Father's Day in Amiens

Our Sunday was a bit low key. It took us a loooooooooooong time to get out of the house. I think we were finally moving by 3PM. We had decided to take the car to go to the train station (a 20 minute walk) to buy the tickets to get to Disneyland. Yes, we are going to Disneyland - sleeping over Wedesday and Thursday nights. Fabien was going to be out of town on Thursday and Friday so it seemed to work out just right. And the kids have really done a fantastic job on this trip so we thought we could splurge a little on them. (The parents won't have any fun at Disneyland.) We did fairly well at buying the tickets in French - I keep wondering what this would be like if we didn't know French - in Amiens it is rare to find someone willing to speak English to you. Anyway, the funniest moment when then guy couldn't understand where we wanted to go (I guess we weren't pronouncing "Disney" correctly) and someone behind him make Mickey Mouse ears on their head. So eventually we got our point across.

After the train station we drove over the a playground that Nic hasn't been to yet, but I have been to it with the kids. It is quite a long walk - doable - but long from the apartment and so it was nice to have the car. We played a bit on the playground and it was quite crowded as it was the weekend. This object spins around which and it gets a little dangerous when older kids want to join in ... some of the smaller ones will fly off of it. We manage to survive. When I was there with the kids earlier in the trip it was empty because it was a weekday. Again, I had a conversation with a French kid about why I was speaking English and as usual we didn't get too much past the fact that I was from the United States. We played a little soccer and then we went home.

On the walk out Ethan of course had to forge his own path. Notice he is not on the walkway and in fact he was about to get stuck. Nic had to go retreive him and shortly thereafter he pee'd his pants becuase he was refusing to go and couldn't hold it any longer. We hope he will learn the lesson some day. We had a nice dinner. We cooked more of the andouiette sausages (and another kind) which went well with the salad and gnocci. We also enjoyed our expensive burgundy wine as it was a "Grand Vin". I can't remember but it may have cost 10 euro. We learned from Fabien that wines have different categories and they are price controlled within those categories. It did taste good but since I didn't do a side by side taste test with the cheaper ones I cannot tell how much better. I think we got to bed late. It is just so hard with it being light until at least 10:30PM. I've been playing (as have Ethan and Gwyneth) the mindless Pet Society game on Facebook, yet somehow I can't stop!

Other random musings .... 1) I've been noticing the pointy shoes that the French women seem to be wearing. 2) It is a bit disappointing going to Paris and not really needing to speak French at all. 3) Billboards/posters/ads are lot more provocative here. I've seen a lot of naked body parts. One day Nic and I saw something in a magazine store that was showing a woman giving a man a blow job (with the appropriate parts faded out) .... but it started to be a little too much information. 4) Everyone has these great shopping bags or baskets that they carry around for the markets and the other little stores. 5) I love walking around to everything but not always with a 3 year old. 6) People/places/stores do not like to let you use their pottys. This is hard with kids! Even the McDonald's has a sign that says the toliets are for customers only. 7) I find it annoying that nothing is open on Sunday, no stores, nothing .... restaurants have limited hours. What is everyone doing on Sunday?