July 9 - Boys vs Girls

Ken and Steven got up super early on Monday morning, leaving the hotel at 6am to catch a train to Bescancon where they took in a day of time trials for the Tour de France. I had booked them tickets on the same train as our friends who were also visiting France with their family, and they had the good luck of sitting directly behind them on the train.

From the train station in Bescancon they caught a bus to about 3 miles out from the finish line, and walked the last part of the race stopping to watch and take pictures along the way.

I think Ken told me there was a motorbike for the team first, followed by the biker, followed by the team car.

He says you don't realize how fast those bikers are going until the car following whips past you.

Steven, and to his right his friend Wyatt.

The tour is a bit of a travelling show, it looks like.

Ken and Steven did most of their souvenir shopping on this day. They stayed until around 4pm and then returned to Paris.

~Meanwhile~

We girls slept in - Chloe most of all, much to my surprise. We did laundry at the launderette around the corner, and then headed to Versailles.

We knew the chateau was closed on Mondays, but we were a little museum/church toured out, and we were most interested in the gardens.

The order of it all appeals to me.

Again, the french thing for symmetry. I loved the rectangular man-made lake.

Spectator stands for rowing races.

Sculpture everywhere.

Touring the gardens on a Monday meant watching maintentance - they don't just eyeball these things.

Here's where Jaclyn explained to me how smart crows are. I heard something about that at the Harry Potter studio tour, and again at the Tower of London, but what she told me was that it has been proven that if you mistreat a crow it will remember you and harass you later, and even other crows that didn't witness your mistreatment will behave differently towards you. They communicate who you are and that is spooky. Alfred Hitchcock had it right.

The grounds are beautiful, but expansive. We opted for a golf cart, which everyone wanted a turn driving, but it turned out you have to have a driver's license and be over 24 years old or something like that, so disagreements over turns were averted just like that. Nice.

My view from the driver's seat. The cart played period appropriate music, and then was location sensitive for an audio explanation of the area you were driving through.

Carmen and Chloe liked to jump off and on of the moving cart to take pictures.

We all returned to Paris close to the same time. Carmen and one of her best friends (who had gone with her family to the Tour) got a picture together in front of the Eiffel Tower.

We took quite a few pictures together, actually, including this group shot. Strange that mostly everyone is the same height. Only 2 people in this picture are shorter than me and they are both in elementary school.

Remingtons joined us for our sidewalk cafe dinner where we celebrated Chloe's birthday one day early. The restaurant even provided us with a candle for her dessert.