Nous arrivons en France

We have a lot of catching up to do Blogwise. The rest of the Norwegian cruise story is kind of interesting, so I hope we'll have it up soon. Meanwhile, we have arrived in France. Yesterday morning, Chris shuttled Siri to work, then my mother to the airport, then us to the airport. The trip to the airport is a little under 30 minutes, so he did a lot of taxiing. Thanks again Chris!!

On our trip to the airport we stopped by this charming town. Oddly, it was a cold day there.


We spent most of our day flying from Trondheim to Oslo, Oslo to Paris. The kids were under control for the flight. Ethan slept pretty much through the second, longer one.



Fabien picked us up at the Charles de Gaulle Airport and drove us approximately 1:30 back to Amiens. There we got our first look at our apartment for the next 4 weeks. We are right in the middle of the small city. Our fifth floor apartment overlooks the traffic circle in the center of town. There are a lot of grocery stores, bakeries, etc within walking distance, so we have high hopes for improvements in the culinary department from Norway. Also the math department of the university is easy walking distance. The apartment itself is funky. It's small by American standards, but has 3 bedrooms (one has a piano!), kitchen, living room, bathroom and dining room. We were barely able to get our enormous luggage through some of the hallways with the bookshelves in the way. The apartment has a lot of character - lots of art on the wall, and knick knacks around. I hope our kids don't destroy anything. There is also a cat here, Olympus, the demeanor of which has yet to be fully determined. So far (s)he has only hidden from us and hissing at us. Anyway it seems like it will work out quite well and we will have a real European experience living here.