A sad day today. We had to take Paul back to the airport. His week here went really fast and we packed a lot of sightseeing into it. This week was much more like being on a sightseeing vacation than the previous weeks have been. Instead of having the flexibility to take things slowly, since he was only here for a few days we kept up a pretty frantic pace. Which was fun, but now we are exhausted. We got up early to get him to the airport. This time, since it is a very long ride out to the airport, we didn’t go the entire way with him, but just helped him find the right train and said good bye at the station in Paris. Charles de Gaulle airport is quite a ways outside Paris and it takes about 90 minutes one way to get there. Since he can find a gate by himself and check in, we thought it was fine to get him on the train and go back to the apartment. Then we went back to bed.
In fact, Katie came down with a small cold and wanted to spend the entire day resting, so I let her download a movie on itunes and we spent the day in the apartment. I caught up on some work, touched base with my students working hard back in the lab and caught up on my blogging. (Well not quite caught up, but made some good progress). It was a very lazy day, but it was just what we needed. I’ve been using a pedometer to gauge how far we walk each day, and over a five day period with Paul here we walked 7.5 miles, 7 miles, 5 miles, 5 miles, 7 miles. No wonder we are exhausted.
Paul had a good flight home and got back to the house around 7pm East Coast time, or about 1 am here in Paris. Trixie was very happy to see him. I wonder if Trixie will be excited or confused when we return after 2.5 months? I wonder how dogs process that kind of absence and what she thinks happened to us. Sometimes she can hear our voices coming over Skype when we talk to Paul and he says that she looks confused and cocks her head looking around for us. Poor girl.
Paul was able to haul back a lot of stuff that we don’t need any more, like our winter coats, hats and gloves that we used in Stockholm, some souvenirs, and some extra clothes. We bought some nice prints of Paris in the Montmarte section and sent those home with him too. Hopefully they made it without being crushed.
Katie and I now have a few days to rest and relax before the whirlwind of energy that we call my mother flies into town. We are going to do a few small museums here, enjoy Easter and go to Amsterdam for a day next week. Paul has been joking with me about Amsterdam claiming that he is going to log on and Katie’s blog is going to read “Duuuude, you’ve got to go to Amsterdam!!!” But, I promise to keep her away from the drug scene and focus on the boring history stuff!
Great exercise!
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