I Do Know How To Spell

I thought I was editing my poorly spelled post, but instead I was posting it. So high tech!

SO HERE HANK'S EMAIL.. IHAVE NO IDEA WHY IT DIDN'T POST ON THE LAST TRY. I'M NEW ATY THIS ND JUST TRYING TO KEEP THINGS GOING WHILE HANK IS GONE....

FROM BELIZE....

Okay, how do I put this. Let's just say that when the first thing you do when you land in a Third World nation is to visit its only prison and deal with customs agents there, it makes your initial impression pretty powerful.

So, after going through customs I stepped out into the world. A random, very sketchy looking guy asked me "are you Hank". This was Kenny, my chauffeur. He and a strange little white guy named Carl led me to a field behind what appeared to be a derelict hotel where a couple of abandoned pickup truck sat. Over the course of the next little while it dawned on me that one of those abandoned vehicles was to be my limo.

We were met there by Tim Tam (so help me, that's his name), the head of the missionary organization and by a middle aged American ex-pat named Judy, who turned out to be a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader in another life--believe me, you'd never guess that in a million years. Then the discussion ensued in the parking lot, for about an hour and it was ultimately was determined that Tim would take me to the hotel while Carl and Kenny took the other rolling junker somewhere else. Tim and I spent an hour getting gas at a full service gas station (where we were the only customers the entire time--literally nothing happens fast in this country).

Then we went into the boonies to the prison--the home of 1,347 prisoners (men, women and children)--(only 40 of whom are women--I'm not sure how many are kids). This is the only prison in the country. Let's just say that I think I could engineer an escape for all 1,347 inmates and that nobody would notice for a while. We were there for a couple of hours hanging with one of the top prison officials and waited for a customs guy to show up so they could break the seal on a container of medical and school supplies that had been donated to the mission. Why they were being stored at the prison was never quite clear to me.

Then it was off to downtown Belize City to pick up Carl and Kenny. Okay then we finally ended up at the hotel, I ended up buying the guys dinner at the hotel restaurant (not cheap, not expensive, but also not good). At that point (probably close to midnight your time), I literally fell on the bed and crashed into a deep sleep.

Woke up this morning too late to scuba. Tried chartering a half day of fishing and they wanted $300 US for it, so, POOL DAY!

Hank's First message from Belize

I thought you might be interested in Hank's first email from the mission trip in Belize.  I talked with him for about three minutes tonight at a gazillion dollars a minute and he was doing great.  I figured in his absence I should blog something, so here is his message to me at 10 this morning:

Teri Makes a Surprise Trip to Paris!

A couple of quick items

Today the Helena Henleys gathered with the Hoover Henleys along with a bunch of their friends for a kind of official farewell party as they complete their move to Lynchburg. We cooked a bunch of hot dogs and hamburgers while the kids swam and the adults mostly shared laughs and memories. It was a good time--very bittersweet. As I write this, Mike is flying back to Lynchburg so he can get to work bright and early tomorrow. Later tonight he'll be sleeping in their new Virginia home (on a blow up mattress since the movers won't come for a couple of weeks). Jen and the kids will head up there in a couple of weeks after the move is finalized.

Mike also has a suggestion for our next poll based on his preliminary research of the Paris dining scene. I'll launch that poll and tell you more about that after we wrap up the current poll on shopaholism.

Okay, so Teri is just back from a surprise scouting trip to Paris last week. She reports that Paris was a little hotter than she expected and that fashions in the vicinity of Paris have taken a turn for the worse.

Don't believe me? Well, I've got proof. Here are a couple of pictures of Teri in front of the Arc de Triumphe and the Eiffel Tower. They're a little blurry because they were taken with her cell phone, but I promise they're genuine.

Okay, okay. It's not that Paris. Teri was actually in Las Vegas for a couple of days for a gathering of advertising professors and had these pictures taken in front of the Paris Casino. It was 107 degrees while Teri was in Vegas last week, so it couldn't have felt much like the real Paris, and Teri says that the fashion sensiblilities of Vegas are also pretty much incompatible with those of the fashion obsessed French.

Petanque Anyone?

Before I get to today's topic, a few odds and ends.

Have you been to the blog site and voted on this week's poll yet? It looks to be a runaway election, but you still have time to exercise your franchise

Teri visited Paris yesterday on a scouting trip for our upcoming adventure. I may have proof for you in a few days (if we can figure out how to get a picture from her cell phone to my computer).

Unless one or more of my co-authors write some guest posts in my absence, the blog is going to be pretty quiet over the next few weeks. On Thursday I fly to Belize for a one week church mission trip. Wish me luck. I'll be painting a church building and playing "Uncle Zeke" in a series of VBS skits among other things. We'll also be visiting a prison, going to a couple of Belizian church services and who knows what all. My understanding is that we'll be working in a pretty slummy part of Belize City, which should be interesting

After I get back, I'll be home for all of one day before flying to Florida for a five day sales meeting (Steve will also be there for that one), so Teri isn't going to see much of me for a couple of weeks and I won't be very blogarific for a while.

Okay, on to today's subject.

The game of Pentanque (also known as Boules), is sort of a French national pastime. Go to any park in any French city on a nice day and you'll find a bunch of older French men (and French folks of all ages) playing the game. You'll see--this game really is a kind of national pastime, particularly for the aforementioned older men. Boules is similar to the Italian game Bocci and is played with metal balls.

It's kind of like a cross between bowling, marbles and horseshoes. I don't know the rules, but it's apparently a really simple game to learn and a very difficult game to master.

So I propose the following:

On our trip I'll try to acquire a Pentanque set (shouldn't be much of a challenge). And then one afternoon, lets find a park in whatever town we're parked in that day and hold a BYSAPC Pentanque Tournament. It should be hilarious and if my plan unfolds the way I imagine, we should draw a crowd of very amused native "coaches" to laugh at us and show us the proper way to play.

Here's a website that has a nice basic explanation of the game.

http://www.petanque.net.nz/Learning_to_play.html

So how about it. Who's up for a game of Petanque?

How Different Are the French?

Here's how different . . .

Imagine, if you will, Laura Bush putting out a music album this week with lyrics like these . . . "You are my drug, more deadly than Afghan heroin, more dangerous than Colombian white."

Imagine if Laura Bush used to date Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger before marrying George.

Imagine (I dare you) that prior to becoming First Lady, Laura Bush had a modeling career and posed nude for a photo shoot. Imagine also that Christie's recently auctioned one of those photos for $91,000.

Finally, imagine Laura Bush being totally hot.

Well, that's exactly the situation in France, where all of this and more is true of the French First Lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

And, other than critics trashing her new album (after it's gotten over half a million listens on her website), the French seem pretty cool with most of this.

Here's a link to that infamous photo of the French First Lady with the naughty bits covered by digital duct tape and a link to the uncovered version if you like your art fig leaf free.

http://www.digitalalchemy.tv/2008/03/carla-bruni-sarkozy-nude-photo.html

When former French President Francois Mitterand died in 1996, he left behind both a widow (to whom he had been married 50 years) and a long-time mistress and illegitimate daughter (age 21 at the time of his death). Both the mistress and daughter were seated prominently with the rest of the family at Mitterand's funeral and nobody was shocked.

I ask once again, gentle reader, are the French different? Oh yeah, you bet they are. Vivre la difference!

SO, in closing, here are a couple more of Carla's album covers. I'm including these only so that you'll be able to so that you'll be able to recognize her if we run into her while we're in France and for no other reason. Click on either of the covers and they'll expand on your screen for your viewing pleasure.

Your first souvenir of France

I have a suggestion for your very first souvenir of France.

Paris has more really cool museums and major sights than perhaps any other city on the planet and there's a way to cram in a bunch of the biggest of them for one reasonable price.

Two of my top 10 museums in the world are just a few minutes walk from our hotel (the Louvre and the Orsay). Other "must sees" on my list include Napoleon's Tomb, St. Chapelle, Notre Dame, the Arc du Triumphe, the Palace of Versailles, etc., etc.

Paris also has a really cool way to prepay admission to all of these and about 60 other museums and sights in and around Paris. It's called the museum pass and it's a really good deal.

Some of the other museums include a Picasso museum, a decorative arts museum, a ceramics museum, a sewer tour--there's something for everyone here. Hey Teri, there's even a museum of advertising!!!

Here's how it works. You can buy a 2 day museum pass for 30 Euros (a bit under $50 at today's exchange rate--and still cheaper than our one day tickets to Dollywood a couple of weeks ago). You can also buy a 4 or 6 day pass, but we won't need more than the two day pass for our trip. Teri and I got these passes on our first trip to France.

The best and cheapest place to obtain the pass is at the tourist information desk at the airport. Then you validate it on the first day you use it by writing in your name and the date on the back of it.

But here's the really good part. If you've ever been to the Louvre in high season (when we'll be there) you'll see that the lines for tickets can be very long. With the museum pass, you go right in--no waiting! This is true at all of the sights. How cool is that?

You don't have to hit too many of these sights for your museum pass to more than pay for itself, and the not waiting in line part is truly priceless.

Just about the only major sites I can think of that aren't covered by the museum pass are the elevator ride up the Eiffel Tower and a nighttime boat ride on a bateaux mouches (that's a must-do in my book).

There's more information and a listing of the sights you can see using the pass on their website. There's also a handy 1 page listing of those attractions and a full 28 page booklet you can print out if you want detailed info on all of them.

http://www.parismuseumpass.com/en/home.php

There are only three places I have to visit on this trip--the Orsay, St. Chapelle and the Palace of Versailles. For me, everything else will be lagniappe (and whatever Teri tells me to do). All three will be repeats for me, but the last time I saw Versailles I was something like seven years old.

If you've never been to the Louvre or to Notre Dame, you've got to go to both of those, although I'll probably skip those this time in favor of something else. At the Louvre you'll get to say hi to the Mona Lisa (and her hordes of admirers) and then get lost in one of the biggest museums you can imagine. Remember, the Louvre was a palace before it was a museum, and it is both huge and amazing. Notre Dame is just one of the great buildings of Christendom. Teri and I went to mass there when we were last in Paris and that was quite an experience.

So, start thinking about how you want to spend your time in Paris. Maybe you want to go museum crazy, maybe you just want to walk the streets, maybe you want to take in a bit of shopping or while away the hours at a cafe. I'm planning on doing some of all of the above.

Third Time's the Charm--Yet Another Hotel Change

Maybe it was the bedbugs comment I read in one of the TripAdvisor ratings or perhaps it was one of the comments from a Brit who said to "avoid it like the plague". It may have even been Cathleen's excitement about staying at a boutique hotel and not wanting to dissapoint her, but I've decided to change our hotel in Paris yet again.

I really wanted to have us all stay in someplace very nice for what may be the only time we may be in Paris and will certainly be the only time we're all together in Paris.

So, that said, I am extremely pleased to announce that we will now be staying at . . . Le Hotel Madison.

http://www.hotel-madison.com/e/hotel/

If you read reviews of the place on TripAdvisor, look at the pictures of the place or just look at their rates, you'll see that this place is a big step up. Everyone will be happy to know that a lovely French buffet breakfast is included in the tab. Good thing too since it may prevent me from having to rummage through the poubelles (trash cans) of Paris searching for scraps of food after what this is doing to the budget. Okay, enough whining.

We're still in the same neighborhood on the Left Bank, so the location is terrific.

Unless I hear back from Jean-Marc at the hotel that they too have forgotten that it's the week of the Paris Air Show we should be good to go.

Also, I'm pleased to announce that Kathy Cooper has accepted the position of Ministre des Transports (Minister of Transportation). Thank you Kathy.

A bit of very sad non-Marjorie news to close today. Several of you knew our long-time friend Tony Newsome, who lived in Charlotte. Kathy called us last night with the news that he passed away suddenly on Sunday. Kathy spotted his obituary in the Montgomery newspaper. We don't know the details yet. A mutual friend of ours (Alan Wilson) has been in touch with one of Tony's cousins and says he was pretty vague about what happened. Alan also hadn't heard the news and neither had several of Tony's other friends. His funeral is today in Dothan. Tony was 49.

Oops, change of plans

This morning I received an e-mail in fragmented English unconfirming our hotel reservation, so we're forced to change our location. Turns out they were already mostly booked because we're going to Paris at the same time as the Paris Air Show a huge event held every other year, and they didn't realize it when they gave me the booking. You think they would have checked that rooms were available before they confirmed the rooms, but no.

The travel agent I'm working with suggested that we move to a bigger (think Hilton) hotel, and I was having none of that nonsense, so I found another one on my own.

The location of our new lodgings are, if anything, better than our last place (we're in the same neighborhood just a couple of minutes walk from the Orsay.

Now for the bad news. The Hotel de Lille is also a small hotel, but it's not what anyone would describe as "boutique". I think we could generously describe our new lodgings in Paris as "basic".

http://www.hotel-paris-lille.com/

The Hotel de Lille is a two star hotel, so we're taking a big step down in Luxury. The rooms are universally described as tiny in various reviews. But you'll have your own bath and it's a place to lay your head while you are in Paris.

The reviews of this place in Trip Advisor are a hoot. They range from "I loved it" to "A creepy smelly dump." One couple is getting a room with twin beds. The good news about that room is that it's bigger than the rooms the rest of you guys are getting. I had to assign someone to that room and picked Mike and Jen, but y'all can work out for yourselves who ultimately ends up in that one.

The good news for me is that this place is saving us a bundle over my last choice.

Oh well--the location is great and it's in Paris, so life is good

The Hotel in Paris is Booked!

I apologize for three blog entries in one day, but I've got big news.

I'm very pleased to announce that we have a home in Paris!

We'll be staying at Le Regent Hotel, a small (25 rooms) boutique hotel on the Left Bank in the St. Germain de Pres district.

Here's the link to their website. Go ahead, take a peek. I'll wait for you:

http://www.hotelleregent.com/

We're in a prime location in the heart of Paris. Our hotel is a 10 minute walk or less to Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Pont Neuf and many of the other sites.

The rooms are nice but reportedly small (well, one couple will have a big room) and nobody has to share a bathroom. I didn't spring for the continental breakfast since that was another 14 Euros per person per day, and it struck me that $726 at today's exchange rate should buy us a whole lot more than croissants and coffee. So if you want the hotel breakie, you're on your own.

That's all for today, I promise. The only piece of the puzzle still missing are the flight arrangements and we should have that figured out before the end of August.

Volunteer needed

When we had our last meeting, I forgot a position that needs to be assigned.

The Bonjour Y'all Social Aid and Pleasure Club needs a "Minister of Transportation."

The duties of that office involve one task and one task only--getting all of us from the airport in Paris to our hotel.

As the MOT you would research the various options (Taxi, Van, Bus, Train) available to us and select the one that best suits our needs. We could take the RER (the train that runs from CDG and connects to the Metro in Paris), or we could take a shuttle bus that would drop us off at a central point in Paris where we'd catch cabs or the Metro, or we could arrange a van to take us all to the hotel. A taxi would be the simplest but by far the most expensive option.

So . . . who wants to do the research and report back to the club and add another title to their resume?



Le Capitaine

Do you have your passport yet?

Just a reminder that several of you either didn't have passports or had passports that were about to expire when I polled you back in January.

If you have not already done so, it's imperative that you obtain your passports right away. The airlines need this information well in advance to screen you and determine that you are not a terrorist. I may even need this at the time of booking and I'll be booking flights very soon.

So PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE . . . if you don't have a passport, can you get on with the application right now so that you'll have your passport in the next few weeks?

Here's the link to the U.S. State Dept. website with all the answers to all your questions about costs, how long it takes, the process, etc.

http://travel.state.gov/passport/passport_1738.html

And if you do already have your passport, can you pull it out of the drawer (or wherever else you keep it) and take a look at the expiration date so that you know you're good to go? Your passport must be valid at least through Sept. 20, 2009 (three months beyond our return date to the US).

A few updates on flights and hotels.

1. I've contacted a couple of hotels in Paris about our lodgings. I should have an announcement on our hotel in a few days.

2. I've pretty much locked in our dates for the trip. We'll be flying to Paris on June 10th. We'll arrive on June 11th and stay in Paris for three nights. We'll board the Marjorie II on the afternoon of June 14th and get off the barge on the morning of June 20th. Where we'll be taken to the airport and fly home. So figure you'll be back in the States on the night of June 20th.

3. It's still too early to book flights. I've contacted a travel agent and she tells me that we should go to work on flights in mid-August. I also contacted Delta's group desk and they said the same thing. I'll be looking at several options (everyone flying from their own home town, everyone flying from Birmingham, everyone flying from Atlanta). If one of the three options is a whole lot cheaper, I'll go that route, but for your convenience I'll look at the options in that order. If we do end up flying in and out of BHM or ATL, those of you in Lynchburg, Houston and New Orleans will have to add another travel day on either end of the trip (leave home June 9 and get back home on June 21). Look for more on that in a few weeks.

4. Bear in mind that all of this is subject to minor changes and revisions, but the plan is pretty much coming together.

Le Capitaine

Your rental car in France

These are pictures Melanie's son took on a recent business trip to Europe. I'm not sure Mike, Steve or I could fit in one of these things.