Dinner with the family and grandparents on the mother's side at the grandparents' house in Lutterbach, which is on the border of France and German on the French side. They speak a German dialect that's mixed with French due to the French/German border being moved back and forth several times in history.
Then we ate this special holiday marzipan pie called Galette, to celebrate the 3 kings that brought gifts to baby Jesus, normally celebrated on January 6th. When you buy them at the store, they come with a paper crown which I'm wearing here. Suits me better than those Burger King crowns, don't ch'ya think?
Here's the famous but under renovation Arc de Triomphe. Around it is a big driving circle where crazy French drivers test their driving skills and prove that traffic circles aren't always efficient. And I quote, it's "vehicular roulette with more balls than numbers" and yes, it looked like it too. It was CRAZY I tell'ya. The circle has no lanes painted but is about 5 cars wide and has 12 streets radiating out with no traffic lights with no traffic coordination whatsoever. In the picture, it doesn't look like there were many cars, but there were, and I was expecting an accident to happen at any time.
One of the most famous streets coming out of the driving circle is Champs-Élysées, a name brand shopper or a window shopper's paradise, where the famous names become bigger than life.
How much junk can a woman hold in these Louis Vuittons??
There's nothing like fake snow on trees out on the streets of Paris...
Standing outside in the Louvre Gardens. Unfortunately, we didn't go inside the museum because the lines were so long!!! We apparently went during one of Paris' peak seasons (week of New Years).
See the men in the khaki trenchcoats? Their job is to harass you into coming into their restaurant. I'm not sure how effective their approach is since they're more annoying than anything else. We chose chose a restaurant that didn't have anyone standing outside and I tried escargo for the first and last time! No, it didn't taste bad, but the thought of eating snails is bad enough. If you want to know, it's chewy, like eating those little squids.
There's a square where portrait artists hang out and wait for tourists to come by. This one is not that bad!We took a cruise on the Seine river and got to see all the beautifully ornamented bridges up close.
I love visiting churches in Europe and I can't seem to get enough of them. And I love the beautiful stain glass windows.
Happy 2005! (although it's almost 2006 as I finally put up this post!)
