One of the things that we wanted to do in Paris was to climb the South Tower of Notre Dame to see the “gargoyle viewing platform”, Galerie des Chimères, that is atop a climb of some 380-plus steps. The word gargoyle comes from the French word gargouille which means “throat” or “gullet” and that is exactly what gargoyles do: they function as drainpipes to carry rain from the roof of cathedrals, thereby preventing water damage to the masonry, and not incidentally, frightening away evil spirits while doing so. In architectural parlance, if a gargoyle is purely decorative, in other words,...

As anyone who has been to a Disneyland park knows, the parades are of paramount importance to the kids who stake out places an hour in advance along the parade route, roosting on the curbs and any available surface: benches, garbage cans, parent’s shoulders. Eventually the crowd is 3-4 people deep, and during the parade itself, the spectators are constantly shooed back against the edges by perimeter guards, making it impossible for an adult photographer to get a shot of anything but the heads in front of him unless he wants to risk the wrath of the wee set by...

The day we walked around Paris was boiling hot. The sun beat down and baked the city to a fine simmer and the white dust of the Jardin des Tuileries rose up and coated the trees silver and dusted the tourists. The Garden is 63 acres and was designed by landscape artist, Andre Le Notre in 1664 (he was also responsible for the park at Versailles); it still looks much like his original design. We entered at the end by the Place de la Concorde and walked all the way through to the Louvre. Because it was such a relentlessly...

I can think of much better ways of spending my birthday than 7 hours of nausea and fever in the car, culminating with a bout of stomach flu. Regardless, now we are back and I am oh so glad to be here. Sweden, even with a thick cloud cover and pouring rain, never looked so good as when we crossed the bridge from Denmark and knew we were nearly home. Although maybe it was partly the comparison with eastern Germany where we spent the weekend that helped. We left my brother’s place on Friday and drove to a little town...