Pardon my French

Monday, May 27 I spent most the work day looking into arrangements through the end of my stay in France; which meant I basically figured out the rough itinerary and dates for my vacation at the end of June.  With the skeleton of a where and when figured out, I'll reach out to a few connections I've made for suggestions about specific towns and visits; plus I can confidently reserve my apartment and rental car here in Biarritz and have my trans-atlantic flight changed to match the actual airport I'll be closest to at the end of the vacation.   At lunch, I sat with Nicole again.  She told me about a modern amusement park about 3-4 hours north of here called the Futureascope.  She also joked about her new haircut as a Jean d'Arc; she'd received it from her daughter (une coiffeuse) yesterday during European Mother's Day (La fête de mere).   The waves on the Grande Plage were acting funny today: the back wash was colliding with the waves resulting in a long...

Saturday, May 25 I didn't actually sleep much on the night train, I'm not sure why.  The bed was long enough for me and pretty comfortable but I just didn't manage to drift off to Dreamland.  Still, we arrived in Paris on time and I disembarked to a warm, sunny morning in the city of lights.  I was the last one to rouse and leave the cabin.  Overall, not a terrible experience considering just how smelly and noisy a cabin with 5 other random guys could be.   The sun is waaaay too bright to have not yet had coffee.  The Austerlitz station seemed pretty nice, a very open air concept.  But I was too drowsy to really develop much of an opinion on it, so I'll leave it at that.  To ensure I was awake, I did a quick walk around the park next to the Austerlitz station.  After stretching my legs, I stretched them some more and I made my way to the 3rd Arrondissement to meet up with my friend.  I took the metro to the area but lost about 15 mi...