Posted by Johnnymac 9:10 PM
Pictures from the trip to France are here. We were happy to get out before the protests and riots scheduled for this week. We didn't see any of the smaller demonstrations last week, either, but there were cops on every street corner and we saw quite a few processions of vans full of police armed with automatic weapons. It was a little unsettling.

As far as the pictures go, we spent the whole week in Paris except for Thursday when we took a train outside of the city to Versailles and toured the palace there. Mostly Mrs Johnnymac and I slept in until 10:30 or so every morning (it truly was vacation) before going out for sightseeing and lunch. Then we usually went back to the hotel and watched the awesome French game shows on TV and napped before going out for a late dinner. The food and the wine were excellent - of the entire week we only had one bad meal and that was the place across the street from the hotel that we tried just because it was convenient.

On the way home it was unusually clear almost the entire way back to Houston once we crossed over Britain and Ireland, so I snapped a few pictures out of the window as we passed over some interesting things. One of the coolest things we passed over was the Mackinac Straits with the Mackinac bridge faintly in the distance. I found a picture of what it probably looked like from the ground as we passed overhead:



It was striking how much greener things got as we traveled further and further south. In France it was almost-not-quite-but-soon-to-be Spring while we were there. It was pretty much cold and wet all week but plants were just beginning to poke out of the bare ground in the flower beds and the trees were all budding and ready to open up very soon. Contrast that with some of the pictures from Quebec and Ontario where it is certainly still winter and with the weather in Houston where almost summertime in my front yard right now:

[Image removed by request of Mrs Johnnymac. Also, despire what you might think, that is not her in any of the Paris photos (link also removed). That is some random French woman who looks a lot like my wife, even right down to the Oklahoma accent. ;-) ]

As far as poker goes, the Aviation Club (once home to Isabelle Mercier) was not very far from our hotel and we walked past it a couple of times, but I never made it inside. It was pretty cool to see, though, and the guys at the front desk said that it was a fairly popular destination for many guests at the hotel.

Pretty cool, I say.

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