THE GREAT TRIP cont. #5

Wednesday, September 2
This is a weather update. The weather has been pretty nice. The first day in England was the sunniest there and then the other days were overcast and cool. In Denmark our first day there was sunny too and the other days cooler. On Sunday it rained while we were in church. In Paris every day started out cool and very misty, but by the afternoon the sun was out and the sky blue and it was warm. So you see, I would say we have had excellent weather!

After breakfast we got on the train and headed for the Louvre. The Louvre is so big and so old and so impressive on the outside and so big and so modern and so impressive on the inside. We saw so many wonderful things. We saw the Mona Lisa and the Winged Victory and Venus d’ Milo. I thought they were all wonderful. The Mona Lisa is beautiful and the Winged Victory magnificent. We saw lots of paintings and lots of sculptures. We also found “Hamurabi’s Code”. That was a big stone pillar with ancient writing all over it, (kind of like the Rosetta Stone). Hamurabi was a Babylonian king who wrote his laws of conduct on this pillar and set it so everyone could see it and know what the laws were. I know about this because Chrissy explained everything to me, as I had never heard of Hamurabi. It is what today’s justice system is founded on. Cool huh? I loved the museum! I hope I can go back and spend more time there again someday. There were two people there copying the masters. One was painting oils and one was drawing. I thought my dad would have had fun seeing them.
After a couple of hours at the Louvre we walked to Notre Dame. It was really fun walking along the streets of Paris and seeing all the buildings and all the people. We were walking up along the Seine River and I loved that too. Notre Dame is big and cold and ornate. There were lots of candles burning inside that people had lit as prayers. Anyone could light one for a fee. There was a priest standing in front of the alter who was speaking and then singing in Latin. It sounded very cool ringing all through that stone place. There were stone sepulchers and sculptures through out the cathedral and it was dark inside. We didn’t climb up the tower. The line to get in was so long and moving very slow. So we went and got sandwiches, (meat, cheese, and tomato in wonderful crusty French bread) and sat outside in front of Notre Dame to have lunch. There was one pigeon walking around looking hungry so Chrissy gave it a breadcrumb. You know what happened then.. More hungry looking pigeons came. She kept feeding them and I got feeding them too until there were so many and more and more kept coming! They were getting a bit demanding! We were becoming besieged ! So we quit and told all the pigeons to please go away. Which they very obligingly did.
There are pigeons all over the place here, even down in the underground train station.
After that we walked all around, going up and down interesting little streets. There are shops and restaurants everywhere. I went into some of the shops and bought more presents and Chrissy got some shoes. When we went in shops Jaremy would wait outside. He was very patient. At one place he had a lot of fun watching a truck trying to back into a garage just off the street. It was a big truck in a small street in the midst of very annoyed traffic. Jaremy said even a big tour bus came along and had to drive up onto the sidewalk. It was a double-decker bus and the people on the top were getting their heads bonked by tree branches, so they were trying to duck down. Jaremy of course, was thoroughly entertained. Finally the police came and got things sorted out.
We rode the train back to our stop and that was our last time to ride the train. I really had fun riding the trains and subways. It was great and we only had a few mishaps. One time on the London tube I was a little too late jumping on and the door closed on my shoulder, (I still have the bruise) but the door didn’t close all the way and another guy was able to get on, so that was good. One time I got off the train before our stop. I just sort of flowed off with this big group of people, like flotsam being swept down the river. Chrissy was looking at me in great alarm, but not to worry, I managed to jump back on in time. We missed our stop a few times and went the wrong way on occasion and didn’t know what we were doing a lot of times, but we always got to the right place eventually and always made it back to our hotel somehow and didn’t get mugged. We even started figuring things out!

Here’s some more stuff about eating on our trip.
In England we ate sandwiches a lot. They were pre-packaged and you could buy them at places, (like the British Museum and Chatsworth House) or at the grocery stores, where they were cheaper. They had all kinds of sandwiches like: red salmon and cucumber, grapes, lettuce and cheese, tuna and cucumber, tuna and sweet corn, egg salad and lots of others that I can’t exactly remember. There were some very interesting combinations, but no peanut butter and jelly! We drank a lot of apple juice, (that was so good) and Jaremy and Chrissy had lots of Fanta drinks. We also drank quantities of bottled water. I had bananas and apples almost every day. The apples were wonderful. They were called Braeburn and they tasted like a mixture of a pear and an apple, very sweet and juicy. In Paris on our way home from the train station after sightseeing, we would pass fruit stands and it was so much fun to buy fruit there. We would also pass pastry shops and buy scrumptious pastries too. Jaremy and I had the most amazing chocolate éclair last night! In Denmark Jaremy had a very delicious kabob in pita bread (he saved some for me) while Chrissy and I were in a store. I would say the eating on our trip was great!