the rain in spain falls mainly on...us

greetings from Spain! today is the first sunny day in about a week. apparently the weather in Spain in September consists of rain, rain, and more rain. honestly, i don´t know why they have a weatherman on TV because the whole country is covered with the raincloud pictures. it´s so rainy here that there are entire shops devoted to the selling of umbrellas. it´s interesting to think that a family´s livelihood can be supported by selling umbrellas. who´d have though? but i digress....

to back up a bit, we wrapped up our time in paris with a tiny bit of sightseeing. i was starting to feel like meg ryan in the movie "French Kiss" where the eiffel tower keeps escaping her. thankfully, after our final hospital visit, we took the metro towards the city. as we got off, an accordian guy was playing "la vie en rose". i´m sure Parisian´s think it´s cheesy, but i finally felt like we were in paris. we walked in the direction of the seine river towards les invalides and voila! there it was - the eiffel tower. paris is such a great walking city. we walked and got lost and we didn´t care. we actually didn´t have a map of the city but relied instead on maps above metro stops. we stopped at a cafe and drank amazing coffee and ordered a whole plate of cheese. we people watched. and on part of our stroll we saw the security guard of a department store wrestle with an old lady who was trying to steal a shirt. surprisingly, the old lady won. ahhh paris!

the next day we headed to the paris ´burbs and picked up our car. jonathan was very excited about all of the features and gizmos. i was just glad that we had a place to stash our stuff. jonathan wanted to splurge and rent the GPS, but being technologically averse, i wanted to use maps. jonathan really wanted the GPS. thank goodness i caved. that thing paid for itself in the first 10 minutes of our driving. i´ve never driven in europe before. it´s tricky. there are roundabouts like nobody´s business. none of the streets have names in places that are visible to anyone whizzing by in a car. and if you can find a street sign on the side of a building, it´s too small to read. so jonathan was right - the GPS is amazing. i think we would both agree that the GPS may have preemptively saved our marriage. i can sit and enjoy the view, and jonathan can drive until the GPS tells him to do something. the GPS came with many different language options so we decided to make her a british woman. we named her penny. penny has been invaluable. sometimes penny gives us directions too late, but it´s ok because we can get mad at penny and then she recalculates our route. and directions sound so much more pleasant with a british accent. i have a picture of jonathan giving penny a kiss. don´t worry, i´m not jealous or anything....

so with our car and penny we were on our way to Beynac, a tiny French medieval town in the Dordogne region of France. we arrived at our quaint hotel a bit late for dinner, but the lovely hotel owners set up a private table for us by candlelight in the salon. it was very romantic. we had a great dinner and a great nights sleep in our twin beds. it was heavenly.

the next morning, we hiked to the chateau in Beynac that sits at the top of the town (view from the chateau in the picture above). it was awesome. apparently this was the chateau that they used for the movie "Joan of Arc". being at the chateau and church was really awesome for me being the art history buff. although i´ve never studied these buildings in particular, it gave me an idea of what life was like in a medieval town. very cool. i highly recommend visiting this little town or other towns in the region. there were things to see, places to walk, many other quaint towns nearby, and the river provided for scenic boat rides. we were sad to leave this little gem, but excited to head to Spain - the country of my people!!