The fruit of our hard labor...

As I mentioned earlier, a part of our activities at my house in Milhac was to plant flowers and tend to the garden. When we returned in July, we saw the beautiful fruit of our labor...






Actually, with the unusually rainy weather of late June and July, it was more work keeping the weeds from outgrowing the garden than keeping the flowers blooming! The weather this summer in France has been unusually cool and wet... the weather in July and August is usually hovering near 40 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit), but this year, none of that!! we had a few days of beautiful hot weather and then a lot of cooler, cloudy and rainy days... today, in Paris, it is about 16C (60F), windy, cloudy and it feels like November!! That is unheard of!!


Anyway, during the first week of July, we attempted a last excursion to the ocean, this time near Bordeaux, in the Bassin d'Arcachon. We had decent weather but the wind was very strong for two out of the three days we were there and made the ocean prohibitively rough! However, there are a few very cool sights in that area, including the Pila Dune, which is an enormous wind-generated sand dune, which is still growing and engulfing whatever is on its path. Despite the many tourists that are lining up to get up on top of it, once you are up there, the size of the dune dwarfs the crowds!




On our last day at the beach, we attempted a surf session... it was interesting... the waves were still quite rough and the wind still blowing, although much less than the previous days. There was a powerful side-shore current and wave after wave after wave, which basically was just too much... after trying unsuccessfully to catch a wave, we stayed on the inside and caught white wash instead!! :) It'll be interesting to return to good waves in Hawaii, i don't remember what it's like!



During our stay in Milhac, in addition to working on the yard, we also did a number of outings in the area, including to two old castles... One of them has been kept up over the centuries and is a beautiful building, still occupied by private owners, but with some areas open to the public.




The other was forgotten after the middle ages and left to crumble for a few centuries before someone attempted to unearth the past.



So it was left in its original form, as a war construction. In a lot of ways, that castle resembles ancient greek or Roman ruin sites, and is a really interesting archeological site, very unusual for this region, where most castles have evolved with time.

Unlike the fickle waves of France, the castles did not disappoint!

Doing the Paris Thing

We are now back in Paris... where we were, a little over a month ago when we got back from Italy. Paris is such a nice city for the visitor... I remember when I used to live there as a high school student and I really did not like it all that much: school there was tough and stressful, and there was little time to enjoy what the city has to offer.

View from the top of the Buttes Chaumont

But as a visitor, it is quite amazing. My father's apartment, where we are staying, is centrally located and from there, we can walk for hours and just go from quaint streets to stunning parks, to great monuments almost endlessly.

Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris

This what we did a few nights ago, when we walked for five hours from the Eiffel Tower, to the Obelisk (the start of the Champs Elysees), to the Louvre and back home. We started our walk at sunset and were out until late in the night, at which time I was completely exhausted!



When we were here last, in late June, we viewed many of the city's landmarks from the river, on a boat tour, which offered less photo opportunity but was much less tiring! At the time, my sister was eight months pregnant, so a five-hour walk was out of the question! Since then, she's given birth to a beautiful baby girl named Tilia.




During our last visit to Paris, we also visited the Orsay museum, which houses the largest impressionist art collection worldwide. The impressionist paintings, which are usually large formats, are really impressive in real life. The colors of those paintings, especially Van Gogh's, are so bright!

My lovely niece needs to get new sunglasses!

This time we will try to go to the Louvre, to pay respect to the ancient and classical artists (the Louvre's collection spans from ancient Egypt to the 19th century)...