Barbara Thompson

Friday, July 19, 2024 Today is my brothers’ birthday!! Shout out to David and Dennis who passed a milestone today. They are in their 70s, while my younger sister, Donna, is only in her 50s. Wow. That’s amazing. They are having a party in the newly remodeled kitchen (at Dave and Jayne’s house) that is […]

Thursday, July 18, 2024 We both woke up at 4:30am today and used the bathroom and celebrated that we got to go back to bed for three more hours. The bus to the airport was loading at 5:30 and we could have been getting up for the day. We had a leisurely time getting ready

Wednesday, July 16, 2024 Our concert in Madeleine church started late because Vladimir (our truck driver from Ukraine) was stuck in traffic. He arrived almost an hour after we did. I don’t know where the truck with big instruments was parked, but traffic was apparently at a standstill. Quite a few people showed up for

Tuesday, July 16, 2024 We started at the Garnier Opera. It’s fancy (one of my favorite words; not one of my sister, Nancy’s, favorite words). It is gorgeous. The novel The Phantom of the Opera made a surge of interest in the opera house at the beginning of the twentieth century. The infamous box five,

Monday, July 15, 2024 We stopped at a rest area again and had lots of fun. There were walls of coffee machines and many people were using them. I was delighted to see that we could have hot chocolate, so we did. There were so many options: with caramel or hazelnut, with grated oreos or

Sunday, July 14, 2024 Happy Bastille Day! I guess we missed some fine fireworks last night. The group picture of the seven of our group that stuck it out and watched made me totally jealous. Oh, well – I wouldn’t have gotten anything written and that would have disappointed me. Keith noticed our friend, Kevin,

Saturday, July 13, 2024 We would have liked to stay longer in Vitré – it seemed like a really nice town – but we were on our way. We stopped after 90 minutes at a convenient rest area. I found it hilarious that everyone said they didn’t need a snack or anything to eat/drink, yet

Friday, July 12, 2024 We checked out of our tiny room in Bayeux and headed again into the French countryside. Oh, wait. Before that we were eating the submarine shaped dealies at breakfast and turned one over. It looked like a shell! Apparently, they are madeleines! Madeleines are delicious. We just bought a little bag

Thursday, July 11, 2024 We have told over and over that our bus is really full (and we should have packed light) and blah blah blah. On the first day, the two hour ride to Giverny and the 3 hour ride to Bayeux saw three large men and two regular sized women share the back

July 10, 2024 The brilliance of a European breakfast buffet cannot be overstated. Everything is yummy and mostly everything is some kind of bread. I focused on little cakes (?) that looked vaguely like submarines today, but I didn’t let the chocolate croissants go untried. The crepes were delicious with no topping at all. The