Those of you who checked out my photos from the D-Day beaches in Normandy the other day might recall my mentioning a place called the Pointe du Hoc, and how I didn't take any pictures there because it was pouring rain. Well, Marjorie's dad sent me his pictures from the whole weekend, including some from the Pointe du Hoc, and there's this great, ridiculous one of me, Marjorie, and Jenny in a huge hole left by an Allied bomb in 1944. We're all wearing identical windbreakers; they were promotional items from M's dad's company, which he brought to protect us all against Normandy's notoriously rainy Autumn weather.

Haha, I wish you could feel the wind and rain we were studiously ignoring in order to have fun out there. I'd brought my good umbrella but the second I opened the thing it immediately turned inside out and broke! At least in the bomb hole there was a little less wind. Immediately after this was taken, Marjorie an I climbed out of the hole as fast as we could, stranding Jenny; the sides were a lot steeper than they look here, not to mention slippery with mud. I think she's still there.

In other news, I have a bunch of fun new stuff up on Cool Stuff in Paris:

Recent articles:

• An unfinished statue of the Virgin Mary, buried for eight centuries
• Saint Denis, the decapitated guy you'll see all over Paris
• L'Hôtel de Ville — a great place for an execution!

Recent blog posts:

• And the award for Parisian bar most likely to keep all their neon letters in good working order goes to...
• Hidden in plain sight: fake windows painted onto a building in Beaubourg
• Monsters in the Jardin des Tuileries
• Beautiful Russian nesting dolls at Peterhof

I've also created a LiveJournal syndication of the Cool Stuff in Paris blog if you'd like to add it. It's here: coolstuffparis. It's not ideal in that it seems to only update every 24 hours or so, rather than in real time, but it's still a good way to keep up with my Cool Stuff blog if you don't feel like following it on Blogspot or adding it to your rss reader.

How're you?

For Halloween weekend, Marjorie's dad happened to be visiting Paris from La Réunion, so he and Marjorie and her two sisters and I rented a car and drove up to Normandy to see a bunch of historic sites from the D-Day invasion. We saw Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery there, slept in a hotel where President Eisenhower himself stayed after WW2, played in some real Nazi bunkers, saw a couple D-Day museums, and enjoyed a tremendous amount of good Normandy food (and drink!): seafood, crepes, cheese, wine, calvados, et cetera. Here are some pictures from the weekend...


A nice Spanish fellow offered to take our picture. That's me, Pascal, Marjorie, Jenny, and Deb.

( Tons of pictures; Omaha Beach, museums, bunkers, etc... )

We went to Brussels! The day after our trip to Mont Saint-Michel, Marjorie and her family and I decided to drive up to Brussels for the afternoon. I'd been there before, so I didn't take many pictures this time. I just have this one picture of me with the most famous thing in Brussels, the fantastic peeing fountain known as Manneken Pis.

Manneken Pis gets dressed up for all sorts of events and holidays and stuff (classy!), but he's normally just a regular naked little kid (possibly not much more classy!), as you can see in the photos on that Wikipedia entry I linked up. The fountain is almost comically smaller than everyone expects, and it's constantly jammed with tourists in front, all giggling and taking tons of pictures. Here's a wider shot.


If you ever go to Brussels, my favorite place to get a waffle is directly to the left of Mannekin Pis, two doors down at a tiny streetside counter. Both times I've been there I've gotten waffles from this place and they were ridiculously good; you can watch 'em come right out of the giant waffle iron all hot and fresh and perfect. I recommend the strawberry jam or chocolate and bananas. And remember, if you wear a lot of black, never, ever order anything with powdered sugar.

Marjorie's mom is visiting Paris for a couple weeks, and last Thursday, Marjorie and her mom and sister Deb and I rented a car and drove up to Mont Saint-Michel!


Mont Saint-Michel is basically a tiny island (some of the time; it's complicated) just off the Northern coast of France. Historically, there was a natural land bridge that connected it to mainland France during low tide, and this became completely covered by the sea during high tide, so you could only travel to and from the island at certain times. Nowadays they've constructed a permanent land bridge with a road on it, so you can come and go as you please. I first learned about Mont Saint-Michel way back in my highschool French textbook, and it seemed incredibly strange and fantastical then, and I kind of can't believe I actually ended up going there on a whim seventeen years later.

( Lots more pictures... )

Okay, here's the last set of photos from our vacation in America! We spent the last week or so in New Jersey, and most of that was at the beach in Wildwood; Marjorie and I rented a shorehouse there along with Ben and Corri and baby Lily. A lot of these pictures come from Marjorie's camera, because I guess I'm so used to looking at New Jersey stuff (having grown up there) I didn't remember to photograph a lot of it!


We visited Lucy the Elephant! I'd actually never done this before! More pictures of Lucy (including her insides!) are coming up after the LJ cut...

( Wildwood, Lucy, some NJ history, et cetera... )

Okay, I got sidetracked for a few days there, but I'm excited to continue with my vacation pics now! After our afternoon in the swamp, we had a couple more days in New Orleans, and visited some more cemeteries, hung out on Bourbon Street, etc...


This is from the intro of my new show on the Food network where, every week, I teach you how to get drunk. (Actually, this was taken at an amazing cocktail bar called Cure, which is Kevin's favorite bar, and is certainly in my top ten as well now.)


( I miss New Orleans a lot already... )

Okay, so I already posted Kevin's great picture of us with the alligator, but I'm finally getting around to my own pictures from our outing to the swamp...


This is actually from the end of our trek out into the swamp; you walk along a long, narrow walkway and eventually cross a big bridge and end up at this dead end. Here we are taking a well-earned rest from all that walking in the crazy heat and humidity. From left to right, that's Kevin, me, Casey, Marjorie, and Patrick.

( More swamp... )

The morning after the barbecue, we hopped on a plane for New Orleans, to visit my friends Kevin (misterscarecrow) and Casey, and Patrick (zombiepatrick) and Melanie, and also to meet up with our friend Leonard (ludickid), who drove all the way from San Antonio to see us! Well, to see New Orleans and us. They first day we were on our own until the evening, and I'd been to New Orleans a few times already, so I had fun showing Marjorie around the French Quarter...


Here's Marjorie in Jackson Square. You can see the statue of Andrew Jackson on horseback in the background; I think two hooves off the ground means genocidal maniac?

( Lots of New Orleans... )

I'm going out of order here a bit on the vacation stories, but I can't wait to post this awesome picture!


Marjorie is literally hiding behind me! Not pictured: bees! Photo by Kevin O'Mara; click the photo for bigger sizes on Flickr.
One fine morning during our recent stay in New Orleans, Marjorie and I went out to the Louisiana swamp with Kevin (misterscarecrow), Casey, and Patrick (zombiepatrick). I'd been out there once before, in wintertime, about five or six years ago, and while it was sunny and relatively warm for January, we didn't see any wildlife other than a few lazy little lizards. I'd hoped to maybe catch a glimpse of an alligator or two this time, since it was full-on summer, but didn't want to get my hopes up too much.

The piece of swamp we explored is some sort of state park or some such (I forget the name and/or exact location), and for the most part you walk along a narrow wooden walkway raised maybe a foot above the swamp water, and in some places where the ground is more solid it's a paved pathway. You can follow this long walkway through a few miles of swamp, and stare out onto the water from time to time and try to see gators, frogs, snakes, birds, lizards, insects, etc. The first thing we saw that morning was actually a pair of otters bounding away from us, splashing through the shallow water, which was quite a surprise! Just after the otters were gone, Kevin spotted our first gator, a small three-footer or so, perfectly camouflaged and motionless in the water, and it's possible we'd accidentally scared his breakfast away.

We walked another mile or so in the intense heat and humidity without seeing any other alligators, but we did manage to see lots of enormous spiders who'd optimistically built their huge webs directly over the walkway, apparently in the hopes of catching a human sightseer. We had to duck under webs every twenty feet or so. We also saw these enormous black grasshoppers everywhere, fat and knobby and the size of a cellphone. Photos of this stuff coming soon.

After looking out over the water for a few minutes from one of the many observation decks that are situated on short side-trails off of the main path, we still hadn't seen any more alligators, and I was beginning to despair. Kevin and Casey said they'd seen a dozen or so on their last outing, and we'd only seen the one little one so far, and him just barely. I mentioned something about growing pessimistic just as we quit the side path to return to the main drag, and boom, alligator on the path! This little guy was sleeping with his head on the path, and we'd have to walk right by him to continue on ahead. The above photo was taken after Kevin and Casey had already walked past him without incident. But before anyone tried to walk by, we stood around for a minute thinking about how best to do this, and as we discussed the situation, we watched the alligator wake up, open his eyes, systematically stretch out each leg, raise his head, and open his mouth. Yikes. Now, we realized this was a small alligator (maybe four or five feet, and of course nearly half of that is tail), he wasn't moving at all, and these things definitely hunt prey that are much smaller than people; frogs and such. Beyond the alligator there was a small bridge (from where Kevin took the above photo). All we had to do was walk slowly and calmly past the alligator, on the far edge of the path, and he probably wouldn't move or attack or anything crazy like that. Kevin and Casey went first, making a wide arc and going slightly off the path, and Kevin held his camera bag low to the ground on his right side so that if the gator should decide to strike, it'd probably just hit the bag. Of course, the gator didn't budge at all, and our friends made it safely to the other side, and up onto the bridge. Next, it was Marjorie's and my turn.

However, as I scoped out the best way to follow in Kevin and Casey's footsteps, I noticed that there were suddenly a half dozen bees hovering over the ground, just on the left side of the path! Kevin and Casey had walked on an underground bees' nest!!! So that would mean we'd have to walk between the bees' nest on the left and the alligator on the right, and we wouldn't be able to leave the path like Kevin and Casey did to make a wide arc around the alligator. This was some serious video game shit right here. I hung my own camera bag down on my right side, as Kevin had, took Marjorie firmly by the hand, and we went for it. Of course, once again, the alligator didn't move a muscle. I was honestly more worried about the bees getting angry and chasing us, so I'd told Marjorie that if we started getting stung, just run straight ahead and don't worry about the alligator, who was almost certainly the least of our concerns, which is an absurd fucking realization to have to come to! Sheesh! Anyway, we stayed on the path, didn't upset the bees, and made it onto the bridge to join Kevin and Casey with no problem.

Did I mention Patrick was filming all of this? Marjorie had given him her little digital camera so he could film our crossing. I'll post that clip as soon as Marjorie has time to go through her camera and give me her pics and videos. Anyway, next it was Patrick's turn to cross, and he had to do it all alone! Were the bees angrier now? Was the alligator finally fully awake and feeling pissed off or threatened? Patrick, completely calm and collected, walked right between the bees and alligator like he'd done it a million times, and he even kept the camera pointed in the alligator's face the whole time as he walked past. Neither the bees nor the alligator gave him any hassle, and we were all reunited on the bridge.

Of course there's no way this tiny gator would've killed us, but as Kevin pointed out, when you know how fast these things can run at short distances and how incredibly strong their jaws are, the idea of that mouth around your ankle isn't exactly pleasant. Plus, let's not forget the bees! I kept imagining getting bit on the ankle and falling directly onto the bees' nest.

I have a ton more photos from our day in the swamp, and there's Marjorie's videos as well of course, but I wanted to get Kevin's photo up here right away, since it's by far the best. It was an exhilariting feeling to be reminded that the food chain isn't just an idea but something we're actually part of! Even if we weren't in any real danger here, it's not often you get to experience that. Later we saw a much larger gator from a much safer distance, and that was pretty humbling as well. More on all of this later!

Here are my other photos from my sister's visit! I only took a dozen or so photos during the rest of Amanda's stay, because we spent most of our time in Paris, which I've already wandered and photographed pretty extensively, and she was snapping lots of pics with her own camera. They're a pretty crazy mixed bag...


Paris Plages! This is a pretty silly thing, and I love it. Every summer, the city of Paris creates a fake beach along the banks of the Seine, complete with real palm trees, real sand, beach umbrellas, beach chairs, ice cream stands, bands playing, bocce ball courts, etc. This stretches for one or two kilometers of the river, with different sights and activities set up in different sections.

( The rest! )

My sister, Amanda, came to Paris and stayed with me and Marjorie for a week! We spent most of our time bumming around the city, but we also took a daytrip to the medieval town of Provins, with Marjorie and her sister Deb. I'd been to Provins once last year when the weather was much cooler, and this time it was a lot more fun to be there on a beautiful day and just enjoy wandering and exploring everywhere.


Amanda and me!

( Lots more! )

Like I mentioned last week, M and I spent the long holiday weekend in Normandy in a quiet little town called Verneuil-sur-Avre. M's sister Jenny came with us, and our friend Courtney came down for a night.



( A bunch of pictures! )

This is my last set of photos from my ten days on La Réunion! These are various odds and ends that didn't fit into the other sets.


I hid under this beach umbrella all day and still got sunburned! I was sitting facing the ocean all afternoon, with the sun to my right, and the sunlight reflected off of the sand and burned the side of my face. Two days later I was in Philadelphia with the right half of my face still red, with a wide white space where the earpiece of my sunglasses had been.

( More! Beach, scuba diving, et cetera )

A few days after visiting Salazie, we spent a day and a half in Cilaos, another of the cirques, to do some hiking and sightseeing. We drove all afternoon through winding mountain roads to arrive at our hotel, a nice, quaint place up at the edge of the cirque. By the time we'd settled in and had dinner in the town, it was time to get some sleep for the big day ahead...


This was our view from our hotel room in the morning! We went hiking on that mountain just after breakfast.

( More! )

We went horseback riding in the mountains one morning. I'm actually posting the last photo first, because it's the best...


At about the midway point of our three-hour ride, we arrived at this gorgeous valley where we could see five or six small waterfalls up above as the mountains disappeared into the clouds. That's D on the far right.

( More! )

M's family live on the North-West part of La Réunion, and the volcano we hiked up (see part 4) is on the South-East side, so we'd driven all the way down and around the West coast to get there that morning. After our long hike, we drove back up and around, on the East coast this side, to see the rest of the island. Just before sundown we arrived at a place where the volcano had recently split open on the side, dumping lava onto the highway and all the way down to the beach and into the ocean; the island is still growing! This most recent activity had happened long enough ago that the lava had already been removed from the highway (and the highway repaved), but recently enough that the earth was still hot and steaming. We pulled over to take a few pictures and feel the hot earth through our sandals.



( More steaming cracks in the earth... )

( ... And a miracle??? )

The mountains on La Réunion are mostly extinct volcanos; they've been quiet for so many centuries that they're now completely covered with vegetation and roads and towns, and you'd think they were just regular mountains unless you looked at them from the sky (or Google Earth) and saw the big craters. However, there's still one active volcano on the island, which actually has minor eruptions fairly often. Hiking up this volcano was my number one priority for this trip, and it ended up being one of the toughest hikes I've ever done, made even more challenging by the constant, direct sunlight, since there's not a tree in sight. I took a whole lot of pictures...


This was taken from the winding mountain road that leads to the parking lot where hikers can set out. I believe the volcano is dead center there. We're still a few miles away. It was amazing to see the landscape change from lush and green to rough and lifeless, almost instantly, right as we arrived at this point.

( Lots more volcano pics, and also my awesome/terrible hat... )