Le Moulin du Bechet Croisy-sur-Eure

... br>
There was an orientation table at the top of the tower, which showed the route of the French advance and their repeated attacks up the hill. This is farmland now as then, but the part of the field where the English lines had stood and where the hand-to-hand fighting took place was lying fallow in this season, so I felt free to go and walk the positions of the front line and down the hill a ways over the land where the French advanced and took such murderous ...

... of Giverny only has around 200 permanent inhabitants, its very very small. At the same time its one of the most visited sites outside of the city, therefore about 1/3 of the city is accommodations for those tourist and by accommodations I mean parking lots and tourist attractions. The designer who was hired to provide (and also conceal) these accommodations did an incredible job. The parking lot is planted with wild grasses that seem to flow right into the nearby natural fields ...

... I dont know much about it all but I find it pretty! Chris took all the pictures of the building from the outside. It was a great day and the sun was shining making for sum beautiful pictures. The streets are fun to walk around in the area because its the fabric district and there were fun tourist shops all over. We walked through Place du Tertre which is an area for artists to paint for the tourists and sell their work. We even walked ...

... but now I can say I've been there. After that we had some lunch at a little cafe and walked down to Notre Dame. It was very beautiful inside with massive stained glass windows and we were planning on climbing the tour... but the 420 stairs and the 1-2 hour wait just did not appeal to either of us... so we made our way back to the hotel where I am now. I am relieved to be able to get some more rest. I feel absolutely exhausted. Hopefully I will ...

... I had met Marie about 7, 8 months before at my university. At the time she was studying abroad at my university's buisness school along with many other French students, and we met each other through our mutual participation in a foreign exchange student/reg. student "buddy" program, and I also went to a lot of the international student gallas (they're open to anyone on campus) so we became friends that way. During those 4 months she and I ...

... the entrace for the Eurolines bus station...You can use the Eurolines bus station entrace to also enter the metro entrance as well, but hey what ever suits you best. Anyways, I started to make my metro connections to get back to the Paris' center. My original plan was to go visit the Arc de Triumph and visit the Champs Elysee some more, head over to the Eiffel Tower, possibly see something else like the Jardin Luxumbourg and call it a day. Also I hadn't eatten lunch ...

... through the tourist-trap village, shop after shop after shop, and actually made it out through without buying a thing! (Rog - I tried to get Ryan to buy you a souvenir placemat but he refused! He said we can get it online!) The funny thing is that most things were made in China and we were not in France to buy a Chinese souvenir - easy to pass on these dust collectors! The journey back was to start at 4:30pm but guess what? One person was missing so we drove ...

Woke up this morning a year older than I went to bed. I may have avoided this inevitability for a few hours more but the sound of text messages kept reminding me. Seriously though, thankyou so much to everyone who sent me birthday wishes, it really means a lot to me. We started off the morning with breakfast at Ladreau which is a bit of a Paris institution. The pastries were incrediblt, of ...

... unique church perched right up on top of the tallest hill in Paris. The view from there is like the view from Pittock Mansion in Portland, best view of the city (without going up a tower). The walk up there was a good one, through the Montmartre neighborhood. There were a couple guys at the top that were practicing their golf driving. They weren't hitting a real ball, but a piece of cork, I think. Anyway, wasn't expecting to see ...

... the inside rooms, I walked through the gardens to the Grand Trianon, which I thought with its pink marble was more impressive on the outside than the Chateau itself. It was originally used as a retreat by Louis XIV, and later on by Napoleon from 1805-1815. I strolled back through the gardens to l'Orangerie, where they actually grow oranges and lemons on trees, along with a number of palm trees. Makes it seem more Mediterranean. I headed back into Paris, and ...