Smoking is allowed in (parts of) the Frankfurt airport, but not in the Paris airports. Given the French predilection for smoking, this is surpising.

The Frankfurt airport is not well organized, in security screening and especially in boarding — seemingly unorganized and moving people in and out of the boarding area. So much for German efficiency!

an aperitif ("that red drink they're having")

You can't have too much caffeine when you're jet lagged.

it was odd to see a prison in the middle of the city.

€7.50 admission is about the same as the Vancouver Art Gallery, but the two aren't in the same class. The Musée d'Orsay is probably more government subsidized, though.

The gift shop couldn't (and wouldn't) make change, even when C paid with coins instead of bills. In N. America they would get change from elsewhere.

Ché Guevara, who said something to the effect of "Before I was a revolutionay, I was a photographer."

after reassuring the ticket woman that he really did want to pay to see the photography exhibit.

Man and woman do not live by pain au chocolat alone.

At one point, the callee must have asked what he was doing and why he was on the phone, and he said, "I have some foreigners." True, but interesting he'd put it that way since he knew C spoke French. Of course, C doesn't know exactly what the callee asked — it may have been what the noise was in the background. Another interesting thing about one call (hey, nothing stops the foreigner from eavesdropping!) was that it was an elaborate, flowery simultaneous thank you and apology for not visiting the callee. So maybe that stuff C learned about writing flowery letters in French isn't just for bureaucrats.

Even the French people didn't know the word for the potatoes — so we're not the only ones who have problems reading a French menu!

writing postcards to the nipotini (you know who you are!)

Only one sketch artist approached C, and he was surprised at that, since he was a single male.

C dug out his bargaining skills, honed in Mali, and eventually we did get the profiteroles, for a discounted price, though, not just substituted for the set menu desserts.

The waiter got our drinks backwards, assuming the non-alcoholic one went to the woman.

we prefer Roman to Romanesque.

At the entrance to Les Arènes, the ticket seller says, "No, you have to go to Les Arènes to buy those tickets."

C stepped in some lovely "regali di cane" as he calls it (in Italian). There's way more of it in Arles than either Paris or Verona. One of our guidebooks said that the French love their dogs. C can't say that he loves their dogs.

on the Rhone where Van Gogh painted Starry Night and others. Now it's where the cruise barges dock, and it's just down from where the buses stop.

it's not vacation if we don't have to forage for food

The Espace Van Gogh doesn't have any Van Gogh paintings, and neither does the entire city of Arles — he wasn't too popular here at the time.

May Day, aka Labor Day, a holiday here and in much of the world, but not in North America. May Day celebrates the value of the worker. September Labor Day celebrates the value of work. Is it any surprise that North America does not celebrate May Day?

the bar staff in Arles were much friendlier than in Paris, and he replied that it hadn't always been that way, but that the bars were realizing that they should be nicer to tourists. M. Eric of the hotel added that bars have relied more on local patrons than on tourists, so they haven't needed to be particularly nice to tourists.

local characters, including a woman who complained about nobody singing the Provençal anthem, when even she didn't seem to know all of it.

the acrobatic kind of bullfight, the kind with no killing ("the bulls die of old age") where the bullfighters grab ribbons from the bulls' horns.

For C, it was a flashback to Mali, walking on deserted city streets early in the morning to get to the station (in Mali, it was for bush taxis, not the train).

The train we were supposed to get, along with 10-12 others, was listed as "suppressed," which seemed a somehow à propos term given Provence's troubled history vis à vis the Parisian-based government/rulers.

"Who took that flash picture?" — The Great Photographer in the Sky.

The Nice station was not nice.

the nipotini (you know who you are!)

Yesterday people were armed with gelato cones. Today there are masses of moving umbrellas.

The Italian press often refers to Pope Benedict XVI as Ratzinger, his family name, while the U.S. press never does.

The restaurant got a lot more crowded, and noisy, at 9:00 when the Italians (mostly) arrived. Before that, it was mainly tourists, and us.

When the clerk made the reservation, he used a typical Italian method of spelling, using cities whose names start with the appropriate letter: Como, Udine, Livorno, upsilon (not a city, but a Greek letter, since "y" is not an Italian letter).

L felt that she was "channeling Aunt Mary" as she chowed down on the pizza dough bread appetizer. Aunt Mary loved bread...