My name is Ben

And I want to be ten

So I can run around Daddy’s den

And act like a little man.

(Love, mum)

May 3rd, 2013

• Walkabout to Bastille stop
• Visited the Louvre
• Pantheon
• Fine lunch at Pirraudin close to Pantheon.  Excellent lunch of Beef stew with Red wine.  Jim tried beef tartare (ie. raw ground beef with spices)… he can tell you about it.
• Dinner at Le Bar Huitres
• Good seafood.  Pricey but good.

• May 2nd, 2013
• Started at Notre Dame Tower.  Got there at about 9am
• Met another couple from Washington DC.  Waited on the line until the tower opens at 10am.
• Climbed the 387 steps up to the top of the tower.  Beautiful view of the city. Close up look of gargoyles and statues on top of the steeple
• Visited Saint Chappelle
• Beautiful stain glass.  Ornate pews with carvings of animals.
• Bus ride.  Bus 69. We got on from the Rivoli Bus stop. Crowded and hot!, No AC.  The main windows did not open.  Only the top row of small windows open.
• Field trip kids got on the bus at another stop.  They were no older than 8 years old.
• Elder gentlemen on the buss, he passed out and fell over.
• His head bump the floor of the bus.  Did not get up.  I think he may have had a heart attack.   I yelled for the driver to stop and for an ambulance. (I think only the stop registered to the driver).
• He stopped at the Louvre.   Called the medics.  I did not see the old man get up.   The driver was hopeless.  He did not even get the people out of the bus to get some air circulation into the buss.   No training on CPR.  Just simply was not very useful as far as I’ve observed.   I obviously cannot tell what he said since he spoke in French but just our observation… he did not seem to show urgency.
• J and I decided we had enough for the afternoon.  Returned to the hotel.
• Evening: Musse D Orsay.   Saw the paitings from Monet, Manet, Renoir
• Late evening, had dinner at Kasmir Restaurant (yes non French, had a craving for rice).

• May 1st, 2013
• Labor Day in France
• Plan to go to Louvre was postphoned to Friday.  Museums and stores are closed.  Most restaurant and churches are still open.
• Visited Arch De Triomphe Etoile.
• Beautiful
• Round about that I will never want to have to drive in.
• Walk from the Arch along Avenue Des Champs Elysees to the Louvre.
• Detoured through Grand Palais.  Walked to Pont Alexander III
• Noticed vans full of police parked alongside Avenue Winston Churchill.  Don’t know if there was going to be a parade or a riot.
• Reached the Louvre, Massive, very impressive from the outside.
• Loads of people at the park.

• April 30th
• Visit to Palace and Gardens of Versailles 
• Fat Tire Bike Tour – fanstatic tour. Will recommend to others.
• Tour Guide was from New Zealand :-).  His name was Costigen.  He wore a funky coloured cap so that we can see him among the masses.

• Tour Guide – from NZ Constigen
• Petit Trianon
• Grand Trianon
• Versailles Market – Pate, Sausignon, Emmantel Cheese,  Dried Strawberries, Cream Puff
• Waited in line for > 2hours , it was a Tuesday.  Versailles is closed on Monday and the next day was May 1st Labor Day in France (ie. Versailles will be closed as well)
• The palace was jammed pack with tourist.   Supper narrow corridors with thousand of people in at once.  Did not enjoy the palace visit.
• The gardens was beautiful but it started raining.
• Jim and I are still recovering from our cold
• Jim had a bad back
• A tree fell on an RER train,  the metro that we were suppose to leave Versailles town from is closed or delayed until 8pm.
• Raining. walked from one RER to another.
• Finally walked back to the RER station that we started from which was by the Starbucks (yes there is a starbucks) and McDonalds (and no we did not get any McDonalds).
• Got back on another RER train,  stopped at Saint Lazare, change to Metro and got back to Mercure Hotel.

Walk: 7 miles

Visited:  Luxemborg Garden, Saint Sulpice, St. Germaine, Ile De La Cite.

I found a couple of Indian curry recipes that I have been meaning to try.  I finally decided to give the Chana Masala recipe from http://www.cookingandme.com/2013/03/chana-masala-recipe-chole-masala-recipe.html and Chapati recipe from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/indian-chapati-bread/  a try.   I love chickpea curry and definitely had a taste for the leaner version of indian bread other than naan.

I think the recipes turned out pretty well.  Ben who is 18 months now, loved it too.  Both recipes only took 30 minutes to prepare together.

As of late, I have been coming across more and more editorial errors in my reading material.  They used to only appear on cheap reading materials but now they are prevalent in every written media.  I’ve found errors in newspapers,  magazines,  and books.

I am not sure how in the days before computers with spell checks software; editors do a better job than today.  It seems with more technology,  more errors show up on printed material.  I wonder if technology is to blame or editors are getting sloppy with their work.  I find myself irked when I stumble across an error while reading a good book or article.

Maybe I should just get use to this new norm…..

Every weekday,  I come home from work frantic trying to get dinner to the table.  I get home about 6:05pm; I am hungry, Ben is hungry and so is J.   We are tired of frozen food bags (with that said, it’s still a life saver once in a awhile).   Ben does not care for it of course,  he is only 16 months!.   So we’ve come up with a dinner plan.   A schedule for easy evening meals.   Yes,  very predictable for a project manager (truth be told it was Jim’s idea).

So we’ve got a two weeks plan and recipes to go with it.   Most of them consist of crock pot recipes, pressure cooker recipes or rice cooker with timer recipes.  So far Ben loves beef stew made in a pressure cooker,  beans and ham soup from the crock pot,  easy weeknight curries and fried rice.   Keeping my fingers cross that this will alleviate the crazy evening rush to get dinner to the table!

So if you have easy weeknight dinner recipes, please send them my way.