Friday in Amiens

Today was to be Nic's first day in the office. We all walked in with him so we could see where it was and also so he could point out some of the other markets to me. We found the Carrefour and the Match. Later on I will return to the Carrefour and will fall in love with it. Well, not exactly, but I will have found my grocery store for the rest of the trip. It is in a place called "Les Halles" which also has some other shops (the kids noted the toy store) and some specialty food shops too. We were at Nic's office by 11AM, not the early start he had hoped for but he put up with us :). After a quick look at where he would be, I went off with the kids in search of some playgrounds that we also did not make it to yesterday. Right near the university is an older section of town criss-crossed by these canals. It is quite nice to walk around. Here we are at the start of our walk. Ethan is showing me his happy face - Not!

Here we are on our way to the first playground which was in the shadow of the Amiens Cathedral (the tallest complete cathedral in France). You can see it in the background here. The kids had fun on see-saw and small slide. The started a small game of hide and seek as well. They started to get hungry so we decided to walk to the next playground hoping to find food along the way. We found sustenance at "Le Plaisir du Pain Chaud" or the "pleasure of hot bread". The place was small an busy because it was lunch time. But I had noticed people walking around with these nice looking sandwiches that were coming from this store so I decided to take the plunge. When I got the front I fumbled through an order of 2 panini's (one cheese and one "hot dog" or so I thought) and then 1 panitiere with jambon (or ham). There was some confusion about "hot dog" but I thought he eventually got it. While I was ordering I had planted Gwyneth and Ethan near the Ice Cream freezer and at some point I turned around and noticed that Ethan was missing. I asked Gwyneth and all she did was shrug. I then noticed Ethan coming back into the store weaving his way through the line as he went. It will be a miracle if he never gets lost on this trip.

Once we got our sandwiches we went outside and at near this fountain. All of the sandwiches came on 1/2 a baguette and cost about 3.5 euros or $5.25. In retrospect I could have gotten away with ordering only 2 but c'est la vie. The paninis where hot and melted and the panitiere was more like a sub sandwich with lettuce, tomato, chopped hard boiled egg, mayonnaise and the chicken. (I had ordered ham, but again something was lost in the pronunciation I guess). Ethan LOVED the cheese panini and I ate the panitiere which was good but had a little too much mayo for me. Gwyneth ate her "hot dog" panini but part way through she said it tasted like tuna fish. I tasted it and she was right ..... so she finished off Ethan's cheese panini when he was done. So I'm not quite sure what happened there or what a "hot dog" panini would have looked like anyway. From now on I think Gwyneth just may stick with the cheese.

After lunch we found the second playground on our list. It was also nearby and in the shadows of the cathedral again. French playgrounds seem to be nothing like the Norwegian ones but the kids amused themselves for almost a couple of hours here. The thing they are climbing on here dumped out into a big nest made out of rope and they had fun trying to figure out how to get from the where they were into the nest. Around 3PM it was clear that big E was getting tired and I should think about getting him home. We were probably a 15-20 minute walk from the apartment here. Not very far if you don't have to carry a sleeping 3 year old boy. Unfortunately for me I did. Very quickly into the walk home he wanted to be picked up, and not soon after he started fading to sleep. We made it home around 3:30PM and I plopped him into bed. Not before he woke up a little bit to say "that was a long walk". Then I said to him that I think he should rest some more and he said "I will". He slept until past 7PM.

Nic came home around 5:30PM or so and went to the bakery near our apartment for a baguette and to the butcher below our apartment for some pork chops. I was hoping to do some shopping while I was out with the kids, but things didn't work out that way. So once Nic came back a second time I decided to go out to one of the other supermarkets that were recommended to us and Nic worked on dinner. I found the Carrefour and it was wonderful. (The picture is from us being there earlier in the day.) It was big and had a good selection of things. It was also fairly cheap - especially things under the Carrefour brand. I will be back!

Back at home I was treated to a lovely pork chop dinner cooked by Nic. They were juicy and tender (much better than yesterdays steak). I should note that we do not have an oven here so it will be all stove top cooking for a while. We finished off the bottle of wine from the night before and then it was myself who was off to bed early. Just before that it was Nic who noticed I had a split right up the back of the seat of pants. Honestly, I don't think I was eating that many waffles in Norway. Kind of a bummer because I was wearing them a lot on this trip, they had good pockets with zippers and stuff. The only way I can think that it happened was when I had returned from the outing with the kids. I had to squat down holding Ethan to open the bottom lock and I remember it was some work to get up back standing again. So it means that I was probably walking around the carrefour with my backside showing but at least I was wearing underwear!