very late in coming.. but I just rediscovered my old blog

fountains/gardens at Versailles

hall of mirrors (Versailles)

The Louvre Museum
Chartres Cathedral (?)

Notre Dame

Place des Vosges - our apartment in Paris was right next to this park. Famous writer Victor Hugo also lived on Place des Vosges and his old house is now a museum.

BACK!!!!!!

ok, I'm home!!!!!!!!! sorry I couldn't write earlier.... I couldn't find the internet cafe.... so I got back this afternoon... just letting you know I didn't like die or forget about my blog or something.... I'll put up pictures later.... kinda tired right now... : / Our flight to seattle was 10 hours.... I watched three movies and stuff like that... it was ok... I really don't know what to say right now besides that I cant believe it's over.... well talk to you soon!

heading out

heading out to Paris today! hitching a taxi from here, in a little ways from St. Quentin, to Paris at 11 am, our time.... that's 2am Seattle time. We rented an apartment there so we'll check into that when we get there so we don't lug our bags everywhere with us. We should have Internet at the apartment... but I don't know if that means they have a network and no computer or what... cause otherwise I'll be going to the Internet cafe. We have a little more than a week left of vacation!! it went by so fast!! I'll try to upload more pictures in Paris because there's only one computer at the hotel for the guests and one time I loaded a lot, not knowing how long it would take and it took up 2hrs to load 25 pictures... plus it was the entire free Internet time.. good for me, but not for everyone who was waiting... I thought it would take like 10-15 minutes, but lets just say I was a little off... yeah, the people waiting were pretty mad... so I'm not doing THAT again.. when I loaded the pictures the second time, I made sure it was only a few and that nobody was going to be waiting... : ) well, I should probably go for now!! talk to you guys soon!!

some pictures from the trip so far...

here's the gite that we cooked in.... the riders stayed in the other gite.
this was the entrance to the gite..

that's the start line for the ride that my dad did..
at the gite, we made pasta... so this is the super yummy sauce!!!
these were all the riders that were at the check in the day before.. I heard that at the ride, there were around 6,000 people riding!!!
me and barbara in the doorway of the gite. we were barbara's helpers for cooking. : )
this was one of the two gites we had.. they're more like houses. The riders stayed in this one.

me at Pizza Pino!! - eating a mini chocolate cake!! the bamboo spork was just there for the picture : )
It's a chocolate macaroon... french style!
it was good.
I want this car.... a lot.
these are really cool bikes!!!

tired

I'm back from ludeac.. they didn't have internet there so I couldn't email or blog for a few days. I was cooking up there like non stop for a couple days for the riders that went through. Once we were finished cooking dinner for people around 1 am at the latest, WE had to start doing wake up calls and making breakfast around 2:30 am and by the time we could rest when there were emty beds was around 4 or 5 am.. so after that I slept till noon one day and 2pm the next.. good sleep. It was cool in Ludeac... it's all like countryside and we stayed in a huge house that was actually like three separate houses called a gite. It was cool... but surprisingly, really cold and the house we were in didn't have heat. and did I mention on the way there, we got lost multiple times. - THAT was sad. but anyway, we also got all this really good bread and pastries at the "local bakery".. I promise I'll put up some pictures.. but I can't right now cause theres somebody waiting for the computer behind me and it took like 20 min to load 5 pictures.. maybe tonight I'll load them. But trust me, I didn't forget!! I can't believe it's already been a week! wow. ok, I'll write soon. like hopefully tonight! but we'll see. just thouhgt I'd update you guys first! talk to you all soon!

So Versailles didn't work out yesterday and there's a slight possibility of going today... But we're thinking about just hanging around the hotel or something today; like catching up on rest. Tomorrow night is the start of my dad's ride so I guess it's good to get some rest. He starts at around 10pm tomorrow night. Oh yeah, surprisingly, this morning we all over slept and he was late to his bike inspection. But I think it's going to be ok. Last night a bunch of us went out to pizza in St. Quentin... It was really good. : ) Then we got these really different macaroons that came in all different flavors and colors and they even had mini ones!! we tried a chocolate one and it was pretty good.. considering I don't usually like macaroons. Then we took the bus back later that night. I have some pictures of our little excursion but my dad has the camera so I'll put them up later.. We also looked around at some of the little shops in town, but didn't buy anything. We basically didn't do that much until the afternoon.. but it was fun! We just finished having breakfast not too long ago. Right now, it's around 11:30 am... but over there in Seattle it's still very early. Well, that's all for now! write later!

arriving

Yesterday we got in around 11:30 am after around 9 hours on a plane.... It was very long and I couldn't sleep. BUT they did have good movies, so that made it better and the food was ok too. (good chocolate pudding) when we got into Paris, it was actually around 2:30 or 3ish in the morning Seattle time. then after finding our bags, we took a shuttle to our hotel. When we got there, I couldn't find the computer, so that's why I didn't blog yesterday. I'm still trying to figure out the keyboard here becase it's all switched around and there's multiple symbols on one key! I'm really tired. today we might try to go to Versailles. ( It was one of the royal palaces.. Marie Antionnette among others, stayed there.) I just finished breakfast and it's around 10:30am here, but in Seattle it's around 1:30 in the morning. But we got here ok qnd everything is going well so far.. no lost baggage, no lost bike, we're luckier than some people who arrived. I'm not so sure what to say. But if we go somewhere, I'll take pictures and post them up here! ok, that's all for now!