time playing at the boar fountain in the Place de la Hôtel de Ville, the market by now having disappeared as markets do.



For dinner, Ally made ratatouille with fresh vegetables from the market. It was excellent.

Mary and Christopher want to take Eli somewhere tomorrow, so he's going to have a big adventure!

Aix-en-Provence and our first visitors

Today's big project was our relocation to Aix-en-Provence, where we will spend the next two weeks. Ally comes to Aix to work at the Archives d'Outremer, the archives of France's overseas empire. She's been here about half a dozen times.

To get here from Lyon, we first had to get from our apartment to the train station. Ally called last night to schedule a taxi and specified that we would need a large one to fit all our baggage. So this morning, when the taxi came, it was a station wagon as we'd expected. The driver told us, though, that we were very lucky to get him; the dispatcher hadn't said anything about our special needs. Anyway, we had a good train trip to Aix. Aix's TGV station is well outside town, about 15 minutes by car. We were again very fortunate with our taxi. Our driver fit everything in his hatchback, which must have been bigger than it looked. He was very helpful. Veterans of our 2001 visit to Normandy will remember the horrible taxi drivers we had there.

The apartment we found in Aix is very cute, although odd. It's a split-level for no good reason. Also, to use the toilet you have to walk into the bedroom, then into the closet, before reaching the toilet. But the kitchen is very nice and the decorations are charming. Like the last place, it has Freebox television-over-internet (via ADSL). This is one of those technologies I've been reading about for about a decade but haven't seen in America. But the French have made it a reality.

Anyway, after arriving, we looked around for some groceries, then set Eli down for a nap. We started worrying about where Mary and Christopher could be. They got into Marseille last night and were supposed to come to Aix today, but we hadn't heard from them. Eli woke up and Ally and I started thinking about how we could find our guests. Then I looked out the window and there was Mary looking for a callbox. They had found us, although they cannot recommend the map of Aix in their Rick Steves guide.

We went out and had a drink, then bought about 5 kilograms of dairy products--mostly yogurt--at the Monoprix on Cours Mirabeau. Then we put the groceries away and almost immediately headed out to dinner. We had pizza and pasta at a restaurant just off Cours Mirabeau.

Eli again had no trouble getting to sleep, despite being in both a new room and a new bed. Our apartment came furnished with a travel crib that's bigger than the one we brought, so we put him in it.

Tomorrow we are planning to buy a lot of produce at the market.

Ally's birthday

Today is Ally's birthday. We had a leisurely breakfast at home before taking the bus to the Parc de la Tête d'Or, Ally's favorite park in France. The Parc de la Tête d'Or is huge, so we only visited a small part of it: a children's playground, some of the zoo, and the rose garden. I'm looking forward to going back when we return to Lyon a few weeks from now. Eli enjoyed the playground. At the zoo he identified giraffes and elephants, which he calls "elelela."

For Ally's birthday lunch we went to a creperie near Bellecour. Eli started to get angry right after we sat down, but Ally got him some milk and that calmed him down. We ordered Eli a ham and gruyere galette, which at first he did not like. After a few minutes he came around and devoured a good part of it.

We then walked around Ally's old neighborhood, Ainay. (Quite by coincidence, this is where Mary and I stayed when we visited Lyon.) After looking up at her old window, we stopped at her favorite bakery and got some treats for later: a lemon-meringue tartlet and a piece of apricot-almond-pistachio tart. They were excellent!

The rest of the evening we have largely spent getting ready to move out. Our apartment is a good deal in that we are getting a very nice place for about half what a minimal hotel would cost, but we have to do our own cleaning.

Rainy day in Lyon

It rained during the morning and evening, with a brief dry spell between. Ally spent the morning at the departmental archive, so Eli and I got to spend a lot of time together. He slept late--till nine--so I was worried he would not take a nap. But right at one, he led me into the bedroom and tried to climb into his travel crib. In the past month or so, Eli's gone from merely making his needs known to deciding what to do next. Anyway, it was a great relief that he slept. It looks like he's gotten past the jet lag.

We all walked to a nearby playground for part of the afternoon. Eli had a great time playing on the equipment and walking around. There is a dog part next to the playground, and Eli loved seeing the dogs come and go.



For dinner we all had ravioli. When we first started feeding Eli regular solid food last fall, we had high hopes for ravioli. He liked noodles. He liked cheese. Ravioli combines them and is less messy. But he refused to eat ravioli under any circumstances. He just threw it on the floor. It did not matter what we did. We tried all kinds of ravioli. We even branched out into tortellini and other dubious stuffed noodles. This didn't change until April, when he finally tried some of this most suspect food. Now, fortunately, he likes it, although it turns out he still makes a mess because of the sauce, which he demands.

Chocolate is a health food

This is our kitchen in Lyon and that is the cereal I am going to have for breakfast tomorrow.

Most readers of this blog are accustomed to choosing between fitness and chocolate. You can have fitness or you can have chocolate, but not both at once. French people do not believe this. As the cereal box promises, you can achieve your fitness goals and enjoy chocolatey goodness without compromising either. (See also, smoking after you work out, another French pastime.)

Chocolate isn't healthy just for women who want bodies like that; it's also good for children. After all, milk chocolate contains milk, which we all know children need. Kinder markets its chocolate with the slogan "Il y a de lait en plus!"--"It's got milk, too!" So French parents know that withholding chocolate would not only displease their children, but probably lead to malnutrition and stunted growth.

We wanted Eli to subsist solely on chocolate during his visit; however, he hates the stuff. We gave him a tiny piece of chocolate cake back in the States Sunday and he could not spit it out fast or thoroughly enough. Unfortunately, there are very few foods available in France that are wholesome but not chocolatey.

To Lyon

We're finishing up our second day in Lyon, where the weather is beautiful.

The rest of our trip went well enough. We were on a Boeing 777 for the ocean crossing. Eli slept from Ohio to New Brunswick and from Newfoundland to the Celtic Sea, about six hours in total. The turbulence we encountered actually helped, as it had the effect of rocking him to sleep.

We landed at Roissy (Charles de Gaulle airport) and entered France without incident. My good luck with baggage held. After a couple hours wait, during which Eli ran around parts of the airport, we caught a train to Lyon.



Eli slept about two hours, and for part of the time Eli and Ally were both asleep, the baby in his mother's arms. I slept for a while, too. We then squeezed everything into a cab the size of a small station wagon and rode to our apartment.

The apartment is charming, quiet, well-furnished, and offers a view of the Saône. I'll put some more pictures up later, particularly so that Vic and Candie can see where they'll be staying.

Yesterday after arriving we went downtown and did some minor grocery shopping. We also had dinner at a pizzeria on the Place Terreaux, where Eli enjoyed the horse statues created by Bertholdi, best know for the Statue of Liberty. Back at the apartment, Eli slept over twelve hours and we adults slept nearly as long.

Today we went downtown twice. In the morning we went grocery shopping at the big Monoprix. We came back for lunch and (baby) naptime. Ally and I watched some French television, which is always a treat. We were too late for daytime gameshows, unfortunately. Animateur et parolier (roughly, "cheesy variety show host") Pascal Sevran died recently, so there was a show where a panel discussed him. Then we watched parliamentary questions, where the opposition kept piling on about the recent defeat of the government's plans to loosen food regulations. The French have a horror of OGMs (genetically-modified organisms) in the food supply. Eli woke up so we did not get to see what would come on next. One of the channels usually shows a dubbed American teen soap a bit later in the day, and we're dying to see what it will be like.



So we went back downtown, had excellent ice cream (me: fraise orientale, strawberry-mint; Ally: orange gingembre, orange-ginger). This was supposed to be Eli's first ice cream, but the flavors we chose were apparently too high-concept for the little guy. We will try again with something more basic. We then spent an eternity getting cellphones and waiting for a bus to come take us home, where we made dinner and put Eli to bed. We may be getting ahead of ourselves, but it seems like he's already adjusted to a new schedule. We'll see tomorrow--or later tonight!

En route

We're at the Birmingham airport waiting for our flight to Houston. (Free wireless internet at BHM! Who would have guessed?) When we got our tickets, we wondered why Continental was sending us through Houston and not Newark. That seems backwards, right? Well, today's flight to Newark was just canceled, so I guess it's a good thing we're taking the long route.

Eli is having a little snack. We're hoping he sleeps, particularly on the overnight flight to Paris. We're also really hoping we get our bags. I have never had a bag delayed on my flight out, although I regularly get home before my bags. So here's hoping my luck holds!

Itinerary

Here's an outline of where we'll be when:

May 12-13: air travel, Birmingham to Paris.
May 13: rail travel, Paris to Lyon.
May 13-17: Lyon. Just us!
May 17: rail travel, Lyon to Aix-en-Provence.
May 17-31: Aix-en-Provence. Visitors: Mary & Christopher; Jenafer, Nano, & Marty.
May 31: rail travel, Aix-en-Provence to Lyon.
May 31-June 8: Lyon. Visitors: Vic & Candie.
June 8: rail travel, Lyon to Paris.
June 8-19: Paris. Visitor: Sam.
June 19: air travel, Paris to Birmingham.


View Larger Map

Why this trip, why these people

You may be wondering why we are going to France for six weeks, particularly with a toddler in tow. Well, as we pack and prepare to deal with a long plane trip and jet lag, we are wondering the same thing!

As you probably know, Ally is a French history professor at Mississippi State University. She needs to get to France pretty regularly--approximately annually--to do archival research. She might post about her projects in more detail later. Basically, she's finishing up a book-length manuscript on her dissertation, which covered deportation of political criminals from France to the French Empire during the nineteenth century. She's also looking at a couple of new projects.

Ally's research needs dictate our itinerary. Most of the French governmental records are centralized in Paris; however, materials related to the overseas empire are in Aix-en-Provence. Lyon has some promising collections for a new project. All three just happen to be wonderful cities to visit and to live in. I lived in Paris in summer 1996 and we both lived there during the 2001-2002 academic year; more recently, Ally spent a few weeks there in summer 2006, while we were expecting Eli. We've visited Aix a few times, and Ally made it part of her 2006 trip as well. And Lyon is Ally's favorite city. She lived in Lyon during the 1999-2000 school year. Unfortunately, we won't get to visit Nice, where we lived 2002-2003.

Eli pretty much goes where Ally does, so the plan has always been for him to accompany her. Various members of our families volunteered to visit and spend time with Eli. We'll be talking about them a bit later.

I was the last addition to the trip. It looked like I might be working for law firms all summer and be able to go to France only briefly or not at all, but it did not turn out that way. I do have a job lined up with a firm in Birmingham after our return. But I jumped at chance to be with my two favorite people in my favorite foreign county. I'll also be doing some research and development for my law school's legal writing program, which work I can do anywhere I have an internet connection.

Getting started

A friend recently asked me what I thought of blogging. I said it would have been great to get into a few years ago, but I just didn't see the point of starting a blog in 2008. The market is already saturated, and blogging seems so 2003. I think I did not say that I also have a horror of failing at blogging, which I suppose I would define as not attracting an audience, links, etc. So why have I turned around and begun blogging?

Well, this blog serves a particular purpose and commands (one hopes) a certain audience. My wife Ally, our toddler Eli, and I are going to France for six weeks. A blog provides the best way to keep all the people interested in this trip informed about what we're doing--particularly what Eli's doing. I also think this will be a nice way to document the trip. Maybe Eli will be interested in it someday. But, when the trip's over, so's the blog.

So the main emphasis will be Eli's experience in France. Of course, I can't promise that I won't branch out into more general travel writing and "here's what I'm thinking about as I sip my coffee" blogging. The medium demands it, right? And I can't resist the notion of sharing my aperçus as they occur to me.

C'est à dire, welcome to Eli Goes to France.