Day 171: Travel Writer Claire Meets Paris (with sound!)

As a travel writer, you should not admit when you have never been to Paris. But I am here, and I am loving and learning. Based on the museums I went to today, here is my brief history of France.

In the 1700s, Marie Antoinette and Louis the sixteenth did have not much understanding of poverty. Class issues abounded, and poor people stupidly felt it not practical to eat cake consistently. In 1789, the French Revolution began. During this time, Marie and Louis went into some sort of non self induced cell with their children. They brought some of their furniture, but not all, and so only had one child sized piano. In 1793, they were executed publicly, which sounds very tragic. At some point thereafter, Napoleon took charge as a sort of vague Dictator replacement for the Republic everyone thought they were fighting for in said French Revolution. The whole Napoleon thing didn't work out eventually, which was maybe not very shocking, and they kicked him out and then went back to normal monarchy ruling systems until finally achieving more real Republics in the mid 1850s. At some point thereafter, some wars started, like one involving Prussians, and then several involving the whole world.

Aside from learning the brief history of the country, my 12 hours in Paris have consisted of meeting my brother, Little Tony, in customs with our (Lara let me bring it to France; she is videoless in Bali) New Video Camera, and then suprising our parents, BBop and Lance Williams. They were surprised, for sure. BBop said, specifically: "I don't know whether to cry or have a heart attack." Needless to say (but I will!), neither was a good option. At one point in the day, it began to rain, and we went on a Lance Williams tour of Shakespeare and Company (the bookstore). At another point in the day, we walked past a man who was traveling alone asking a passerby to: "Please take a picture of me, eating." Now, we (Claire) are looking at the twenty US Weeklys BBop brought Claire. (BBop did this, although complaining heavily, because she has not seen Claire in over six months).

In the next several days, you blog viewers will be benefitting from the recent purchase of the new Video Camera, which will *hopefully* ensure that our videos no longer have fatal errors - like no sound, no picture, and or just non existence. I think these ones below should work though. (But of course that means they won't.)

The theme of this set is "Claire" and "Running." In one video she discusses running in hotel rooms, and in the other you can see her actually going on a run with a French person. Lara still thinks Lara has better "form," though.