Protestant church in Toulouse

Sorry, no pictures with this post, but a really good story. We have found and attend the only English speaking protestant church in Toulouse (95% of France is Roman Catholic, though not practicing). The church is Anglican (the church of England - Episcopalian in USA) and most of the members are British (go figure). It's currently in the process of a clergy call, so ministers from other communities often fill the pulpit as guest preachers.

We took our daughter and nieces to midnight service on Christmas Eve. The minister filling the pulpit that evening was from a community called Limouex (the minister himself was actually from New Zeland). After he said the benediction, he paused and asked the small congregation (the five of us literally doubled the attendance) if we'd stay and share a bottle of wine to toast Christmas with him.

He went out to his car to get the wine and the five of us stood kind of "dumbfounded" while we and the others waited for him to return. Someone in the congregation found some plastic cups while someone else found some "bickies" (biscuits - translation cookies) and we all toasted the Christ child with a bit of sparkling wine and cookies.

You should have seen the faces of my teenage nieces. One of them thought that if their pastor back home in the US started that practice, attendance in church on Sundays would increase :)

So an unforgettable Christmas memory - Protestant British church in France officiated by a New Zelander that comes to church with his own wine to share. Isn't that priceless?

London Theater

When Katie and I were in London, "one" of the highlights was the theater. We were able to see a production each of the nights we were there. My favorite of the three was Legally Blonde. It was fun and glitzy.

We saw a Moliere play, The Misanthrope. One of the stars was Kierra Knightly, which is the reason Katie wanted to see it. We had nosebleed seats (we had one seat and one standing room only space both in the balcony) as it was almost sold out. It was reproduced to be set in the present, not the 1600's. It was good.


The last show we saw was the Jersey Boys. The music was a lot of fun. We used the half priced ticket booth in Leicester Square. It appears to be the way to see shows in London. Anyway, we saw all three shows for a lot less than you would in New York, maybe even in Mpls.

The Paris museums

We had a great time exploring Paris over the holidays. We spent quite a bit of time exploring museums. Of course that included the Louvre (I'll get to that one).

I don't profess to be much of an art connoisseur. That said, I found I really enjoyed my time in the museums. My favorite museum was the Orsay which has a very good collection of the Impressionist painters. After viewing most of these great painters, I've decided that my favorite artists are Renoir, Monet, and Degas. I liked all of the impressionists, but these three the most.













We went to a museum called l'Orangerie which has Monet's Water Lilies. I was amazed at how large these paintings were. They were incredible. If you get to Paris, don't pass this little museum by.


The Louvre is quite the institution. It's the largest museum in the world. That said, it was crowded. Taking the advice of Rick Steve's, we did the highlights tour and saw the Venus, the Mona Lisa, etc. The Mona Lisa was disappointing. It was a small painting in a large, crowded room (see picture to right).



The building itself is a work of art, as it was once a palace. I can say I've been there and done that now. I'd go back to the Orsay.

We also spent a couple of hours in the museum, Musee de l'Armee at Les Invalides. It had the tomb of Napolean Bonapart in it's dome (left). It also had very interesting collections of WWI and WWII. It was fascinating to see this history from another perspective.

Holiday food

I know it's almost 3 weeks since Christmas, but I have to share the unique food experiences we had at Christmas. Under advisement of our French tutor, I ordered a chapon (capon) from the butcher for Christmas dinner. She informed us that turkeys here were not the same as in the US and that we'd be disappointed with how small and dry they are. So I ordered the chapon.

We picked it up on Christmas Eve and when I unwrapped the butcher paper Christmas Day to begin preparations, I was in for a bit of a surprise. Having the head and neck still attached kind of "threw me for a loop." Once we had taken all of the pictures and had a good laugh about it, it cooked up nice and tender.

We also enjoyed Panetone. It's a holiday bread with fruit inside, very tasty. The French celebrate Epiphany with a Galette de Roi (cake of the king). The cake (puff pastry with fruit inside) has a small prize baked inside it and it also comes with a paper crown. The person who gets the prize becomes the "king" for the day. It's sold a few days either side of Jan. 6th.








The other holiday food that we tried was a yule log cake. It was pretty tasty. It's baked with brandy or some similar kind of liquor as there was a bit of a surprise in the first bite. It was all good though.

New Year's in Paris

We rang in the New Year under the Eiffel Tower this year. It was quite the experience. From 11 til midnight, the there were a variety of light shows which lit the tower in various colors and in various rhythms. The light show commemorated the 120th anniversary of the tower.


There were thousands of people around the tower, most of them with their bottles of champagne (us included). At midnight, the tower blinked with all of those hundreds of little white lights (picture to the left).

Last year there was quite a problem with security (1,147 cars were burned) so this year there was a very large police presence (complete in riot gear, though they mostly stood around in groups of 4-5 smoking cigarettes).

My turn to be stranded

Hi everyone,
I've got lots of wonderful pictures and stories to tell about Barcelona, Paris and London, but first I want to tell you the latest winter weather story (since I know the Midwest has hit the deep freeze) and I really thought this was the year that winter weather stories would not be part of my vocabulary.

After celebrating the New Year in Paris, Larry put Katie and me on a plane for a 3 day stay in London. We had a fabulous time and I'll tell you all about it in pictures later. We just got back to Toulouse after spending the night in Heathrow airport. About 8 inches (I know that's nothing to us hardy Midwest folks) of snow fell Tuesday night into Wednesday and created chaos. Our original 12:30 Wed. afternoon flight was canceled but we were booked onto the last flight to Toulouse at 5:30. Of course within minutes of clearing security, that flight was canceled as well as everything else.
Katie and I were going to divide and conquer. I was going to claim our bag and she was going to look into rebooking our flight and getting us out of the airport. This was the scene at
the baggage carousel: hundreds of people looking for thousands of bags with very little help from British Airways staff. After spending 2.5 hours waiting for baggage, I gave up and found Katie on the arrival concourse figuring I'd deal with my bag later.



She had scoped out a couch after the British Airways people announced they weren't going to do any more rebooking, told people to call a phone number our use their website and went home.

Well, now we're home but we're still waiting for my bag to arrive. I hope it gets here with some of Katie's stuff before she has to return to the states on Sat.