More Cathedral and travel!

and 11 hours of sleep never felt so good! Woke up this AM and barely made it to breakfast before they tore it down, Mom ate lots of fruit, I was more American and Bacon and Eggs, we both had tea, Mom had three glasses of Orange Juice!

Then we cabbed to Galleries Lafayette, amazing store, Mom was tempted with some articles that if you live in Paris would be great and 50% off, but Californians don't really need leather coats with more pockets than a bunch of Kagaroos! We didn't look at purses, Mom's repetitive rubbing has worn the suede off her favorite black purse, so we go back on Saturday (oh darn!).

Then on a whim we cabbed to the Gare de Est (there's like five train stations in Paris, tracks going in basic directions, North, East, towards Lyon, you get it) to get the TGV (that's Tres Grandes Vitesse) to Rheims, the cathedral where the Kings of France were crowned; and I think Joan of Arc got involved with something out there too). There's history of a Church there since the 400's, the current building was started in the 1280s or something and has been through its perils too, WW 1 hit the Champagne/Ardenne region very hard and lots of the Church had a toll extracted, they were going to finish the spires at one point but after WW 1 they said no way. It is still one of the largest church Naves in the world and since its built of thick stone it holds temperature well, I could see my breath in there today, it was appreciably cooler than the outside air.

Anyway, we got there and my still camera said that I let the memory card in Paris, so the iPod Nano videos and iPhone shots are all we got. There are two great sets of stained glass windows in the Cathedral, one set that illustrates highlights from the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Kings of France was done by Marc Chagall in 1971 (the colorings in the glass are amazing) and another set shows planting, making, and consumption of the regions beverage, Champagne! The videos are not great but I'm going to try to put them up here, if it doesn't work here in the hotel room tonight I'll find another way to do it later!

Get back on the TGV into Paris, cab back to hotel, Mom and I have a simple dinner of tri-color fusilli ala Alfredo, Mom's tired, I'm planning on the fly, find out that there is an American Catholic Church here and its about a mile away at the most, they have Saturday Masses at 11 and 6:30, so we'll go, between then its purse shopping and probably lunch so we can come back and pack for the train trip to Salzburg via Stuttgart. The little train trip today was a good introduction to the train system since I had some ideas that were not really right, but after 2 embarkations and rides I've got it figured out now!

More later!