We're back!  It was magnificent!  We spent 3 days in Paris, 5 on Belle-Ile-en-Mer, and another 1 in Paris again before departing.  We both like Gustave Moreau's art, so during our first spell in Paris we visited the Moreau museum and saw hundreds of his paintings and sketches, as well as his bedroom and kitchen, which we ogled like typical dorky fans. 

We had many wonderful walks on the Seine, and the last day of our stay was the first day of Paris Plage,  a summer festival hellbent on making the Seine look like a beach.  They put sand on the banks and set up tropical plants, a swimming pool, petanque courts, roller blading, etc.  It was pretty weird.  Unfortunately, it wasn't at all hot, so noone was swimming.  Dan and I explored the festival for a while and then walked further down the riverside when we found ourselves in the middle of....(fanfare)... an indie festival?  Apparantly, this was the last act of the night.  They were named Stuck in the Sound, and they played pretty boring music with lyrics that were supposed to be in English, but I'm still dubious about that.  At any rate, we gave them a few songs and then decided to leave after one song whose chorus seemed to be the word "SHRIMP" repeated over and over again.

What else? We had a totally great Lebanese meal.  According to the menu, we were supposed to get 3 or 4 appetizers, but we wound up getting about 9 or 10, and they were all delicious things, whatever they were!  After all of that, we figured we were done, but no, more food came, mainly meats, and then dessert.  To add to all of this, Dan and I shared a large amount of alcohol (large for us) - both wine and Arak.  Arak is basically a milder Ouzo.  At some point during our meat course, Lebanese music came on, and after a bar or two, a belly dancer burst into the room and performed for the restaurant.  Neither of us had ever seen a live belly dancer before!  She put on a great show, and it was a good cap to a memorable night.

The next day we left for Belle-Ile-en-Mer.  Getting there was a challenge... While on the train, we discovered that the online agency that had sold Dan the tickets (Rail Europe) had given him the wrong tickets.  We were on our way to the wrong town (Quimper), which had a name similar to the town we actually wanted to go to (Quiberon).  After consulting a map, we realized that by sheer luck we were still going in the right direction, but would have to make a transfer at some point.  Dan was able to track down a conductor at our next stop, and asked him when we should get off.  The conductor replied, "Right here", and Dan probably cried, "Mais ma femme!" very dramatically, which convinced the conductor to hold the train long enough for him to run back and grab me and then get off the train. 

Anyway, we eventually made it to Belle-Ile.  It was beautiful, and very similar to Scotland - misty, rocky, lots of dramatic cliffs over the blue ocean.  The island itself is not huge, and only has two main towns - Sauzon and Le Palais.  We stayed in Sauzon, which was considered a main town by virtue of the fact that it has a few restaurants, a small grocery shop, and a church.  Le Palais is more of a small city.  Dan and I also rented bikes and explored the interior of the island a bit, and many of the smaller towns on the island.  Lots of farming and agriculture, lots of towns with a population of 6 chickens.  We biked all the way to the south of the island, to a place called the Wild Coast, which was huge seacliffs, fjords, and big rocky spires jutting out of the ocean.  There was heather everywhere.  We wound up biking over 20 km that day, and my legs wound up almost falling off.  But we saw some gorgeous sights.  We did a lot of hiking by the ocean side too.  Once we attempted to swim, but it was just too dang cold. 

Because of all of the seafood vocabulary, we had no clue what half of the stuff on the menus meant, so we did a lot of ordering stuff without knowing what it was.  "Crevettes" apparantly means "shrimp", and it was some of the most delicious shrimp I've ever had.  Dan ate what we think was the liver of some animal, and that was pretty good too.  We ate mussels and raw oysters.  We ate fishes of some sort.  We ate a LOT of crepes and galettes (the savory version of crepes), and drank a LOT of cider. 

It was a very peaceful place.  It's kind of like Mackinaw Island to French people (for those of you from MI) - pretty much all the children in France were on vacation there with their parents. We knew almost nothing about the island before we got there, so we were hoping it would be as beautiful as it looked online.  But it was WAY more beautiful than we had imagined. 

After Belle Ile, it was back to Paris again.  During our last day, we visited the Rodin museum, mainly for something to do.  For whatever reason, sculptures don't appeal to me as much as paintings, but it was a good time nonetheless.  We also were able to track down a champagne that Dan wanted for his mom - Veuve Galien.  Galien is her last name, and since her family lived in France a couple generations back before they moved to Holland, it's possible that it's made by a very distant relative.  She requested that we get some for her if we could find it.  The first sommelier we talked to was quick to tell us that it was a bad champagne, and then gave us directions to the shop where we found it. 

We splurged on dinner that night, and I had the most amazing dessert I've ever consumed.  It was a chocolatey mousse, in short cylinder shape, with all of this magical powder on it.  The powder was magical because when you bit into the dessert it gave off the tart flavor of rhubarb, which faded away, and then came back reincarnated as a raspberry flavor. HOW DID THEY DO THAT?  Also, it was decorated with a gold high-heeled shoe, which was also edible.  The sneakiest part was that on the chocolatey cylinder there was a piece of chocolate with a gold "Y" on it, which peeled away to reveal a SECRET COMPARTMENT.  YES.  What was inside the secret dessert compartment, you ask?  A white, inedible tile with a black "R" on it, and on top of the "R" was the silhouette of a curvaceous woman reclining.  Was this real?  Were we just drunk?  Did any of this really happen?  And what is the meaning of the mysterious Y and R? 

We left the next morning, and after a long flight with an angry baby, we're back in Detroit!  It was an excellent trip, but it's good to be home again.  What have you all been up to?