The Fogwells in France

Paris is the big dog of European cities. It is huge and has everything - dozens of museums, in tact, original palaces, and famous monuments. Through the luck of history, it has avoided the bombings of war. The entire old city is absent of ugly modern buildings and apartments. The wierd thing is that it seems more like a big theme park than a city. There seem to be more tourists, speaking every kind of language, than Parisians. The monuments are built to move people - even the boat rides on the canals are huge glass enclosed 'people movers', with headphones in each seat where you dial up your language. The prerecorded tour is complete with music. You don't see this kind of stuff in any other city. Lots of cities have boat rides, but old open boats with some local rattling off in 4 poorly spoken languages.

The Louvre museum was odd. They have tourists from all over the world, but all of the displays in the museum are only in French. Lee Ann and the kids lasted about 30 minutes in there. I stayed the afternoon and sorted out an English tour. It was a good tour but covered only a tiny fraction of the museum. They also had CDs you could use in English, but they were limited to only certain selections too.

Surprisingly, the locals in Paris were nice to us. Lee Ann and I were here 15 years ago, and we weren't treated very well. Twice last week, in the subway, people stopped and asked if they could help us! Maybe its because of the kids... The other tourists were friendly too.

Anyway, I kept the typical tourist shots to a minimum - you've seen them all before. Some other shots are pretty, and the rest are just us goofing around.