Modern Art

Friday afternoon took us to the Center Georges Pompidou, a modern art museum commissioned by former French President Pompidou. Emma remembered visiting the Children’s Gallery last summer and asked to return. Though Mom and Dad aren’t huge fans of modern art, they knew the building would be air conditioned and remembered the spectacular view from the top of the building. Some say it rivals the view from the Eiffel Tower and might even better it because one can see the Eiffel Tower along with Paris’ other major monuments. The focus in the Children’s Gallery this year is “faces.” We created a variety of different faces using magnets, felt faces we could not see, changed faces into masks on one computer screen, altered our own faces on another, and saw many faces painted and sculpted, some by artists such as Matisse and Picasso. One of the special exhibitions on the top floor was a collection of sculptures by American artist David Smith. Some of them were impressive, while others definitely fit our impression of modern art. We asked Emma to guess the titles, which she did exactly on sculptures like “17 H’s” Yes, that was a sculpture made by using the letter “h” seventeen times. The main focus in the larger part of the museum this summer was on Cinema as art. It was interesting, but I think we preferred last year’s light selections. However, Emma did enjoy dancing in the room full of pink lights with one giant red shoe at the end. We agreed the exhibit would have been cooler had the shoe actually been a slide. A favorite exhibit of paintings and drawings was by Jean Bazaine, who we think is a genius, but not because of his artistic ability. The exhibit was titled “Artworks Accepted in Lieu” and after some reading we discovered the artist donated his works in lieu of paying taxes he owed the French. Which brings us to a question for Gramps: “Think this will work for us in the U.S.???”
After a little over two hours in the world of modern art, we were spent. The day’s highlight came minutes later at the crazy fountain located in the square Igor Stravinsky. When we visited last summer it was on a rainy day. Apparently on sunny days many get into the fountain. So, Daddy rolled up his shorts and accompanied a gleeful Emma into the fountain. Mommy, of course, needed to stay out of the water to take the pictures! When they’d finished playing, we rung out Emma’s dress and went back to our area in search of food. Chinese was the selection for the evening and Emma fell asleep in her fried rice around 5:30 pm. We carried her back to the apartment where she napped until around 8:00 pm.

Floyd Wins the Tour de France...or does he?

We made it to the completion of the Tour de France where American Floyd Landis came in first continuing the US streak to 8 years in a row! A couple of days later, the victory is up in the air because of a possible doping scandal - what are the French up to now?!

Rue de la Huchette

That’s the name of the street where our Paris apartment is located. Last summer when we walked out of our alley we’d see the Eiffel Tower; this summer when we walk out of our alley we see the Notre Dame Cathedral. The location is in an area frequented by tourists – lots of little restaurants and shops. This is great during the day and, well, not so great at night. We’ve adjusted our schedules accordingly, meaning that Emma’s been up past midnight every night since our arrival and we’ve been sleeping until around ten each morning. The loud noises begin to diminish around two am. In another interesting turn of events, Paris has hit record high temperatures this week. Now, I know it’s been over 100 degrees for most of you reading this, but when you sit in the comfort of your own homes it’s probably more like 77ish. WE HAVE NO AIR CONDITIONING!!! This is another reason for the schedule adjustment. At Emma’s normal bedtime it’s simply too hot to sleep. So, we sleep when it’s cool & roam around Paris when it’s not. The apartment itself is great. We have a bunk bed setup with double beds & the couch is a bed as well. It’s very clean & contains a well-equipped kitchen. However, with this heat we’re mostly eating cereal, yogurt, and sandwiches – who wants to cook???

During our late afternoon trip through Notre Dame, we noticed many who were inside to escape the heat – several carrying all their worldly possessions with them. Suddenly one week in a hot apartment didn’t look like such a burden. We’ve been through the cathedral many times together, but I’ve yet to walk through without being overwhelmed by the love the people who built it must have had for God. In an age of few machines, this construction took over 40 years. Emma asked to walk to the top and see the gargoyles up close, which we did last summer. However, since Diana freely acknowledges praying not to die for the first time in her life on that climb, and we’re definitely not in better shape this summer, we convinced her to admire them from afar.

In an effort to soothe the Parisians, most of whom do not have a/c, the city has set up a faux beach environment along the River Seine. On Thursday evening, we went for a stroll along the area where they’ve brought in grass, sand, beach chairs, misters, children’s climbing equipment, ice cream stands, etc. Emma loved walking under the misters and drinking from the fountains. I don’t think she understood why we would only let her drink from the spouts until she saw a woman washing her feet in the base!

Paris Disneyland

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Taking advantage of the free shuttle service from our hotel, we arrived at Disneyland Park around 11:30am on Wednesday. Emma opted to forgo the giant line to meet Minnie Mouse and head straight for the rides in Fantasyland. Our first stop was Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, where we woke the dragon and then climbed the stairs to view beautiful tapestries portraying scenes from the film. Next was the ride through Snow White’s adventures, followed by a family favorite: “It’s a Small World.” After our journey around the world, we wandered through Alice’s Curious Labyrinth and then drank some serious bottled water. It was over 90 degrees that day and Wade is crazy about neither heat nor amusement parks! En route to the Tarzan Adventure in Frontierland, a live show, we scored some fast passes to ride Peter Pan’s Flight between 6:05pm and 6:35pm. The Tarzan show was good, but nothing compared to the Lion King we’d seen last summer, so we decided to try to get tickets to the 8:30pm showing. Lunch found us around 3:00pm at Pizza Planet in Discoveryland, where the food was mediocre, except for pricing. Wade did manage to identify the fact that there were only two air-conditioning vents in the entire massive room, one when you queued up for food and the other in a far corner of the dining area. It was stifling in the place so our trio headed for the corner and the A/C. The cold air felt great and Emma enjoyed the Buzz Lightyear play area immensely, especially the ball pit located in the Bucket of Soldiers from Toy Story 2. Somewhat refreshed from our brief stay with a/c we headed out to wait our turn at Disneyland’s newest attraction, Buzz Lightyear’s Laser Blast. Though the wait was longer than almost any other, this turned out to be Wade’s favorite ride and one of Emma’s top three. We climbed aboard “spaceships” and began to shoot our laser guns at targets throughout the ride. Scores are kept and we didn’t meet anyone for the rest of the day who’d hit more targets than Daddy!! When we finished assisting Buzz in saving the galaxy, we took our fastpasses to Peter Pan’s flight. The fast pass option is AWESOME. The average wait time for the ride at this time was 35 minutes and we didn’t even wait for a complete minute. We were set to get in the front of our ship when a family jumped in front of us. We were visibly frustrated because this would completely block Emma’s view for most of the ride. An extremely sensitive worker noticed this and when we finished the ride put us on again, this time with Emma in front!! How nice! So, we were able to ride one of our favorites (you fly over London!!) twice with no wait! Just before time to secure our seats for the 7:15 Princess Parade, we got in our longest queue of the day . . . the Dumbo ride! Emma and Daddy rode together – in an elephant decorated in pink, of course and Mommy rode ahead of them to snap the requisite photos. We found our spot for the parade, Daddy went for more bottled water for our trio, and then Mommy went to line up for Lion King tickets. Since Daddy had spent an hour waiting for them in the hot sun last year, it was only fair that Mommy go now (plus, much of the waiting area for the evening performances was shaded!!). Emma really enjoyed the parade and then we all grabbed some dinner before getting in our seats for the Lion King production. The family of four seated in front of us was from South Carolina. We had a nice visit with them until the curtain rose. SPECTACULAR! Perhaps even better than we remembered it! Our last ride of the day was aboard rockets in Discoveryland before finding our spot for the Fantillusion Parade, a Disney Parade filled with lights. After the last car rode by, we hurried away because the spot we’d chosen would be off limits for the fireworks. We watched “Wishes” the laser light and fireworks production before heading back to wait for the shuttle, which we boarded just after midnight. We told Emma the day had changed to Thursday and she thought that was really something. She says her highlights of the day involved meeting Disney Princesses Cinderella (Emma said she reminded her of Aunt Martha!), Sleeping Beauty, Esmerelda (Daddy said her smile reminded him of Aunt Julie), and Ariel.

Kids Suites

Emma loved our room at the Holiday Inn . . . once Daddy shifted us to a kid friendly locale. His recently acquired platinum status at HI gets us free room upgrades, which is generally fabulous. And for a business traveler this would have been ideal. We had reserved a Family Room which is a circus-themed room with a queen-size bed and a single bed. However, upon check-in we were upgraded to an executive Tower suite, which included two queen sized beds in separate rooms, a nice sized bathroom and two leather swivel chairs. Although the room was extremely nice, Wade and Diana knew most other rooms were circus themed and decided we’d rather go down a notch and provide Emma with the atmosphere. When he went to ask at the front desk, they told him he was entitled to a free upgrade to a Kids Suite. This room was fantastic! Emma had her own room (no door – circus curtain instead) with a bunk bed, even the bathroom had a circus theme. The mirror wore shoes, and several circus stools were placed around the room. Initially not thrilled about changing locations, Emma squealed with delight when she saw the bunk bed.

We spent our second day in Europe lounging around the hotel, playing Uno, watching Tom and Jerry in the hotel’s kid-friendly lounge area, playing outside at the park, swimming, and reading. After our swim, we headed in to Disney Village for dinner at the Rain Forest Café and a little shopping so we wouldn’t have to carry purchases around Disneyland the next day. Jet-lag attacked Emma later that night. Although she’d gone to bed by 8:00pm, she was up again by 9:45pm and didn’t hit dreamland again until well after 1:00am. While this was extremely frustrating to Mom, who had sung all of our standard bedtime songs and a conglomeration of Yo-Yo Collins tunes before beginning to make her way through the Baptist hymnal, it turned out to be a good thing because Emma slept past Disney’s opening and we could not possibly have lasted any longer at Disneyland that day.

A Rocky Start

Just shy of a week ago today we hugged the neighbors, had breakfast with Grandma and Pawpaw and were driven to the Tulsa airport by our gracious friend Brett. Then the unpleasantness began. At check-in we were told one of our bags was overweight. This would disturb anyone, but we’d called the airlines the day before to double check the limits because Wade thought they’d dropped to 50 pounds. No, the United Rep. assured him, 70 pounds was still the limit for international travel. LIES! So, in the big middle of Tulsa airport we began shifting weight from one bag to another and called Brett who kindly returned to the airport and took a few books off our hands. In the chaos, Diana busted the zipper on her carry-on. Thankfully, the airport had a suitable replacement for less than fifteen dollars. We regrouped and prepared to board the plane. Smooth sailing until our transfer in Chicago. As the gate agent ran our tickets through the machine, she told Wade he needed to return to the counter and speak with another agent because he wasn’t checked in (the three of us had all checked in together!). ARUGH! She encouraged Emma and Diana to go ahead and board, but they refused on the off chance that the man with the passports and the money was unable to do so. Wade’s seat had been given away (anger exacerbated here by the fact that a couple of days before Wade had called to confirm our seat assignments only to find out that the seats on our original itinerary had been given away and at that point he secured three seats together) Although he was assigned another seat on the same flight, it was still frustrating as it was not near the other family members. Fortunately, a solo traveler was seated in the row in front of the Watkins girls and agreed to switch places with Wade. Once we’d taken to the not-so-friendly skies, we discovered that Emma’s in-flight entertainment system was malfunctioning. Thus, those Disney Channel programs and kids music stations we’d promised her were inaccessible from her seat. Diana swapped places with her and finally forced Emma to take off her headphones and get some sleep. She managed to eek out about three hours, which was more than anyone else in the family scored. There was honestly less legroom on this flight than on the puddle jumper we’d taken from Tulsa to Chicago. Once we landed at London Heathrow, the frustrations subsided and we headed to Waterloo Station to wait for our Eurostar train to Paris. In the meantime we had a brief meeting with Lucie March from Regent’s College London, where Wade will be teaching the summer class, to iron out a few details. Breakfast and several games of Uno later (Mom was nodding off between turns) we finally boarded the Eurostar. Our arrival at the Holiday Inn Disneyland Park came about 24 hours after we’d left Stillwater. Now the fun begins!