stuff

Well my three lovely girls have moved on, I think they must be in Nice by now. It was so nice having them around! My apartment seems awfully boring without them and their clutter!
It was fun times; though I had work the week days so it was probably most fun for them! But we did get to do some stuff together, mostly eating and watching tv after their full days of sight-seeing.
We did get to have a very fun weekend together. We took the toy kiwi out for a crepe dinner on Saturday night. The toy had a squeaker in it's head and we squawked it whenever we saw French supporters (it was the night of the quarter final). Here is Emily on the metro, squawking at a really glum looking Frenchy.
And eating our tasty meal:
After this we went to a bar to watch the rugby. It was so full that we had to stand on the stairs to watch, but at least there were a few other groups of kiwis there, so our cheers were on par with our competition. Okay so we lost and it was disappointing for a little while, but the exuberance of the French was so contagious that we soon forgot our sorrows and set out to have a fun night. It was also the night of the 'Nuit Blanche' when contemporary art is exhibited all around the city. It was mostly installation art; we visited the Tuileries garden which had been transformed into a fairytale-ish fire garden. Paths were lined with fire-filled terracotta pots; men in top hats made fireballs come spurting out of contraptions resembling giant potbelly stoves; enormous wire spheres were dotted with more flaming pots creating kind of burning bushes. The heat hit you in waves as we walked the length of the garden towards the ferris wheel at Place de la Concorde.
And my camera had no battery.
Anyways we ended up on the Champs Elysees where people were tooting their horns like crazy, waving flags, sitting on car-roofs or hanging out of windows all night long.
We slept away half of Sunday, and then went to the lovely Rodin museum, where the sun came out and we lounged around and yawned.
My gosh it is suddenly late and I feel like I have been sitting here for hours. Well I have been watching 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring' at the same time. I recommend it, but it may make the sensitive cry a little.
So to conclude, we also went to visit the catacombs of Paris. Not as gothic and gloomy as I thought it would be, but nevertheless quite a unique experience. The catacombes used to be quarries under the city, and then when over-crowded cemeteries were linked to the spread of disease in the 17th century, the graves were exhumed and the bones stored in the tunnels. My guidebook describes it as the 'most macabre place in Paris', which is pretty exact.