Day 14 - Monday, July 22nd

Today the girls had tickets at noon for the Louvre, but Laura and I, having already seen it, elect to stay back at the condo and make preparations for our return trip home as well as rest tired muscles and regroup a bit.  My right knee, which I was apprehensive about prior to the trip imagining everyone strolling 30 feet ahead of me while I struggled to keep up, has actually done pretty well as long as I pause and rest it when able.  One of these years I will likely have to get it replaced, but for now I can still shuffle along like Joe Biden on steroids, so there’s that.

With Laura resting back at the condo, I meet up with the girls outside the Louvre and together we did a victory lap around the Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon’s little gift to himself for winning the Napoleonic Wars.  I say little because, after winning their Independence, Mexico constructed one quite similar but slightly bigger.  The three of us took one long last look and bid adieu to this wonderful city then trained it back to our condo for the last time.

I have now seen what I have come to see and done whatever it is I came here to do.  I am actually looking forward to minding and tending to matters back at 5254 N. Lamon Avenue.  My closet shelf needs fixing, and several other matters large and small will need attention.  I have enjoyed briefly inhabiting the persona of Sir Malcolm Highbottom, international playboy, the wastrel offspring of Lord Highbottom, who has never worked and will never work a day in his life, but now both tired and refreshed a bit, I look forward to resuming the tasks I need to do, and once again returning to the roiling politics and concerns of the United States, a place called home.

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Day 13 - Sunday, July 21st

As an aside, so far on the trip we have typically been walking between 6 to 8.5 miles per day on foot.  On our previous European trip, we did between 10 and 12 with the outlier being a 14-mile jaunt through Barcelona in one day.  However, I now have more wear and tear in the meniscus of my right knee, and wanted to rest up a bit on Sunday morning.  Gladly, everyone was in consensus acknowledging that they too could use a break.  So we all slept in and rested not leaving the condo until 13:30.

Our first stop was just down the street in our neighborhood,  Père-Lachaise Cemetary, where the likes of Edith Piaf, Isadora Duncan, Oscar Wilde, Frédéric Chopin, Jim Morrison and many others are forever interred.  We explored this tranquil space on a bit of a treasure hunt locating this person and that before heading back to the condo to change clothes for our dinner reservation.  

We boarded a train heading to Notre Dame, an injured beauty still convalescing from a horrible 2019 fire.  Her roof and central spire are once again restored and intact, but the presence of the two tower cranes and all the scaffolding suggests much more work and healing continues.

Directly across the Seine from the cathedral is Shakespeare and Company, an esteemed purveyor of old books that we visited in 2017 and we knew the girls would love.  They were drawn into to its dense interior of cubbies containing musty classics while Laura and I went to a nearby cafe to cool off on the hot afternoon with some ginger-lemonade.  Right on cue the ubiquitous gendarmes who have established, to me, a both impressive and oppressive security presence ahead of the Olympic Games arrived in number to sweep everyone from the surrounding area as, from what we could gather from the confused bits of nearby English words we could surmise, a suspicious package had been located nearby.  Security forces in camo and automatic weapons then appeared, and I presume the threat from someone’s lost bag containing whatever harmless thing it held was neutralized and everything returned to something close to normal.

The girls rejoined us happy with their visit to the book shop and, since we were now solidly in the Latin Quarter, we made our way into the Saint-Germaine neighborhood to pay a brief visit to 16 Rue Séguier, our HomeAway spot from seven years prior, and once again strolled through the streets we had acquainted ourselves with back then.  After returning from that trip, I was doing some reading about the area and learned that possibly the oldest Parisian cafe still in existence, a place frequented by Marie Antoinette, Thomas Jefferson, and the ever present Oscar Wilde, had been right in the area and we had missed the chance to drop by.  I decided to remedy this by obtaining a reservation, so our Big Night Out began with being seated at Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s favorite table (or at least the one bearing his portrait), and tucking ourselves into a wonderfully French and absolutely delicious meal complete with some tasty desert and a huffy waiter.  It was all one could really ask for, and a divine good time.

As evening fell, we left Rousseau’s enchanted gaze and strolled through Jardin du Luxembourg, a park every bit the equal to Kensington Gardens, until we were once again descended upon by the fun police, who seeing people enjoying themselves on a warm summer’s eve, swept everyone from the park in the name of the kind of municipal “security” that I have found to be an increasingly stifling presence so far on the trip.  This has caused too much of the city to be off limits for my taste, and I wonder where the notoriously rowdy Parisian protesters are, who often battle their police, and are often found to be winning or at least coming to a draw.  Why aren’t they here in numbers to take back their city from the Paris 2024 invaders?  I am seemingly alone in my discontent as the rest of the family obliges the security restrictions with little complaint and they happily exit the park when asked while I mutter under my breath ACAB.

I should mention that prior to being ousted from the park by the fun police, I received the notification that President Biden had exited the 2024 race and was endorsing Vice President Harris, yet another unprecedented political development on the home front, that once again made us pause in our tracks.  I can’t but wonder if many of the French must shake their heads in wonder at our fraught politics in the states, but judging by those in my immediate surroundings, it looks as if they could care less, besides they certainly have their share of their own problems.

After exiting the park, it was just a short walk to our final stop of the night, Montparnesse Tower and its 59 story rooftop deck with a full view of the city.  We made our way up to view all that glitters below and were eye level with the top of the Eiffel Tower two miles away.  We stare at the City of Light below us in awe until finally heading back to our condo just after midnight luxuriously exhausted once more, this day having walked 9.6 miles and seeing all we could physically see.

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Day 12 - Saturday, July 20

We arrived at Versailles at 11:00AM on yet another day full of sunshine, typical of the trip so far.  The gals briefly tried recreating the October 6, 1789 Women’s March that liberated the place on the promenade leading up to the Chateau.

The scale and spectacle of the palace confirmed all my prejudice against royalty and its aims.  After an hour and forty-five minutes of stupefying splendor, I was ready to leave before my latent Ultra-Hard-Leftist-Saul Alinsky-ite-Radical-Socialist-Liberal-Moderate-Democrat tendencies got the better of me and forced me to sack the place in the name of Revolution.  I find it mind blowing that back home in the states the People, who have a republic where they themselves rule, are rising up to install an aged and incontinent king.  In 1992, it was Clinton who famously proclaimed, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  Today I want to swing from the chandeliers in the Hall of Mirrors saying, “It’s the stupid, stupid!”

We decided next to tour the Eiffel Tower.  Remembering from our 2017 trip the boulevard along the Seine where sites like the Petit Palais lay in store, I elected to take the train to Invalidides and walk back along the Seine to Champes de Mers and tower itself.  Emerging to street level, however, I was met with a hastily constructed ten foot high wooden fence that I soon learned surrounded every site of any value in Central Paris and barricaded everyone not holding an Olympics pass to what lie within.  This stung my sense of egalitarianism and liberty deeply and with every encounter with this bastard wall and with the dull eyed, bored police officers standing alongside, my fury grew.  We got as close to the Tower as permissible without taking up arms, and retreated once again to the condo.

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Day 11 - Friday, July 19th

We left the condo at 9:30AM to spend our first day in Paris making our first stop at Musée d’ Orsay, a favorite memory from our previous visit.  Once again, its collection did not disappoint, and we all enjoyed wandering around the cavernous former train station.  Next we made the trip up to Sacre Couer Basilica and poked along in the hot summer afternoon through Montmarte winding up tired and thirsty in front of the Moulin Rouge.  That was plenty for Day 1, so we headed back to Rue de la Chine to prepare a dinner of hamburgers and quiche before falling asleep.

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Day 10 - Thursday, July 18th

We checked out of our sleek London condo at 11:00AM and left West Hampstead to board the Chunnel train to Paris.  What was to be a layover at King’s Crossing with all our luggage in tow evaporated as our train was cancelled and we were able to board an earlier one.  So in little time we were on our way.  However, this meant that our arrival at our Paris AirBnB in the 20th Arrondissement would be a couple hours earlier than planned.  Laura was uncomfortable with the idea of going under a body of water in a dark, dank tunnel, but our ride proceeded so smoothly I had to inform her the crossing had already occurred.  Although our host was unavailable given our earlier-than-planned arrival, fortunately her husband Jean Yves was on hand to welcome us to our small comfy retreat just up the hill from the Gambetta train stop.  We located a nearby grocery and prepared a meal before flopping contentedly in front of the Netflix machine to watch “The Devil Wears Prada.”  Laura and I had never seen it.  Meanwhile, the girls had significant amounts of the dialogue committed to memory.  Sleep found us quickly.

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Day 9 - Wednesday, July 17th

After a solid night’s sleep, Abi is out early to retrieve groceries and prepare breakfast, and we enjoy a sunny morning in the condo.  At 11:00AM, we leave for our first stop, the British Museum.  Where previously the line had stretched around the block, on this day we sail through in five minutes.  We go directly to the “Flood Fragment” of the Gilgamesh tablets and then weave our way through probably the most astonishing collection of stolen artifacts anywhere in the world.  The sheer audacity of the British Empire’s sense of entitlement in the 19th Century is itself a thing to behold just as a supposed thorn from Christ’s crown preserved in a golden reliquary is as well.

We then ventured down to Cecil Court and its curious collection of small antique and book shops before dining at a traditional British pub and heading to our 7:00PM performance of “Stranger Things” at the Phoenix Theatre in the West End.  The show was a bedazzling spectacle of theatrical wizardry that more than made up for its sagging storyline with flash pots, loud bangs, and sheer technical bravura.  My jackknifed knees could no longer take the tightly packed theatre rows in the Grand Circle which had been designed by three highly prominent motherless bastards back in 1930, so I spent the second half happily standing in the SRO section in the far upper reach of the venue.  A fun night of theater.  Arriving back at our condo at 11:00PM, we all flopped exhausted into our beds.

 

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Day 8 - Tuesday, July 16

Refreshed from our first night’s stay in London, around 10:00AM we walked a block from the condo to Abbey Road, and then strolled along it until we reached its namesake studio where dozens of tourists were holding up traffic to get “the shot” in the iconic crosswalk out front.  We then took trains from St. John’s Wood to Westminster and emerged from the Underground in what picture books and postcards have always told me was London.  Big Ben, Parliament, Whitehall and 10 Downing were all clumped together presided over by the stoic Westminster Abbey.  Laura got her picture taken with the scowling statue of Winston Churchill, and we had ice cream in St. James Park on our way to Buckingham Palace.  This part of downtown London loves to give its visitors the royal treatment.  

We then went to Kensington Gardens so Laura could have her picture taken with Peter Pan, and headed back to our condo to rest before going to The Globe where we held tickets for the night’s performance of “Much Ado About Nothing.”  It had been our longest walking day of the trip so far as we put in 8.5 miles (or about 13.7 kilometers.)

The show amazed and delighted.  The cast worked their hearts out, and the words of Shakespeare glowed bright as did all the city lights along the waterfront of the Thames.  Those folks certainly know how to put on a show.

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Day 7 - Monday, July 15th

In the morning we checked out of our charming cottage and left the rolling hills and glades of Freshford for a final time as we headed back east to begin our London stay.  After a nearly two and a half hour trip, our train swept into Paddington Station where we transferred to the Underground with plans to stow our luggage at a FedEx, grab a bite, and see the British Museum.  Where four years ago, Laura and Abi had simply strolled in, a line now stretched around the block.  We abandoned the idea and turned our attention to finding a place to eat.  Most of the small lunch spots were overcrowded so we slid into the somewhat pretentious Bloomsbury Kitchen and sampled their fusion Mediterranean and Japanese fare puzzling our palates with several small dishes before once again retrieving our luggage for our last leg north to where our West Hampstead condo awaited us.  After arriving, Abi and I made a quick trip to a nearby Sainsbury’s for groceries, and we had a nice meal of chicken parmesan prepared by Abi as we settled into our new digs.

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Day 6 - Sunday, July 14th

We book an Uber to take us to Stonehenge after learning our train does not run on Sunday mornings.  It is our first early departure of the trip with us leaving around 8:30AM, still hardly the break of dawn though.  Our driver Asad shows up and we head out for the 30-minute drive to our destination.  Asad is Somali and asks where we’re from.  We confirm his suspicion that we’re Chicagoans and he remarks about the futures exchange.  Since I use to work at a trade desk, we start discussing trading as he day trades currencies when not Ubering.  I’ve found no matter where on Earth two people are born, they will always have something in common, and often that something involves Chicago.  He drops us off at the Visitor’s Center and soon we are making the 2-km trek by foot to the ancient site where 4,500 years ago Neolithic people had drug sarcens, carved rock monuments each weighing around 25 tons, from where they had been quarried over 200 km away and lifted them into place to commemorate our solstices, days that seem to pass with little mention in our modern day culture.  Crows stood watch around the site as we made our way around this remarkable ruin.  Then we shuttled it back to the Visitor’s center to find a bus to take us into Salisbury.

The double decker arrived to whisk us off emptying out a number of sightseers.  However, we are the only ones who board so we commandeer the upper deck with each of us sprawling out in a different  area of the otherwise empty top deck for the roughly 25-minute trip into town.  Pulling into the outskirts, we pass close by a hill and I make a glib reference to a Peter Gabriel song only to later realize this is Old Sarum, an ancient site that was the original settlement of this locale, which would later be capped by an Iron Age castle long ago reduced to ruin with all the stones recycled off except for its foundation.  

We make our way to the cathedral standing tall in full Gothic splendor above the town and look at so many of the treasures within its majestic walls including possibly the world’s first mechanical clock along with some say the best preserved of the four existing copies of the Magna Carta which resolved that kings would no longer enjoy absolute rule, an idea that would not be overturned for over 800 years.

We ate at a nearby Nando’s and then made our way to the train to Freshford arriving back in the evening in time to tune into the Euro Final where England was looking to bring the Tournament Cup home after defeating Spain.  Spain had a different plot line in mind for the ending unfortunately and, after England had scored a tying goal, Spain managed to score one more late in the match that fair England would not be able to answer.  We shared her pain.

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Day 5 - Saturday, July 13th

Despite hearing from a local that the weather had been “rubbish” lately, we awake to another delightfully sunny day and ready ourselves to spend more time exploring Bath with Abi now as our tour guide.  But first we head to the local Abbey set atop a hill and again from the 16th Century, apparently when there was a bit of a building boom in the Cotswolds.  We were ushered into the small tidy sanctuary by two smiling ladies and I asked about John Wesley who was known to have preached here.  Yes, they confirmed; however, they explained the Methodist Chapel built later was no longer operational.  After taking a look around at this small gem of a place, we began making our way out.  One of the ladies mentioned that they often watch the news from the states.  “Yes”, I offered as they smiled expectantly, “This is our struggle.”  

We then walked the short distance down to the platform to take the GWR into Bath for the day where we were soon heading up Gay St. and stopping to get tickets to the escape room at the Mary Shelley Museum for later that afternoon.  Then it was on to the Circle and the sprawling lawn beneath the Royal Crescent.  Afterwards we poked our way along Walcot St. where Ella found a Ramones t-shirt at an outdoor stall as we headed back to the city center arriving in time for an annual summer carnival that capped off our afternoon.  Abi had to retrieve her dorm room key from a friend in town for the weekend who is staying there, and we decide to split up with she and Ella heading to the school and Laura and I stopping at the market prior to heading back to our cottage to make dinner.  

Abi’s friend was delayed by an urge to stop at a bar on her way to the dorm and Ella and Abi unfortunately missed the next train to Freshford.  After an hour’s long wait, they then learned the next train was cancelled altogether, so they finally booked an Uber arriving back tired and hungry at 9:30 pm.

The girls settled in to watch more Dr. Who episodes as Laura and I headed up to bed.  I stay up reading on the iPad and I receive a notification that loud noises like gunfire had been heard at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania causing Secret Service to whisk him from the stage.  I continue reading my Wikipedia page on Somerset.  I then receive another notification saying Trump’s limo had left the venue.  I again thought little of it thinking maybe someone had set off some leftover fireworks in the general vicinity, which had perhaps caused a stir at the rally abbreviating Trump’s typically rambling stream-of-conscience remarks.  I again return to my reading only to receive another notification about a possible gunman at the rally.  I finally hop over to the NYT which is reporting that shots have been fired at the event.  A YouTube video confirms for me that Trump had indeed received fire and was taken bleeding from the podium as the Secret Service scrambled.  I debate whether to wake Laura finally doing so after several minutes pass.  Abi then knocks at the door looking for a charging cable, and she watches a video of the event.  It is now past midnight and we are all up with heads spinning at the change of events.  We worry that the place we will be coming home to will not be quite the same place as the one we left only five days before.

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Day 4 - Friday, July 12th

Abi is up early to head out for her final day of summer lectures at the university meanwhile the rest of us have another leisurely morning before our trip into Bath.  Upon arrival, we explored Stall Street, the square outside St. Peter’s Abbey, and the Roman Baths before retiring to a late afternoon lunch at Cafe Cosy and heading back to the lovely hamlet of Freshford. 

Abi catches up with us and she and I are joined by Ella as we duck around the bend for another pint (or in Ella’s case a mocktail and for me a non-alcoholic IPA) at the inn.  Laura stays behind to make a chick pea and curry meal in the cottage kitchen which we happily devour.

 

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Day 3 - Thursday, July 11th

We wake rested to explore our little cottage in the light of morning, and Laura and I have breakfast on the garden terrace which has stairs leading up to a sun deck located above the dining room and adjacent our bedroom gable.  Ella had the downstairs room and in the morning asked why we had tried to wake her by rattling her door earlier, only we had not done such a thing.  We then make some attempts to figure out this puzzle or recreate the noise, but are unsuccessful.  We consider the possibility of a 16th century cottage having its share of ghosts.  We give up and everyone but Ella shrugs off the incident.  After a leisurely breakfast, we head out to explore our lovely, little village heading first to the town’s shop which doubles as an art gallery and is located adjacent the council hall.  It is operated by friendly volunteers and we stock up with a few provisions.  After stowing these at the cottage, we head down the narrow, one lane road out of the village to Iford Gardens located a couple kilometers to the east where we explore the Italianate manor and its elaborate and well maintained grounds with many hidden nooks stretching up its hillside before trekking back to the cottage for a mid-afternoon nap.  Abi arrives after attending a day of her grad school summer conference and I meet her at the train for the brief walk back to our new home.  We all head to the inn for a very tasty meal where I am forced to reconsider all my seemingly baseless jokes about British cuisine.  The girls tune into Dr. Who and Laura and I turn in early to read in bed.

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Day 2 - Wednesday, July 10th

7/10/24 11:18 AM BST Flight AC 858 Arrives LHR - Long, meandering path to train platform.  The signs may as well have been in another language as well as I am interpreting them.

7/10/24 1:50 PM BST Rail HRA to PAD (Heathrow Express) - Taking in the sights of a new city like London for the first time never gets old.

7/10/24 2:30 PM BST Our Train to Westbury says it was cancelled.  We set about trying to find an alternate train and are finally told simply to board any westward train, which we do, but I start to momentarily panic as I believe it to be heading east.  We arrive in Bath to change trains, and are starting to more familiarize ourselves with the train lines.  We text Abi who has located Weaver Cottage in Freshford and is starting to prepare dinner.  Hungry and tired, the end of our long travel day begins pulling into sight as we board the train for the quick 10 minute trip to Freshford.  As the train pulls into the platform, we have no idea that one needs to push the button in order to exit the train thinking the doors open automatically.  We make a dash with our luggage for the open doors at the other end of our train car, but they close before we can get there, so we head to the next stop Avoncliffe to await a return train.  After a brief layover desperately trying to figure out how to make it back, a train arrives and we leave the idyllic Avoncliffe and its old aqueduct for the 8-minute trip to our destination. 

7/10/24 5:06 PM BST We arrive at our cottage for a triumphant reunion with Abigail who has dinner prepared, and the 16th century cottage is a thing of storybook dreams.  After a delicious meal of goulash and salad, we head around the bend to the inn for a pint and fall in love with their dessert menu which ultimately satisfies.  We turn in for a long sleep.  

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Day 1 - Tuesday, July 9

7/09/24 1:00PM CST Depart home for Jefferson Park CTA - We got a text from Air Canada saying the flight was delayed two hours, so we circled the block and hung out around the table silently staring at nothing.

7/09/24 1:30PM - We decide to head to the airport anyway and stare at nothing while at the gate.

7/09/24 3:00PM - We arrive at check-in and the agent said our flight isn’t delayed and will be boarding soon.  He suggests we get through security ASAP.

7/09/24 6:00PM EDT Flight AC 508 departs for Toronto

7/09/24 8:00 PM EDT Delightful dinner at the Swiss Chalet with the illustrator for Laura’s new book, Janine Carrington, her son Luis-Mario, and her boyfriend Fernando.

7/09/24 11:40 PM - Flight AC 858 Departs YYZ for LHR (6:50) - We got to board our 777 early but an older lady was seated in our aisle already pretending to be asleep which caused a brief pile-up as we all tried to work around her and stow luggage.  Bumpy and uncomfortable overnight flight follows with little to no sleep.

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