Scarborough

We're in Scarborough, where Mark's mom's family lives. Although she grew up in the Caribbean, they are originally from England, Scarborough in particular. While here, we got to see a couple of great cousins, Mark's Aunt Margaret and his grandma. Pictures of the relatives coming soon...

Scarborough by the sea

Here's Mark's cousin Christine's newly purchased bed and breakfast. REALLY NICE inside, too bad we didn't hear about it before we left...

Scarborough Castle

View from the castle of the church and graveyard where the Bronte sister, Anne-I think, is buried.


Peasholm Park

Sealife Aquarium

Almost Home

Mark's here and we're seeing the sights. Our internet sucks, it's as slow and intermittent as dial-up - will post more later when I get someplace with either good internet or free internet. It's really expensive here, about 15 euro a day! Love ya!

Dijon

Sorry it's been so long a wait for a post that's so short - we're at the end of the first leg of the tour and it's been hectic. Here are some photos in the meanwhile. 2 shows left, and Mark's coming to get me! Yippee! The thought of sleeping in my own bed is so luscious that I can barely fathom it. I imagine my dogs attacking me with doggie kisses and cuddling. I ALWAYS appreciated my home, my dogs, my friends, my husband. But now this takes appreciation to a new level. Home's going to be a joy. And yes, we go back out again, but for a much shorter stint this time.

Geneva

Dijon

Pics from Metz

When I'm not singing, sleeping or eating, I'm a professional tourist, trying to take in the most I can about a city in a day or two tops.

This city, Metz, was traded back and forth - well more like stolen and poached back and forth, between France and Germany several times. So some of the architecture is a little schizophrenic and varied back and forth from the multiple influences. There are ruins of an old fortress/gate to the city called Porte des Allemands (Gate of the Germans.) The first two pictures below are of that gate.

This photo is taken on the Moselle River, in old town Metz.

Below is a closeup shot of some of the ghastly, gothic gargoyles and such on the front of the St. Etienne Cathedral. I was quite pleased to see some differentiation between cathedrals and churches finally. After you've seen one white stone church, you've seen them all, sort of. But this church is made of some different, richer colored stone. And in Strasbourg, I believe, the church was made of a variegated pink stone - even cooler. All the cities are starting to run together, so it's hard for me to tell w/o looking at photo titles. My photo naming conventions and general photo hygiene in general is spectactular, partially due to my former life as a photo captioning asst or whatever at Discovery Channel, and partially due to my anal nature (which is probably how I ended up doing photo captioning in the first place.)

Temple Neuf

Okay, I'll see you soon - 2 weeks! Until then, smooches...

Rouen and Strasbourg

Here are more pictures of Rouen. A lot of these northern cities have serious Flemish and/or German influences in the food, language and architecture.

Once we left Rouen, we traveled straight to the venue and did a show, so we only got to spend about 2 hours in Strasbourg the next day before leaving for Metz, but here are photos of what I got to see:

Strasbourg

Lucky, lucky

I've had a couple of really good days here. It gets rough sometimes, but I've been quite pleased to be here. We left Lille and are now in Rouen. By the time you read this, I'll most likely be back in Paris again for a petite respite before we head to Strasbourg.

Rouen feels like a village. It's the place where they burned Joan of Arc at the stake. For some reason, the building they built to commemorate this and I guess to honor her looks TOTALLY out of place. Here it is:



Not very french looking. My friend kept complaining about how modern it was. I keep forgetting what city we are in or what day of the week it is. It starts to run together. It's quite amusing to watch a group of adults discuss what day they THINK it is for 3 minutes, dead serious. We were standing in front of a french store that was closed in the middle of the day and we had to run through our list of why-the-french- don't- want- to- work- right- now excuses.

1) It's Sunday (sort of legit, but it's been so long in the US I've forgotten about Sundays off)
2) It's Monday and I already had to work on Saturday
3) It's Monday and it's a pharmacy before 3pm
4) It's a restaurant and it's after 2pm, but before 7pm
5) It's the weekend of Easter
6) The owner has a hangnail....

Okay, just joking about the hangnail, but there's lots of closures. And when we first saw a store closed we thought it was Sunday and then realized that it was Thursday and that individual store proprietor was closed for no predictable reason.

I try to figure out why I seem to have so little time here and it dawns on me that eating at restaurants every day for 2 meals takes a LOT of time, as does doing laundry and mundane tasks that you can't do easily without a car or a house. So, I get less done, but I've sort of come to expect less. A good day is one where I can call my husband, read and answer emails, update my blog, paint my nails, eat and get a decent amount of sleep. Anything above and beyond is just gravy.

Alright, more later.

Brussels to Lille

Brussels, Belgium photos:

Me in Brussels at midnight - this is all I got to see of it

We're in Lille now. It's a cute city - 4th largest in France. Small, when you hear those stats. Anyhow, it's fairly cute. They have a lot of creperies here. I haven't been very inspired with the photos here. I don't know if all the cities are starting to look alike, if I'm burned out or what, but after Brussels, I just sort of stopped taking 100 photos of the same thing.

What's happened to my art! :) Anyhow, we're in Lille. Back to toilets in the closet again. We got spoiled in Brussels - it was a one-off and we had the BEST hotel. Housekeeping in France is relentless! Yesterday I got 1 phone call, one question in the hallway and a knock on the door followed by a sliding of the door key while I was blow-drying my hair and doing naked leg lifts in the bathroom. Why do they want into our rooms so bad? We never use the mini-bar! I have a do not disturb sign on the door and I asked the lady outside why they bother to have the door hangers if they are going to double check 3 times. One of our bandmates suggested that he figre out when the maid comes and then he could perform a lascivious act, naked, at her exact arrival. That'd traumatize her enough to stay away. At our last hotel in Paris, this little women knocked on your door and when you opened it, she bulldozed in like a hungry stray and marched over to the window and opened the curtains. All the while uttering something about having to open your window. So I'm thinking there's a trick lock or something, and she grabs the curtain and opens it, as if I couldn't do that myself. All this with the curt tenacity of a German war nurse. I thought it odd but forgot about it until at lunch our bandleader said that he told the front desk that he never wanted to see "that woman" for the rest of his stay here. They are deep here with the hospitality, even if you don't want it. So funny.

Here's what I could muster for Lille: