Andy Smallman

Such was my blog post title 3 years ago today, on the 13th day of the sabbatical. How can it already be 3 years? And here’s a link to that post, for those of you who, like me, enjoy time travel.

Get this, this is our fourth consecutive year in which we’ve spent July 13th in France, which leads me to think there are two interpretations of this. The first is that we feel some kind of need to get far away from my father on his birthday. And the second is that we so much want to celebrate his birthday in a big way that we travel to France to do it.

On that note, Melinda & I found this poster in Paris announcing a big French celebration of my father’s birthday taking place today at an Irish pub. If you squint a bit while using your imagination, you can almost believe it says Smallman there on the poster (or O’Smallmans).

Say, Al, Frédérique just walked by and wanted to make sure I pass on a birthday greeting to you from her. Have fun at the track!!

Cheers!

So yesterday we went on an art tour by boat from Nantes to Saint-Nazaire. It was Bernard’s idea and along for the trip were Christine, Bernard, Théo, Claire, Melinda, and me. It was a great time. If you want to know more about it, read about it (in English) here. Me, here are some additional things I think you should know.

#1 – That really is a house in the water. It’s an art installation. Think that’s nuts? Go to that link above.

#2 – As I wandered the boat, I discovered that they have brassieres stowed away in packages of 6. My guess is that if the water gets rough and a lot of large-chested women are on the boat, they want to keep everything in order.

#3 – When you get off the boat in Saint-Nazaire, the first thing you see is the re-purposed Burger House!! You may recall that Rick moved the Burger House out of Nantes. Sad fact of the day, it was closed yesterday.

We’ve not had easy Internet access for the last couple of days, hence the lack of blog posts. Thursday was our last day in Paris and we wanted to make the most of it. We went out for a Thai lunch at a restaurant recommended by Christine. It was really good. But it was far enough away from our apartment (one Métro transfer) and we had to check out by 2pm so time was tight.

We were able to stash our bags for a few hours, time enough to do some final sight-seeing. But then we had about 3 hours to kill with our bags before our train left. We managed to do that in a wonderful little bar. It’s really not difficult to bide one’s time in a Parisian bar while on vacation. I recommend you try it some time.

We did such a good job of biding our time that we had to hustle to the train station (one Métro transfer and a packed, packed subway). But we arrived with plenty of time to spare (10 minutes), according to Melinda.

We are back in Nantes and all is well. More soon…

So yesterday we visited several museums of modern art, all of them having clothes for sale. Galleries Lafayette, Uniqlo, Antoine and Lily, and other places I’ve worked to forget.

Today we went to THE Museum of Modern Art and it is one I will remember. The featured exhibit was the work of Keith Haring and it really was interesting. The way he presented his humanistic views really appealed to me.

Melinda is a big Keith Haring fan so she took a lot of pictures. I got a kick out of how this one turned out. It’s the same photo here. The first version is what Melinda intended to shoot. The second is our reflection in the glass, cropped and enhanced.

More modern art.