Skegness

Cooper and I took a day trip to Skegness, a coastal city about 90 minutes from here (by train).   It's a big touristy place during the summer months -- great beach and a big pier with tons of arcade games and kid play areas and food stands.

It looks a little desolate now, but add in some sunshine, a carpet of beach towels, and about 300 colorful umbrellas, and I'm guessing this is a hopping place!

A portion of the pier:

Again, add in some people and loud music, and I bet it's fun.  Things seemed pretty cheap.  You could play those claw games (where you try to grab a toy) for only 10 or 20 pence (cents, essentially), and there were tons of ride-on vehicles (for kids) that you could operate for only 30 or 50 pence.

Seems like it would be a fun summer destination.

But I specifically chose a quiet Thursday, before the school kids' term break, to enjoy Skegness.  Coop and I had two things on our agenda.  First up, Natureland Seal Sanctuary.  Natureland has been open since 1965, and its primary work is to rescue and rehabilitate seals, though it also occasionally gets injured birds, whales, dolphins, etc.

Natureland has five adult seals in residence:

And four baby seals, who were rescued from a nearby beach area, given medication and food, and are now learning how to swim, socialize, and hunt before they'll be released back into the ocean.

Natureland also has five Jackass Penguins (heh -- I'm not making that up),

in addition to a wide variety (though not a large quantity) of other animals -- fish, crocodiles, parrots, snakes, turtles, lizards.  Coop and I also walked through a tropical plant enclosure and a butterfly house that, like the rest of the beach, was pretty sparsely populated during the cold-ish spring months.

The second item on our schedule: Captain Kids, an indoor play area that is ostensibly pirate-themed (which just means that the "Rules" of the place say things like "no outside grub" and "pirates must remove shoes" and "the friendly crew is here to help").

Coop wore his pirate costume and seemed to have a good time!

He told Alan that night that it was "amazing!"

4.5-mile Fun Run

One of the British professors is a prostate cancer survivor and he participates in a fun run every year to raise money for cancer research.  He drummed up a few other brave Harlaxton souls, including Alan, to join him in Hose Village for the 4.5-mile Belvoir Fun Run.

Our group, before the race:

Jack and Abby's mom Nancy (in the red t-shirt above) and Tilda's dad Chris (reddish shirt, blue shorts) ran, so all four kids came along to cheer.  While the runners were galavanting around the countryside, I organized a kids race to keep them entertained and burn off some energy.

(As you can see from the START banner, in addition to the 4.5-mile run, there was also a half-marathon, which served as a training race for people participating in the London Marathon.)

(One more note:  Belvoir is pronounced like beaver.  Really, it is.)

Cooper running into the finish.

Alan running into the finish.

(So fast, the photo's blurry!!)

And how about this for a cheering section:

Paris: Not in the Guidebooks

Sidewalk musicians (with a piano!?!):

The Hunchback of Notre Dame:

Since we stayed right near the Notre Dame Cathedral, we walked by it several times.  Each time, this man with a creepy mask was walking around entertaining the crowd and making everyone laugh by scaring people.  He came up behind me, for example, and held onto my hand while we were walking.

Cooper was fascinated by him.  So we tried telling him the story of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and explained that this man was hanging around the cathedral sort of acting like the Hunchback.  Except neither Alan or I could really remember how the story went.  "Well... a man was hunched over and ugly and people were mean to him, so he went to live in the cathedral's bell tower and rang the bells at the right times..."

We spent a lot of time talking about both this man and the Hunchback, and trying to remind Cooper of the difference between what's real (the man) and what's pretend (that the man is the Hunchback; the Hunchback himself, for that matter).  I'm not sure we succeeded...

But Cooper was very excited to have a photo of the man.

Alan wanted this photo:

A homeless person asking for money, but with a dog.  As if to say, "I love animals, too.  I would never use your money to buy booze; I've got to take care of my faithful pup."

We saw these green wooden boxes along the riverbank.

Turns out, they're little store fronts.  They serve as storage containers for various books and prints and whatnot, and they open up into these stands for display the items for sale.  Clever.

When our tour bus was parked at the Eiffel Tower picking up new passengers, we saw this street performer (trickster?) putting on a show.  He was playing the shell game -- one of those round brown discs was white on the bottom side.  He would show the people which one, mix them up a bit, and let folks guess where the white one was.  No, not guess.  Bet.  And not a cheap bet either.  50 Euros (so about $65, I think) at a time.  And he paid out, too.  We saw him give away quite a bit of money.

BUT.  From our vantage point, we could see how he makes his money. The people in his audience watched him move the discs around.  It really was pretty easy to follow, so the audience was confident that they knew where the white one was.  They reached into their purse or back pocket for money.  And when they turned away ever-so-briefly, the man moved the discs.  The most common and effective move was just to spin the piece of cardboard around.  It was actually pretty shocking how many people he tricked (repeatedly!) doing that.  I was sorely tempted to hop off the bus and play, but I didn't have the 50 Euro ante.  Probably a good thing...

This little pod is a public toilet.

But it's a fancy toilet.  It cleans itself:

"The toilet bowl is washed, disinfected and dried automatically with each use.  The floor is also washed after each use." 

So someone would come out, the door would shut, you could hear some water noises, and about 45 seconds later, the door opens for the next person.  With a freshly washed floor and toilet bowl.

Paris: Notable Landmarks

As I mentioned, our hotel was right across the street from the Notre Dame Cathedral.

It is widely considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture in France and in Europe.  Construction began on the cathedral in 1163 and was essentially complete by 1345.  It was among the first buildings in the world to use the flying buttress (arched exterior supports).  

We peeked our head in early one morning, avoiding the crowds.

This was a display illustrating how the cathedral was built.

Most of these next photos were taken from our bus tour, which is why they're at a cock-eyed angle and include other people's heads.

This is the July Column, which stands in the Place de la Bastille, a square where the Bastille Prison stood until the Storming of the Bastille and its subsequent physical destruction in 1789-1790 during the French Revolution.   

The July Column commemorates the events of the French Revolution of (July) 1830, and is actually unrelated to the Storming of the Bastille.  Except that it stands in the center of the Bastille square.

This is the Arc de Triomphe, which stands at the western end of the Champs-Élysées.

I didn't study up on my Paris monuments before the trip; the only thing I know about the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées (a fancy schmancy avenue) is that it is the location of that final stage of the Tour de France bike race in the summer.

Luckily, we managed to take in a bit of the art scene in Paris.  In between the triangle trees, you can see the butt of The Thinker, the 1902 sculpture by Rodin.

This glass pyramid serves as the entrance to the Louvre Museum, one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world. 

The pyramid was designed by architect I.M. Pei, and was opened in October 1988.

This is the Luxor Obelisk, which sits in the center of the Place de la Concorde.  It was originally located at the entrance to the Luxor Temple in Egypt, like Cleopatra's Needle that we saw in London.

It is 3300 years old, and it was moved to Paris in 1833 (its twin remains in Egypt).  It is 75 feet tall, and like the obelisk in London, is covered with hieroglyphics.

After a long day of sight-seeing, we were ready to relax with some ice cream.  So we checked out Berthillon, a French manufacturer and retailer of luxury ice cream and sorbet.  

Worth the 30-minute wait and the extra Euros for the name recognition?  Probably not.  But still delicious!

Paris: The Eiffel Tower

The only thing we planned in advance to do in Paris, other than the bus tour of the city, was spend some time at the Eiffel Tower.  The Eiffel Tower, named for its designer, engineer Gustave Eiffel, was built in 1889.  It is the tallest building in Paris, standing 1,063 feet tall, about the same height as an 81-story building.

We saw an advertisement with a small Eiffel Tower stuck on someone's head, so Cooper was pretty fascinated with taking pictures to look like the Tower was on Daddy's head.

A shot straight up the middle:

The footing of one of the towers:

You can walk (we did not) 300 stairs up to the first level, and another 300 up to the second level, or you can take an elevator, which can also take you to the very top.

We did:

I wasn't a huge fan of being up there, which is why we're all sort of crouched on the floor.  It took me a couple of minutes to actually stand up and walk around.

I held my camera over the edge and took a picture straight down.  The legs of the Tower seem much closer together from this angle:

Coop also enjoyed the nearby carousel ride:

And we picked up a souvenir "to remind me of this visit to the real Eiffel Tower."

He carried it with him the next day on our bus tour.

And held it up to show the real Eiffel Tower.

Paris: An Introduction

One item on my must-do list for the semester was a quick trip to Paris.  We booked tickets on the Eurostar, a high-speed train connecting London with Paris and Brussels.

The Eurostar crosses through the Channel Tunnel, also known as the Chunnel, which is a 31-mile rail tunnel connecting England and France under the English Channel.

We booked a room at Hotel Dieu.  Hotel Dieu ("hostel" or "house" of God) is the name given to hospitals in French towns, and Hotel Dieu is the oldest hospital in Paris.  It was founded by Saint Landry in 651 on the same site as it now stands, although it has been destroyed several times by fires. The architecture of the present building dates from 1877.

On the sixth floor of the hospital, there are about 15 hotel rooms for rent.  So we checked in, walked past doctors in scrubs and x-ray machines parked in the hallway to get to our room.  It was lovely and in a fabulous location -- just across the street from the Notre Dame Cathedral on a little island in the middle of the Seine River.

Since we were next to a major tourist attraction, there were lots of food stands and souvenir shops.  We tried the sidewalk crepe stand -- delicious!

Alan picked caramel; I got one loaded with Nutella!

We didn't figure Cooper would like to spend days in museums, despite the fabulous art in the city, so we opted instead for a bus tour:

Photos of the various attractions coming later.

We walked a little bit around our little neighborhood, and we quickly discovered the fastest way to move:

Solves a lot of problems, not the least of which is Cooper's seemingly unquenchable need to buy things "to remind me of this trip."

More misc photos

Cooper misses his musical instruments, I think.  Sticks frequently become guitars.  Or, as here, drumsticks to be used on the upside down trashcan.  

This is Ralph and Judith Poore.  Ralph used to work at Harlaxton and they've been involved as a "Meet-a-Family" (local British families assigned to students to welcome them to the area) for years.  Our Baker coordinator Martha suggested we introduce ourselves to them.  Turns out, we didn't need to.  Alan was out running one day, he said hello to some men working in the Grantham Canal, one of the men stopped to ask if Alan was from Harlaxton, and it was Ralph! 

They invited us over for tea one afternoon, and it was easy to see why they're so popular among our Baker students.  Perfectly lovely.

Cooper found his ice-cream-lover-soul-mate when Aunt Ellen came to visit.

This is the Refectory (dining hall).  It's such a light and airy room (even if the food is not).

One of the security guards found this Superman towel cape for Cooper.

 "So now people can tell I'm Superman from the front an from the back."  Indeed.

We took a special field trip with the Baker students (six of the ten of them anyway).

This is in the village of Sproxton, about fifteen minutes from Harlaxton.  And it's the place where the Baker chapel used to live before we moved it to Baldwin City.