Scanning the web for the upcoming trip, here’s what I found…

awesome.

So two sites predict rain on Tuesday, one says “sunny.” One site says rain the entire time, one says rain on Sunday only, one says rain on Tuesday only. ARGH…

Hurrying up the stairs as it closed in a few hours, I was immediately stopped by a nervous man. After I stopped his Swiss-German explanation mid-way, he said “oh, please hold your purse at your elbow.”

“Should I check it?” I say.

“No, no, just hold it on your elbow instead of your shoulder.”

Odd instructions as it’s a small hobo purse, but absolutely.

About 5 minutes later, a concerned woman stopped me.

“Excuse me, but could you hold your purse in your hand, instead of your elbow?”

Ten minutes later…

“Excuse me, but could you keep your elbows in?”

Twenty minutes later…

“Could you not swing your umbrella?”

Finally, as I walked down the stairs towards the modern collection (my elbows in, my purse held in my hands, my umbrella safely put away), a guard glares at me. He takes in my elbows, my correct purse position, my fearful expression and finally looks down at my boots clanking on the wood stairs.

“SHHH!”

Eating lunch in the Louvre

Favorite things in the city of lights…

• Sugared lemon crepes
• Whipped cream crepes
• Buttered crepes
• People assuming that I could only speak English (no, really, I liked this)
• A man puking on the sidewalk without breaking stride while climbing up a huge hill in an, umm, interesting area
• Cezanne
• Monet
• Degas
• The scam where people pretend to find a “gold” ring on the sidewalk in front of you and then try to give it to you (apparently, Tony looks like their kinda guy)
• Tony’s umbrella exploding in front of the Arc de Triomphe (as in *literally* every piece of his umbrella separated and jumped in front of the insane traffic roundabout — I don’t think it could handle the shock either)
• Shoes
• Marais neighborhood
• Macaroons

Eiffel Tower at night

• Fixed menus (onion soup, farm chicken, tarte)
• Tourist traps
• Lines (actually, we skipped them all, but still…)
• Traveling via plane (yes, we were advised to take the train….)
• Latin Quarter restaurants (sorry!!)
• The price of macaroons (kid you not…. 3 euros for each little morsel)

Either way, we survived through a week of Italian driving to see Florence, Rome, Pisa and Cinque Terre… all in seven days and two major traffic jams.

(You might guess from the pictures, but yes, it rained. A lot.)

The ladies start their pilgrimage down the mountain.

How do we spend our weekends in Switzerland? If Tony won “paper, rock, scissors,” we would visit a cow-related festival every weekend. Fortunately, we’ve only dedicated one to our bovine peeps.

Thus, this last weekend was the overload of all things cow.

Saturday was spent in Saint Cergue, Switzerland watching hundreds (maybe thousands?) of cows descend from the Jura mountains to the lower level pastures. Most wore headdresses of flowers – some wore pine trees decorated in crepe paper. Most looked thoroughly disgruntled and were shaking their heads frantically to dislodge them.

Sunday, the ladies tangled. Martigny, Switzerland is famous for their cow fights. We paid 15 francs and crowded into the standing area only.

Umm, yep, Tony refers to cows as “the ladies.”

The oddest moment of the trip happened when I saw a man up ahead, leading two mules and carrying something around his neck. As he came closer, it was clearly a dead animal — namely a chamoix (small goat-type creature).

About 10 minutes later, we saw a younger 20-something carrying a dead animal in a plastic bag. It was his son and he was carrying a marmot. Of course.

Hmm… So I do tilt my head when I take pictures. Ignore the 20 degree angle. I think it adds character.

Right now, I’m holding onto my cell phone and watching the minutes tick by (yeah, it’s digital time, but same concept).

I fully expect my parents or significant other to call me in minutes to say that checking six pieces of luggage was not a win. The airline said “nuh, uh” and my parents are heading back to their hometown with four big bags and no solution of how to deliver them overseas.

It sounds like we waited until the last minute to figure this out, but we didn’t. Between the two of us we made countless calls to all of the international customer service counters to see if we’d get the same response. We took the majority answer, which was up to 10 bags could be checked for excessive baggage fees.

Crossing my fingers…