'tis the season, I suppose

Merry Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten! Joyeux Noel! Buon Natale! Feliz Navidad!

Yeah. That's all the languages I've got. But you get the message, eh?

I am, in fact, all Christmassed out and have been for a couple of weeks, probably because I started listening to Christmas music in early November and we had our Cambrai Christmas two weeks ago and did presents and crackers and all that stuff. I even thought about taking down the decorations the other day and then realized, right, the 25th hadn't actually happened yet. But so that goes. Cambrai cranked up the Christmas to the highest notch. Lights everywhere. Hapless Peres Noel hanging on ladders from almost every window, or so it seemed. Gaufres in the main square. Paris is both more and less decorated: what they have is better and on a grander scale, but generally the people seem less concerned with Christmas.

Today on our magical mystery tour of Northern France, we caught the train to Paris, where we'll stay for a couple of days, and then we went to Chartres to see the cathedral, which was, of course, beautiful beyond description. We looked at the famous windows with their many tiny, tiny panes: it's amazing that they didn't get broken in the wars, but the townspeople would take them out pane by pane and hide them away when there were bombings. The carving is so intricate and lovely, and since it's Christmas, there were a lot of people there lighting candles and such. I had a laugh over the fact that the new steeple is taller and more ostentatious than the old steeple - yet another case of architects and builders saying, "Oh yeah? Watch this action!" in a kind of bit-too-late contest of (usually) masculinity. Of course, the new steeple was just built sometime after 1196, or possibly 1836. I wasn't really paying attention to the history of horrendous fires, what with all the obscure statues and tiny stairways to look at.

Anyway. Tomorrow we'll probably go see Sacre-Coeur and whatever else we can find open on Christmas. Maybe not the best timing in the world, but what can you do? At least our hotel is cute, if out in the 20th arrondissement, nearly out of Paris proper. Only a block or two from the metro though! Which is good, because it's too cold to walk too much. Other benefits include cheapness, an English speaking staff (though my French has improved remarkably, it's good for Mom), and free wireless. Hooray. I would recommend the Hotel Armstrong to you if you are in Paris.

On the 26th, we're off to Bretagne to see the standing stones at Carnac and possibly Mont St. Michel, which is supposed to be incredible. Or we were supposed to be, anyway, except that the woman told me they were out of seats for holders of Eurail passes, which sounded like a bunch of lies, but it was safer not to go than to be potentially stuck in Bretagne. So it was back to tiny Cambrai so that Mom can pack and we can head back to Paris for her to catch her flight and me to meet Matthias. Exciting!

Anyway. That's life. Spent a lot of time on trains today reading Jane Austen. Tell me that's not a vacation.