Once I learned the French Open (or as the woman at the opera told me "we call it Roland Garros") was occuring during my trip, I started scoping out how to get a ticket. While the tickets sell out very quickly, there is a legitimate resale sight that made buying a ticket really easy and relatively affordable (at least for the second day of play)! If the opera was awesome, the Open was AWESOME. There are three premier courts are Garros, one court seats ~15K, one...

I'm back to having trouble loading pcictures to this website, so check back later for today's photos. Today was Opera day! That's the good news. The bad news (which really wasn't bad) was that I had to return to the Palace of Versailles to attend the opera. On the last trip to France, Versailles was MY Waterloo. After being pushed and pushed and pushed through the Palace by members of a certain ethic group which will remain nameless, I finally lost my state ...

ok, I know I've already fallen behind. I'm goign to write seperate entries for each day. Last night one of my former students, Kristen, rolled in to spend a few days with me. Kristen is doing a one year research gig at a lab in Germany, so she was just a 4 hour train ride away. I picked the first event of the day, the famous Clignancourt Flea Market. I'm not a shopper and REALLY not a flea market shopper, but it beats fighting the crowds at the Louvre. It w...

Bonjour! After four flights in less than 24 hours (yes, it saved me a few hundred dollars and yes, now I wish I hadn't set it up that way), I'm back in Paris. The flights were fine, it was just a long day. I arrived at the apartment about 3pm local time, and it is really good. It isn't as nice as the place I stayed last time (which was owned by American and very American-user friendly), and it is super small...like NYC hotel room small. However, the lcoation ...

In the immortal words of General MacAuthur: I shall return. (especially Paris!) I arrived back in Columbus about 10pm last night (which is 4am Paris time) and have been up and at'em since 6am. I checked a bag for this leg of the trip, and it is still in Detroit. We were a couple hours delayed in Paris so it was a sprint in Dertoit to get through customs and on my connecting flight, and my bag just didn't make it. Allegedly it will be delivered to the house t...