Lance Corporal Mervyn Shopland Gibbs

The day I arrived in Caens was a beautiful, hot, sunny day: blue skies, with hardly a cloud to be seen. It was an ice-cream-and-bare-feet day. The next day – the day I went to find the grave of my great uncle – I woke to a completely overcast sky and cool temperatures. Rain, or at least drizzle, was forecast. It seemed appropriate.

No one from my family has ever visited the grave, so when he knew I would be in the area my Dad asked me to go and take some pictures. He doesn’t ask for much, my Dad, so I was happy to do this. He also gave me copies of the letters from the Department of National Defense about the whereabouts of the grave. They were terribly sad. I can’t imagine what it must be like to receive a letter like that.

So when I arrived in Caen yesterday my first stop, after a sweaty 20 minute trudge from the station, was the Tourist Information Office (or “TI”, as we “RTW” types like to call it). I had a bit of a tricky task – the Canadian War Cemetery at Bény-sur-Mer is not exactly on the beaten track, so I needed some advice on how to get there and back. The woman who helped me was really good and very friendly and tolerated my poor language skills and odd requests with a smile. However it seems that the good people at the Caen TI are not often called upon to get visiting Canadians to and from a cemetery 20 km away. Wikipedia, on the other hand, made it sound like finding the place would be a simple matter:

The cemetery is about 1 kilometre east of the village of Reviers, in the Calvados department, on the Creully-Tailleville-Ouistreham road (D.35). It is located 15 kilometres northwest of Caen, 18 kilometres east of Bayeux, and 3.5 kilometres south of Courseulles-sur-Mer. The village of Bény-sur-Mer is some 2 kilometres southeast of the cemetery. The bus service between Caen and Arromanches (via Reviers and Ver-sur-Mer) passes the cemetery.* The cemetery can be accessed any time, and tours of the cemetery are available through companies offering tours of historic D-Day locations in the area. The cemetery is easy to find, and plenty of parking is available.

I’m sure that’s all fine if one has a car and a proper map. However, if one is à pied, it’s another matter. And to confuse things further, it turns out that the Bény-sur-Mer cemetery is actually closer to the tiny town of Reviers than it is to the slightly larger eponymous town of Bény-sur-Mer.

Nevertheless, there is a way. There really is a bus that goes from Caens to Reviers (Ligne 6, from Place Courtonne, €3.20 one-way, for future reference), and it’s a short walk from the town to the cemetery. The first bus of the day leaves Caen at 12:37 pm and arrives at Riviers at 1:12 pm. Perfect. The problem comes if one desires to return from Reviers to Caens. The last (in fact, only) bus from Reviers to Caens departs at 1:36 pm, allowing just 24 minutes of time in Reviers. I ask you, what kind of slack-jawed cretin devises a bus schedule like that? Honestly.

Back at the TI we looked at alternatives and determined that the simplest thing would be to reserve a taxi to pick me up at the cemetery and deliver me back to Caen. Not the cheapest option, but the one with the greatest chance of success. By this time I’d reached the very limit of my ability in French so the long-suffering woman at the TI phoned and made the reservation for me. And then I decided I should probably leave because they were actually turning out the lights.** No matter, I was sorted.

The next morning I got the bus as advertised and had no trouble finding the cemetery. I really was a short walk from the town, and it’s surrounded by farmland, which seemed very appropriate. I knew I'd found it as soon as I topped the hill, and just seeing this had me blinking back a few tears:

Notice that the Canadian flagpole is slightly taller than the French one - nice touch. The French may be arrogant about some things, but they can not be faulted when it comes to acknowledging their debt to the men who gave their lives to free them.

My first stop was the cemetery register. Every war cemetery I've been to has a register - it's just a plain bunch of bundled sheets that lists every marker in the cemetery, ordered by last name, along with a few details about the soldier. Some entries have notes about medals won - I saw one at Essex Farm about a Victoria Cross winner. And there's always a Visitor's Book too, where you can sign your name and leave a message. They're normally stored together in a little recess in a wall, away from the elements.

I had no trouble finding the entry I was looking for:

There was nothing for it then but to go find the grave, which was a simple matter. He was right where he was supposed to be – Plot 11, Row A, Grave 5.

It was really emotional standing there in front of that headstone. Ypres was emotional too, but in an overwhelming and abstract kind of way. This was personal. Here was someone I’d never met, in fact never had a chance to meet, but who was still part of me. Mervyn Gibbs was the oldest son of four siblings – he had one brother and two sisters. One sister was my grandmother and one is my great aunt who I still visit when I’m home. If it hadn’t been for that war I might still be able to visit him too. Granted he’d be about 88 years old by now, but that would mean he’d have had 65 years more life than he got.

I’ve been thinking about this side-trip for a while, and a few days ago I realized that I wanted to leave something at the grave just to show I’d been there. Just to show that someone had been there to personally acknowledge the sacrifice of this particular man. I thought about flowers, but that didn’t feel right. It felt like it should be something from home, but I really couldn’t think what that might be. I could see that people sometimes leave Canadian coins, but I’d long since got rid of any of those. And some people simply balance small pebbles on the top of the headstone, but that didn’t seem right either. Then I figured it out. I cut the little Canadian flag badge off of my daypack, and I left it tucked into the plants at the base of the headstone.

It's not much, but it was left with care.

It feels strange to be without it – like I’ve lost a bit of my identity. But it feels better knowing it’s there, and it seemed right that it should be something that had traveled as far as he had. At 23 years old he came all the way over here to fight for people and a place he’d never known, and he died doing it, and now he’s here forever. That really struck me – how very very young he was and how very very far from home. Now at least there’s a little bit of home with him.

The whole cemetery is fairly large – slightly bigger than Essex Farm at Ypres, but much smaller than Tyne Cot. It contains 2049 markers, many of which are for those who were killed in early July 1944 in the Battle for Caen. And I’m happy to report that it is immaculately kept – the grass is neatly mowed, and the leaves falling off the maple trees must be raked up regularly. In fact there was a gardener there this afternoon tidying things up, and he was kind enough to take my picture for me.

There’s also been an extensive program to replace many of the markers due to faster-than-expected deterioration. I could see some of the ones that hadn’t been replaced yet, and they were indeed looking a bit sad. The marker for my uncle is almost certainly new – it was pristine. The people at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission do good work.

And then I looked around, and I took a lot more pictures, and just sort of thought about things. I was there for about an hour and a half before my cab arrived, and it was a good amount of time. Long enough that it felt appropriate and respectful, but not so long that I was spending more time thinking about how it really must be time to have something to eat*** than about what I was there for. And then the cab came and whisked me back to reality, or at least what passes for reality for me these days. All that remained was to try and find a late lunch and to gather my thoughts about the day. And so I did.

What to say in closing? All I can think of is this: Thank you, Lance Corporal Mervyn Gibbs. You gave your name to my father and you gave your life to us all. I wish I could have known you.

Rest in peace.

Lance Corporal Mervyn Shopland Gibbs, died July 8, 1944, Age 23.

* In fact this is true, but only between July 3 and September 1. Convenient.

** They really were, but I hasten to add that everyone at the Caens Tourist Information Office was unfailingly pleasant, with nary a Parisian “Pffftt” to be heard. The fact that they turned out the lights on me is just because it was 6:02 pm and they closed at 6:00 pm.

*** And let me tell you whatever crazy Frenchman decided that every decent restaurant in Caens must be closed between the hours of 3pm and 6pm should be forced to eat at McDonald’s for eternity. And super-size that, please. I ended up noshing on a sandwich and beer in my hotel room, which is in flagrant disregard of the notice declaring Il est interdit de manger dans les chambres. Hrrummmph.... Il est aussi interdit de faire la lessive (already done it), d'accrocher du ligne aux fenêtres (easily accomplished) et de cuisiner (slightly more complicated but not impossible). If I put my mind to it, I could manage to break all the rules before sunset.

Random Observations on Paris

As with Moscow, there are a number of things I’ve noticed that are interesting, but don’t really warrant a proper long post. Here you go:

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There are buskers on the Metro here. Notice I didn’t say in the Metro, as in “hanging about in the tunnels between platforms”. I said on the Metro, as in “riding on the trains”. The first time I saw this was on the train out to the Catacombs – there was a guy in my car who actually had a microphone and amplifier and was doing some kind of karaoke act. Despite the fact that I’ve recently made the acquaintance of someone who is busking for his dinner and thus am more aware of how precarious an existence that can be, I was tight-fisted with this particular guy because really, karoake to a canned sound track? The next day there was a nice violinist in my car and since I am a generous sort I gave him fifty cents, so now he can probably get that 96” plasma screen TV he’s been saving up for.

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One night I went to a one-man comedy show near le Bastille; it was billed as being 100% English, and promised to teach you how to become Parisian. It was only sorta funny, but some of it was really true. For instance, the guy taught us what he called the “Parisian Sound”, which is that contemptuous “pfffft” noise usually accompanied by a quick roll of the eyes that marks a true Parisian’s reaction to, well, almost anything. The funny thing is that a few days later I found myself making that very noise after deciding to have a coffee and pastry near Notre Dame, solely so I could use the toilet in the café. Upon discovering that, even for paying customers, the toilet cost an additional 50 cents, I instinctively let out a “pfffft” that would have made any Parisian proud and departed instantly. Well I mean, really.

Pleasant street near the annoying café

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Some of the metro cars here have little buttons or levers you use to open the doors when the train arrives at the platform. The cool thing is that if you push the button early, the doors will actually open before the train comes to a complete stop, which lets you hop off in a rakish manner, somewhat like being on one of the old Routemaster doubledecker buses in London. Ah, it takes me back…

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It seems like all hostels in Paris have a mid-day lock-out period, which is really annoying. I remember this from London twenty years ago, but all of the hostels I’ve stayed at so far have evolved since that time. Not in Paris. The lock-out is ostensibly so that the hostel rooms can be cleaned during the day, but if the staff at the hostel I currently inhabit are really spending 11:00 am to 3:00 pm cleaning the place then I shudder to think what the place would be like without that time. It’s conveniently located and has free wifi, but I wouldn’t want to have surgery there or anything.

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I think I’ve mostly got the whole computer disaster sorted out. The new machine still needs some tweaks – iTunes is being, well, iTunes-y, and I need to get in under the hood and expunge a bunch of Microsoft bloatware and such, but generally it’s working fine and the battery life is brilliant. I was also able to arrange a pleasant evening of quality time with an external monitor and the “forked”* old computer, so I rescued the files I needed from it and it’s now been dispatched home along with my broken steripen and a few other odds and sods. It’s a relief not to be dragging all that (literally) dead weight around with me. And though I suspect he’ll never see this, I have to thank Kai, the sort-of hasher** who invited me over to his flat to let me use an old monitor, and chatted with me, and gave me a cup of tea, and then opened the bottle of wine I’d brought as a thank you, and then walked with me through a nice park back to the metro. What can I say? It’s all about the kindness of strangers.

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The Arc de Triomphe is smack in the middle of a gigantic traffic circle. It’s madness – 12 streets converge at that point, which is called Charles de Gaulle Etoile, I guess because it looks like big star on maps. The roundabout – the world’s largest, according to the LP - is about 5 lanes wide and I honestly can’t figure out how that many cars manage to negotiate it without everyone ending up in a crumpled heap. From the sidelines it looks like utter chaos.

The Arc de Triomphe

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The food… God. I keep walking down streets that are lined with shops selling beautiful bread and pastries that are works of art and fruits and vegetables and artisinal sausages and paté and oils and wine. It’s become apparent to me that in order to really experience the best of Paris you need three things:

1. An infinite budget
2. An infinite appetite, and
3. An infinite ability to ingest calories without actually becoming infinite.

Despite having none of the above, I think I’m making a game stab at the first part of number three, but failing miserably at the second.

Macarons! They will be my undoing.

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That’s all for now, stay tuned for news about my trip to the Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, near the Normandy coast. I’m going there to visit the grave of my Great-Uncle Mervyn, of the Regina Rifles.

* Ironically, I’ve actually lost the fork that was the cause of all the trouble. I used it at a café near the Musée D’Orsay and forgot it on the table. It was gone by the time I realized it was missing and went back to look for it. So now the computer is gone, and the fork is gone. It’s like the whole episode has been erased, which isn’t necessarily bad.

** Sort-of hasher because he’d hashed exactly once a couple of weeks ago and found it wasn’t quite what he was expecting. Still, he was on the email list to which my cry for help was sent, and he responded. Nice guy.

Encore! Encore!

I’ve had a good few days in Paris since we last spoke – seen some more of the highlights, and had a few distinctly subterranean experiences.

The Louvre was, as expected, entirely too big. I didn’t even try to see it all. In fact I swanned in around noon to get my entrance ticket and my ticket to the 2:30pm guided tour, and then went off to find lunch. After a lovely crêpe (well two crêpes actually, one savoury, one sweet, and a bowl of cider… it was a set menu, how could I refuse?) I wandered back for the tour. This one was similar to the one I did at the Musée D’Orsay in that each person in the group was given a headset and the guide wore a wireless microphone, which means that you were free to wander away from the guide’s immediate area and still hear the never-ending patter. It worked quite well until my guide, in an excess of passion, shouted at two miscreants fingering some priceless objet d’art saying “Ne touche pas les objets!” at top volume, which was then amplified and transferred to my ears at a dangerously ear-drum-damaging level.

Anyways, the tour was nice, and I saw all the big important stuff, like the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace and this:

It’s small, and completely mobbed all of the time.

The crowd in front of the Mona Lisa. Wild.

I’ll only add that doing a tour of the Louvre in the mid-afternoon after a substantial lunch and a glass of cider leaves one feeling a bit dopey and more in the mood for a nap than a Da Vinci. Lesson learned. Objet d’art before lunch. Also: Ne touche pas!

On Friday morning I went to the market at Rue Cler – just a small street with a nice stretch of shops - and I bought the makings of a picnic to eat in a nearby park, before proceeding to the Catacombs (one of the aforementioned subterranean activities). Rue Cler was nice, and I got a chunk of cheese and a small baguette and a basket of really good strawberries and an enormous macaron and a café au lait. It was all really nice, so I took a picture.

Oo la la!

While I was eating my little picnic, in the metaphorical shadow if the Eiffel Tower (it was cloudy), I was treated to the overture of a well-known tourist scam, and am happy to report that I did not fall for it for one second. Here’s what Rick Steves says about how the scam is supposed to work:

The found ring: An innocent-looking person picks up a ring on the ground in front of you, and asks if you dropped it. When you say no, the person examines the ring more closely, then shows you a mark "proving" that it's pure gold. He offers to sell it to you for a good price — which is several times more than he paid for it before dropping it on the sidewalk.

And that’s exactly what happened, at least up to the “When you say no” part. The guy continued to talk and, having twigged to what was going on, I just held up my hand and shook my head and kept saying, “Non, non, non… allez!” Obviously the guy realized I was on to his little game and off he went to find someone more gullible (who would, no doubt, be wearing flip-flops). And so I finished my macaron, which was fantastic.*

After the picnic it was time for the Catacombs, a site that was on my “Must See” list. You’ve probably heard about this place, and seen pictures. It’s a series of underground tunnels – actually the remains of an old quarry under the city that’s now filled with bones exhumed from cemeteries all over Paris.

At the end of the 18th century, rampant disease in the les Halles neighbourhood caused by the adjacent Cemetery of the Innocents led to the mass grave being entirely exhumed. In 1785 it was decided that the bones were to be moved to the building stone quarry under the Mountsouris plain in the south of Paris. On April 7, 1786, after being properly converted and readied the quarries were consecrated and became the principal ossuary of Paris. Until 1788, cartloads covered with black cloths, escorted by priests chanting the office for the dead, crossed Paris by night to deposit their remains.

Not surprisingly, it’s pretty much off the charts on the Creepy Scale. Being underground in disused quarry tunnels, wandering for what seems like miles under the streets of Paris, feeling the chill in the air, slipping on the wet floor, and occasionally being dripped on would be interesting enough. Now add this:

And this:

And cheery messages carved into stone tablets, like this one:

Un monstre sans raison aussi bien sans yeux

Est la Diviniteé Qu’on adore en ces lieux;

On l’apele la Mort et son cruel empire

S’etend également sur tout cequi respire.

- Philip Hebert **

It just went on and on. At first chilling, and then sort of moving, and then finally kind of tiresome. (“Hmmm, I wonder what’s around this corner? Aha… more bones…”) At the end of the tour you emerge into a tiny, featureless office blocks away from where you started and a friendly attendant asks to see inside your bag to make sure you haven’t taken a souvenir. I’m not kidding, he looked into my bag and said, “No bones? Good.”

The other subterranean activity of the week was a visit to the Musée des Égouts de Paris – The Paris Sewers Museum. It was markedly less creepy and definitely more pungent than the Catacombs. I was hoping for something much more Jean Valjean, but it was all quite modern. Then again, next time you're in Paris with 45 minutes to kill and €4.20 burning a hole in your pocket, you could do worse. If you won't be here any time soon, the two most interesting tidbits from the tour are these:

1. They really did discover a small crocodile in the Paris sewers, who was apparently flushed down a toilet in a pet shop or something. She was about 1 metre long at the time, and now resides at the zoo in an enclosure painted, ironically, to look like the Paris sewers.


2. If you drop something down a sewer grate in Paris (like, say, your car keys, or your wedding ring, or your crocodile) you can phone up the sewer hotline and tell them where you were, and they will go try to find it for you. Apparently they have an 80% success rate, and there is no charge for the service. Maybe the pet store people above should have taken advantage of this (“Hello? Yes, I’ve lost something down the sewer at Place de la Concorde. Car keys? No, not exactly, but trust me you'll know it when you see it…”)

And of course I've hashed in Paris. Twice, in fact, on consecutive days. Both times involved taking a train out of town and crashing around in the woods for a while before settling in for some post-run beer. And since it's France there was also baguette, and cheese, and various other post-run treats. I'm not sure the French can do anything that's not accompanied by at least one baguette. Then again, you'll hear no complaints from me in this department.

*So good, in fact, I thought briefly that it might supplant sticky toffee pudding as my favourite dessert, but then I regained my senses. I did not, however, regain any self-control when it comes to macarons, because when I stopped to pick up a cheap grocery-store supper that evening I also dropped in to the local boulangerie/patisserie and decided to try one of each flavour of the small macarons, and there turned out to be eight (chocolate, lemon, raspberry, strawberry, pistachio, coffee, orange and something else unidentifiable). They were all fantastic, none more so than the chocolate, naturally.

** Here’s my ham-fisted, Google-assisted translation effort:

A monster without reason and also without eyes

Is the god adored in these places

We call it Death and it’s cruel empire

Extends equally to all that draw breath.

Steve's Weird Food for France: Steak Tartare

Steak Tartare. I know this would not be "out there" for a lot of people*, but it's definitely weird for me. I mean come on! Raw hamburger on a plate?

What can I say about steak tartare? My first forkful made me think, "Hey, this is quite tasty". Unfortunately, that thought was followed in approximately 0.00000001 seconds with the thought, "THIS IS RAW BEEF!" which kind of spoiled the moment. Mine was served with some decent fried potatoes, a green salad, and some baguette. I think it's often served with toast, for spreading.

And it was a lot - a mound the size of a softball. Too much for me to finish.

What did it taste like? It's chilled, and mostly you just taste the seasoning. I'm pretty sure there was some kind of vinegar-like thing in there, and some onion, and I believe it's usually prepared with Worcestershire Sauce. It was savoury and tasty, and the texture was like coarse, moist, stringy paté. I just couldn't separate the taste from the idea. Also, it is disquieting to get raw hamburger stuck between one's teeth.

I believe I can go to my grave without having steak tartare again.


* And by "a lot of people" I mean "the Paris Hashers with whom I discussed the 'Steve's Weird Food' project". One of their suggestions was Tête de Veau. But this came from a guy whose cafeteria at work serves frog's legs so he's clearly on a whole other Weird Food Level.

Ah, Paris!

Paris caught me unawares - I really hadn’t planned to get here quite yet. My intentions on leaving Belgium were to proceed to Arras, France and thence to the memorial at Vimy. But it turns out that touring the sights of Vimy and being sans auto are two largely incompatible states. After some fruitless research into tour companies, and a pleasant but unhelpful chat with a woman at the memorial, I just decided to chuck the whole thing and head straight for Paris, on the TGV no less.*

My current hostel is adequate – well situated mere steps from the Seine, near the western end of Île. St-Louis. The room is well-equipped with sink and shower en suite, and the breakfast is very French – a chunk of baguette, a small brioche, butter, jam, and coffee or tea. On my first night I happened on a comfy Scottish pub with free wifi and Guinness on tap, so I abandoned my plan to find a bistro and eat something with lots of duck liver and and butter and cream. Instead, I had the burger-and-beer special and camped out with the computer and finished (finally) the post on Ypres. A cop-out, I know, but sometimes you just need a pint of Guinness, even at a heart-stopping €6.90/pint.

I wandered over to Île-de-la-Cité after dinner, where there is a church you may have heard of.

Notre Dame

It was a beautifully warm night, so I sat in front of the cathedral and glanced through my LP France, and watched the fire-flinging buskers, and enjoyed the moment. When I got back to the hostel it was nearing midnight, but only one of the four bunks in my room was occupied. Midnight is not an outrageously late time to arrive, but I was careful to move about as quietly and politely as possible. Still, the woman sleeping in the bunk opposite radiated such a perfectly Gallic sense of contempt at my audacity that it fairly rolled off her in waves. I almost wanted to applaud. She repeated her quiet snorts of disgust as each of the last two occupants of the room arrived. Well really, who did we think we were anyways?

Being in Paris is nice. It’s comfortable in a city where the language is not a complete mystery. My French is pretty good, though paradoxically I speak it much more readily than I understand it. This is frustrating because I can make myself understood in almost any situation, but comprehending the response is often beyond me. Everyone in France should just bloody well SLOW DOWN when they talk. Apparently my tongue may be at least partly French, but my ears are stubbornly English.

Also, being around all these sophisticated French women makes me feel like a grubby under-dressed oaf, but happily this can often be rectified by finding an overweight tourist in flowered shorts and flip-flops to stand next to.

I’ve decided to spend about a week here, and I’m getting my museum/sight-seeing chops back, which is good. Yesterday I visited the Musée D’Orsay, did some wandering there on my own, and had a guided tour. It’s really big, but not so outrageously over-the-top big as the Hermitage (or the Louvre, on the schedule for Friday). I’ve decided that if I can locate one or two pieces that really move me in these places, then I feel I’ve done well**. Here is my moving moment from the Musée D’Orsay:

Monet’s “Londres, le Parlement – Trouée de soleil dans le brouillard" (The genuine article is really much nicer - all pale purple and hazy.)

Maybe I was feeling a bit wistful about being alone in Paris on a rainy day. Maybe I missed the familiarity of London.*** Whatever it was, I stood and stared at that painting and got a bit choked up.

The other most excellent discovery at the Musée D’Orsay was an enormous cut-away model of the 19th century Paris Opera House, the Palais Garnier. It was huge, and showed all the backstage mechanics of the fly system, and what looked like a system of moving scenery on stage as well. It was accompanied by a display of two sets of maquettes for 19th century operas that were delightful. I’ve kind of been avoiding theatres and such, feeling like that might be a bit of a busman’s holiday, but that was clearly a mistake. As soon as I saw that model theatre and those set renderings it was like I was home. I thought to myself, “I know this. I live this. I AM this.” I wanted to turn to the person next to me and say, “Look! This is a rendering for the 3rd Act of “Moses”, when he parts the Red Sea! Look at the painting – you can see where the designer gridded out the paper before he started to paint. I know all about this!”

Model of the Palais Garnier

In fact, it made me decide to have a look at the theatre itself, so I went for a guided tour of the public spaces of the building the next day. We got to go into the auditorium, and I itched to get on stage and have a look around. They were in the middle of fitting up a show, a very modern design with lots of gigantic mirrored legs and straw strewn all over the floor. The orchestra pit was down, and the piano was being tuned, and guys were pushing big lumps of scenery on and off stage, and people were wandering around wearing headsets and it was all just great. Then again, maybe it was only great because it was all not my problem. It’s entirely possible that they were days behind schedule and hundreds of thousands of euros over budget and that the straw on the floor was the result of the total and spectacular failure of some bit of machinery up in the fly tower****. No matter, it was just nice to see.

The stage of the Palais Garnier

I also had a reasonable 10k run all the way along the left bank from Île. St-Louis to the Eiffel Tower. That wasn’t my original aim, but as I ran along I started to see the tower in the distance and it just seemed ridiculous not to stop for a photo op. After that, it was a nice return trip along the right bank, past the Tuileries and the Louvre, and thence to the hostel and a shower and a beer.

Seen on the run. And yes, I do appreciate that this was not your average 10k.

And that’s been my first few days in Paris. Pas mal.

* The TGV (Tres Grand Vitesse) train was not at all exciting. In fact, it felt decidedly down-at-heal, and much less space-shuttle-like than I’d expected.

** I like to wander around and think about what piece I would take home with me if the management of the Musée were to approach and say something like, “Madame, you are clearly not an average tourist, as evidenced by the fact that you have lingered for more than 4.2 seconds in front of this painting. Thank you also for not simply approaching, reading the tag, taking a digital photo of yourself with the painting, and then moving on to repeat this process with each piece in the room. Please, it would give us great pleasure to present you with a small memento of your visit. Perhaps this Monet? Mais non, we insist.”

*** On my very first day in London, on the very first tube ride from Heathrow to the hostel, I saw a “Rhymes on the Road” advert in the tube car I was riding in, and it has stuck with me ever since:

Go where we may, rest where we will,

Eternal London haunts us still.

**** Technical Director to Stage Manager: “Yeah, ummm… about the Big Straw Drop… What would happen if you didn’t have that until next Thursday? Uh huh. Yes. I see. Of course. No no no, absolutely we’ll put a crew of 17 on overnight to get it fixed. No no, it’s no problem at all.” Heh. Sometimes I don’t miss work at all. Hey Adam, how’s it going?