Jen has a fun travel game you can play on your next visit to Europe. Just as we used to play punch buggy with VW Beetles back when we were kids, Jen likes to play the same version, except you punch when you spot the trademark Burberry plaid.

Springtime in Paris and the scarves and hats and coats are everywhere.

Grab a pal and see who can spot the Burberry in this fun photo on Des Champs Elysees. If you can spot it before your friend, smack ‘em on the arm!

This game would be equally fun to play in Vancouver walking down Robson St. However you may need to substitute fake LV and CC for the smackings.

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End of March.

Weather is a little unpredictable, sure. But the crowds aren’t. They’re no.where.

Today it was sunny, showering, cloudy and about 13 degrees. This is a cafe across the square from the chateau in Blois. It’s written up in many guidebooks.

This was us at lunch today.

Same thing happened at Chambord. I should not have been able to take 15 photos like this with nobody cluttering my view of the chateau. This picture was taken at 4 in the afternoon. Personne is in it. Couldnt do that in August.

Come to France in the spring - c’est magnifique!

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Jen and I fell in love with Rob and Big when trapped inside our hotel room in Cuba. We were pregnant, not drinking and not smoking, so, there we were in Cuba, watching MTV. It was a Rob and Big Marathon, we saw about 10 episodes in a row. We were hooked.

To understand what we did today, you need to watch what Rob and Big did earlier this season.

So, imagine our surprise while trucking along the A13 in Normandy today when Enrique blasts on Radio NRJ! I grab the camera, flip on the video and the whole family breaks it down Rob and Big style.

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There is a Starbucks inside the walls of the Forbidden City. Nothing is sacred. So I shouldnt be surprised, in the least, to the make the gauntlet hike to the top of Mont St Michel and be bombarded with ticky tacky tourist trap shops all the way.

Mont St Michel is a medieval masterpiece, and if you didnt know that, you’d just have to visit one of the dozen shops offering to sell you armor, swords and chess pieces of the day. Heck, they’ll even sell you a Knights of the Round Table rotating centrepiece, or action figures from Pirates of the Caribbean or Lord of the Rings.

According to Rick Steves, we shouldnt be too disappointed by the tackiness of the Grande Rue. He warns in his book, France 2008, the Mont is “home to a single, grotesquely touristy street.”

In other words, it’s just like Gastown. A beautiful, classic, heritage site taken over by the fine purveyors of tee shirts, tea towels and anything with an “I was there” marking.

Okay, that’s fine and dandy but E3,70 for a can of Coke? That’s about C$6. That’s about ridiculous.

Jen and I survived the run, and made it to the abby at the top. 10 minutes late. Sure, it’s open til 6, but the last group is let in at 5. We saw a back door from the gift shop with people trailing in from the tour, so we thought we’d do it in reverse. We made it about halfway through, when a woman made some comment to Jen.

She doesnt speak french, I heard her make english comments to someone else along the lines of “go ahead, I’m coming back.” I thought it was a tour, Jen thought it was something else. So we continued along for another few minutes until we reached a locked door. Uh-oh.

The church is closing, that woman was sweeping out the dregs, and we just passed her. We hustled a couple of dark, stone chambers ahead and found .. another locked door.

We were trapped. In a stone abby, that just 2 centuries ago was used as a prison. Sure, Michael, it may not be Sona or Fox River, but let’s see you get out of this one. With a baby. And no food. And no phone.

Thankfully we didnt need to scream, the woman was just a few steps ahead and heard us fiddling with the locked door. She opened it, scolded us, and we hustled our way back to the beret shops, where we belonged.

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Quebec City is celebrating its 400th anniversary this year. The commercials all over tv should be enough to remind you by now.

Jen and I got the message, and went to the place where Quebec City really got it’s roots - Honfleur, France.

It was from this harbour that Samuel de Champlain made his many voyages across the Atlantic to found the posts that became Quebec City.

Now I have never been to Quebec City. It’s a place I want to visit terribly, but I got a pretty decent second place. Almost 400 years to.the.day that Champlain returned to this habour, Jen and I stood at the gatehouse of the Le Vieux Bassin and wished a bonne fetes a Quebec.

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Not the movie. Not the awards. The beach. (France, not Florida) Maybe you’ve seen the movie, maybe you’ll watch the awards next week, but the Juno you should really care about is the beach.

A beach in Normandy which Canadian boys stormed on June 6, 1944 as a part of D-Day.

I’m not a war guy, I don’t stay up late watching cgi recreations of WW2 naval battles on History Channel. I couldnt tell you the difference between guns and planes and battalions and such. I just know I hate war. I think it’s stupid, it’s ignorant and pointless.

But go to Juno Beach, and you get an idea of why the boys came here. The depression was knocking the stink out of the Canadian economy. Incomes had dropped by more than 50%, unemployment had doubled.

When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Canada declared war on Germany within months and thousands of Canadians saw a way out of the hell at home, by going to a hell overseas with the chance to be a hero.

The beach is tiny. Maybe 20 yards before the first row of German bunkers. Those were backed by tunnels, trenches and barbed wire. The troop transports would land, the doors would drop open and the boys had orders to “run like a bat out of hell and shoot anything that moved.”

The most impressive part of the centre, is the sculpture outside. It has waves of motion to remind you of the sea, all of the soldiers are linked together, supporting each other, each leaning into the action in eager defense and aggression.

It wasn’t as sad as I thought it would be. But the Juno Beach Centre is there to explain what and why, and a ilttle bit of the who. One small section features a wall with the scrolling names of the more than 15 000 who lost their lives. It takes more than 12 hours to scroll through each and every one of them.

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To celebrate our engagement on Monday night, Jen and I opted for a romantic dinner in.

A couple of boxes of takeout from Mezzo di Pasta and a bottle of Tavel from the marche.

Again, we’re not pairing this properly, but Jen was so excited to see this half bottle on the shelf, she dropped it (must have been the extra weight from that engagement ring;). It didnt break, we bought it.

This wine is only available in the spring and is ripe for the hot Mediterranean days to sip on a patio with a bucket of mussels. It’s about +2 and raining in Paris and we’re having bolognese pasta. So the pairing is off - way off. But this is Paris, and Jen and I got engaged today, and Zacharie is sleeping. All that makes a perfect pairing.

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Jen and I often joke about how “you’re given what you can handle” when it comes to babies. Based on the behaviour of our son, we can’t handle much. He’s a saint, an angel a godsend and any other holy analogy you want to make.

All parents think their kids are perfect - ours is.

Witness the largest outbreak in 4 1/2 hours on a plane yesterday.

His first time flying and he was totally happy to sit in our lap, play with the tv screen and read books. He had a couple of killer naps, some snacks and flirted with the flight attendants and grammas on the plane.

Tomorrow night it’s round 2 - the red eye to Paris. The biggest struggle shouldnt be with Z on the plane, it will be getting our stroller, carseat, 2 knapsacks and 2 suitcases up and down the stairs and through the Paris Metro turnstiles.

Throw in a train change and a 4 block walk to the hotel, and we should be good an exhausted come 10a Monday - but you know we’ll have enough energy come the afternoon to head back out and up to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

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That little button at the top of my Google Reader is fulfilling.

Mark All As Read.

I love clicking it. Wiping the slate clean and seeing the 1000+ stories in my roll shrink down to zero.

Sometimes I feel empty when my queue gets to zero. As if there is nothing left to know. There is nothing new. But usually it’s a sense of accomplishment to know I have bellied up to the internet buffet and beat it. I ate all I could and still had room for more.

Well, for the next 2 weeks, I am on vacation. I’m going on an information diet.

Yes, I’m carrying a MacBook with me 1/3 of the way around the world, but that’s more for something to do while we’re shut in hotels at 730p with a sleeping baby.

I’ve loaded it with 2 seasons of Dexter and will have many hours to manipulate our daily photos and videos into fun memories.

But yes, I have also brought it to stay connected. To try and leap on to some open WiFi connections around Nantes, or St Malo or Honfleur.

Instead of hopping on and checking my reader and scrolling through the updates, I will hit one button.

Mark All As Read.

Okay, and maybe another button. Upload to Flickr.

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It’s flight day.

Easter Weekend with Nana and Gidu in Onterrible, and then 2 weeks en France.

I booked our flights in October and paid extra to secure seats so that we would have the most room possible for Z. This week I double checked our assignments. Out of 4 legs, we only have 1 bulkhead. 3 of the 4 legs are packed full flights.

Samuel L Jackson may have had it with those “mother*** snakes on this mother**** plane!” but he didnt have to deal with a baby.

Z is 10 mos old. He’s just learned to crawl and there is no way in hell he is going to sit still.

We have aisle seats and middle seats, but that 3rd person in our row is going to have fun. So we picked up a Congratulations! You Get to Sit Near Me tshirt to help break the ice with our lucky winner.

We’re lucky he’s so damn cute, maybe they’ll only just kill Jen and I and leave him.

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