I slept in a bit this morning, but not as much as I'd have preferred. I had to take care of some business, the rental of a road bike. With the help of the intarwebz and a lovely front desk attendant named Christina, I found The Bicycle Doctor, a quick cab ride from the hotel. Given the dual challenges of my not having removed and brought along my own pedals (the kind of cleat I have on my shoes is a bit out of fashion these days, except on some types of mountain bike), and most bike shops that do rentals being outside the actual city of Denver (and me without a car), this was my only option, and I'd thought I'd have to rent a hybrid. It worked out that they had just finished building a couple of Legato 3.0 bikes this morning, and they're just about as close as hybrids get to road bikes, narrow tires and all. After raising the seat a bit, one of them was nearly a perfect fit. So I rode the city bus back to my hotel (Denver's buses have those cool bike racks on their fronts, something Ithaca has had for many years and I wish New York City would adopt as well, but that'll likely never happen).

On the recommendation of the Westin's concierge, after wandering the Tabor Center and Larimer Square areas for a little while, I stopped by Osteria Marco for a late lunch. The gnocco frito (fried cheese crisps) were light and rich, and the Classic Italian panini (sopressata, salami, peperonata, and robiola) was outstanding. A mellow Montepulciano accompanied them brilliantly. I also got through another chunk of "Limitations," the Scott Turow novel. On the way back I picked up a small piece of Oreo fudge from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, and a Chai latte from the Starbucks in the Westin's lobby.

It snowed a bit during the day, but more to the point it started getting rather cold and windy. A few of the other Cornellians in town and I had seriously contemplated a trip via light rail out to the Denver University campus to watch a Denver vs. Quinnipiac men's lacrosse game at 7:30, but I decided tonight wasn't a good night for sitting outdoors. If it had been Cornell in a playoff game or something, that would be another matter, but with tomorrow's bike ride, I didn't really feel like risking my health. Instead I took it easy in the hotel, and wandered up the 16th Street Mall for dinner when the time came.

The 16th Street Mall is a pedestrian commercial district, much like the Ithaca Commons, but a great deal longer and apparently somewhat more successful in meeting its aims. All lit up:



Upon my check-in yesterday, the man at the front desk had recommended Rock Bottom Brewery to me for local flavor, but when I arrived tonight there was a considerable wait. So I wandered a little further, and on a side street I found Los Cabos II, a Peruvian restaurant of some local repute. The mixed seafood ceviche special I had was extraordinary, and just the right level of spicy/piquant for my taste (and for my stomach, which at this point in my life gets picky about such things after a certain hour of the day). The stew-style beef main course I had was decent enough, though a little disappointing given that I'd hoped to have pollo a la brasa (one of my favorite foods since I discovered Flor de Mayo in my old neighborhood seven years ago), but their rotisserie machine was on the fritz. I finished "Limitations" at about the same time I finished dinner; it's a nice, light read, with some fun twists, but not up to Turow's highest standards.

I'm going to try to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, because Alicia from TNT is picking me up at 8am. I hope it's a little warmer tomorrow morning than they expect it to be... I brought my cold weather riding gear with me, but it's only effective to a point. Between the cold and the altitude, I really hope I don't embarrass myself and the New York City TNT chapter on the ride!

...I'm rather proud of myself. I've got some game where the cooking thing is concerned (and we all know about my pecan pie), but there are some things I've just never attempted. In the meantime, my usual stable of a couple dozen favorite things to cook was seeming stale - and I bother to cook a real meal so rarely these days that this is saying a lot.

So when plans to get drunk over champagne with my friend Brandyne on Saturday for her birthday somehow morphed into my offering to cook dinner, I decided it was time to try something new. And with the help of a friend who really knows his way around the kitchen, I pulled it off rather nicely, I think.

The menu:

Bottle of chilled Prosecco
Gruyere and aged jack

Char sui pork tenderloin
Forest mushroom risotto
Szechuan green beans
Bottle of Pinot Noir

Brandyne provided the dessert of fresh berries in graham cracker tart crusts with freshly whipped cream. Yum!

I'd always wanted to know how to do a proper risotto, especially since my father taught himself a few years ago. It's not terribly complicated, but it does require some serious patience and an ability to time everything else in the meal properly, so I'm proud of myself for getting it right the first time out of the gate. I would definitely want to bake a pie several hours in advance if I were going to serve it at the end of a meal that included risotto. :-)

The pork was really perfect, which is probably as much a testament to FreshDirect as it is to my cooking. Next time I may try the same recipe with a beef tenderloin, though it's far more expensive for the right cut of cow. The beans also came out well, but I overdid the oyster sauce just a touch.

Leftover risotto made for a decent dinner last night, too, along with some fresh avocado.

We had a nice buffet breakfast at the chateau, then set off for Colleville-sur-Mer to visit the American Cemetery and Memorial above Omaha Beach. It was a spectacularly beautiful day, the only one we've had (or are likely to have) this week, fortunate for our visit to this place. It's overwhelming; over 9,000 American soldiers are buried there, with the names etched on a wall of another 1,500+ who were not found. There is also a beautiful statue called "The Spirit of American Youth Rising From the Waves," and a small chapel. Finally we spent close to an hour in the new visitors' center, reading the gripping and emotional displays, complete with original equipment, letters, films, and audio. It's so new in fact that it had opened for the first time a mere three days before our visit. We were moved beyond words.

From there we drove to Bayeux, a lovely small city with a lot of character. We had lunch at a little place the Michelin guide recommended called La Cassonade; I had a buckwheat pancake with andouille sausage, apples, cream, and pommeau (apple alcohol), and Mark and I split a green salad with smoked salmon, cream, and caramelized onion. Then it was on to yet another cathedral, this one originally built in the 11th century. After seeing the inside, we wandered around it outside, then walked over to the Tapestry Library/Museum, where they have exactly one - count 'em, one - tapestry on exhibit. But it's the Bayeux Tapestry, created in the late 11th century to commemorate (and explain) William the Conqueror's trip to Hastings to depose King Harold after the latter took the English crown that had been promised to William by Edward before his death. The tapestry is 203 feet long, and although the art isn't exactly great, the scope of the thing is rather impressive.

While Mark and Mom went to a cafe to relax for a bit, Dad and I wandered the town a little more to take in minor architectural sites and such, including a beautiful park on the site of Charles DeGaulle's speech to the people of Bayeux only days after the D-Day Invasion began - with a barely noticeable, thoroughly non-descript monument to him in a dark corner of this beautiful park. Dad and I split a great cookie on the way back.

We returned to the chateau, and had what should have been an earlier dinner, but it didn't turn out all that well... Many of the problems were service-related, but many were also with the food, which is ironic given that the well-regarded head chef had returned from his day off, and our meal the previous night had been so wonderful. Mom's veal was tough, then it took forever to get her replacement lamb... the sun kept shining in my eyes, and the waitstaff kept moving the curtain after it had been fixed... the waitress (who looks an awful lot like Scarlett Johansson, by the way) spilled something on the table in front of Mom... the chef forgot the sesame seed topping on the chicken dish Dad and I had (though we didn't figure that out until we saw another table have it served properly), and the chicken wasn't all that good in the first place... and they never could keep straight who was having which dessert. It wasn't disastrous, but it sure wasn't a great meal as we expected. To sum up, I had an asparagus amuse, cold turbot soup, some dorade, the mediocre chicken with red pepper sauce, a tiny goat cheese puree (sort of a yogurt consistency) with raw onions, chives, pepper, and flower petals, and a pistachio biscuit with raspberry for dessert (the highlight of the meal, by far). We also had the same excellent wine as the previous night.

I spent some more time writing, and Mark and I hung out again in the lobby for a while for the wireless, and then it was time for bed.

Another rainy day, and we checked out of the Manoir des Saules, then headed back to the Comfort Hotel for breakfast. They didn't have a large breakfast buffet, but for six euros each, the coffee and pastries certainly sufficed. We also took advantage of their free (if weak) wi-fi for a short while before getting back on the road.

Our first stop was Le Bec-Hellouin to visit an abbey, where rain forced us to leave. Next we drove to Jumeiges, a small town on the Seine that required crossing the river on a small ferry. There we found what's left of a large abbey/cathedral that had been raided as a stone quarry in the early 19th century before a private individual bought it and tried to preserve the remains. Afterward we ate lunch at a local pizza place right across from the ruins; a large salad for all of us, plus very tasty thin-crust personal pizzas with gruyere cheese, mine also topped with chorizo and mushrooms. While we ate, the rain got harder.

The next town was St. Martin de Boscherville, where we visited yet another abbey, St. George - this one not terribly remarkable except for its age, having been built in the 12th and 13th centuries. It was still raining, so while Dad checked out the garden and the other buildings, Mom and Mark and I stopped in at a pub for coffee and tea. When Dad was done we drove straight on to the Caen area, where we were staying at Chateau d'Audrieu, a grand, enormous former private residence. Unfortunately the two-room suite we'd reserved (the only way we could afford to stay there) had only one working shower of two, so we negotiated with the front desk. Mom and Dad stayed where they were, in a suite to themselves; after a brief stay in a room with a double bed and a crappy little couch-like object that couldn't possibly support one of us sleeping, Mark and I ended up finally in a room with two twin beds.

Dinner was supposedly going to be less than perfect because the head chef had the night off, but it was still really quite wonderful. Along with a very fine Marquis d'Estephe Prestige red wine, we had langoustine soup; whipped foie gras with eel, port wine, and green apple foam; a choice of country poultry with asparagus and asparagus sauce, or mullet (a white fish) with roast potatoes (I had the chicken); a cheese course, including an absolutely fantastic sharp gruyere that the waiter called "Gruyere de Carrouges" and claimed was purely local; and a raspberry and white chocolate macaroon followed by a shot of strawberry juice and a basil sorbet.

Mark and I stayed up in the bar area to take advantage of the wi-fi for a while, then went to bed.

We didn't get our wake-up call this morning, and Mom and Dad got theirs late, but we still managed to be ready for breakfast at 8:35 or 8:40 or so (after both Mark and I had hit our heads on the door to the bathroom - which featured a hand-held showerhead, not my favorite way to get clean). Breakfast was a lovely array of fruit, fromage blanc, toasted bread, pastries, a chocolate pot de creme, raspberry preserves, and hams and a fruitcake-type bread of which I tried neither. Sun alternated with rain as we watched from the dining room, but either way it was chilly. We set out for Rouen a short while after breakfast.

The Musee de Beaux Arts was nice, though nothing was really spectacular. Then we wandered around town in a light rain for a few hours, took in a few cathedrals of varying magnitude (including one in which we stumbled upon an organ and trumpet concert), had a nice lunch at a brasserie (I had steak frite), collectively finished up the Friday NY Times crossword puzzle that Mom had been unable to complete on her own, stopped at a cafe for hot chocolate, visited an old plague cemetery, and saw the site where Jean d'Arc was burned at the stake. Rouen's a nice town.

We returned to La Saussaye earlier than we wanted to have dinner, so we hung out in the hotel for a short while, then set out to track down a random restaurant. The first one we tried to find, a few towns away, seems no longer to exist; so we ended up stopping at a Comfort Hotel near Elbeuf that has a dinner special featuring a rather extensive buffet, a main course, a cheese plate, and a dessert buffet with absolutely fantastic chocolate profiteroles. We also had a decent bottle of red wine. I think for the four of us to eat there - and the food was quite good, if not elegant and refined - Dad spent about as much as for one of us to eat at the finer restaurants we've been frequenting. We certainly managed to stuff ourselves, too.

It's worth mentioning that the Manoir des Saules had several bikes available for renting, but the weather was not at all cooperative.

On family vacations when Mark and I were children, and maybe even particularly when we were teenagers, our father was very concerned with punctuality, and he sometimes got pretty upset when we were running late in the morning (which, in fairness, was often). So this morning, when Mark and I were sitting in the lobby of our hotel at 8:37 and wondering why Mom & Dad hadn't yet arrived for breakfast, it was absolutely unprecedented. But we still gave them until 8:45, as they're getting older and deserve a little leeway. When I called their room, they had just woken up - apparently Dad set their alarm for 7:30 in the evening. Whoops! Mark and I enjoyed a quiet breakfast together, during which I predicted they would be fed and ready to go at 10:15. We returned to our room to hang out, and they called, fed and ready to go, at 10:17. Particularly on the first night after the redeye, it would have been nice to have that extra hour or so of sleep, but I won't hold it against them.

First up was a visit to the Louvre. That the Louvre is larger than any other museum you've ever seen, so absurdly large that you won't believe the scale of it, is the kind of statement around which the human brain has difficulty getting itself in the same way it does with "The Grand Canyon is a mile-wide, mile-deep chasm in the desert and you simply won't believe the scale of it," until you see it right in front of you. We split up and spent a decent chunk of Wednesday at the Louvre, and I moved pretty quickly - yet I barely saw 10% of the collection. I would need a week to see everything, and two weeks to do it properly. I did see "Winged Victory" and "Joconde" (Mona Lisa) though, two of the pieces I'd have been annoyed to miss; I also saw most of the German, Flemish, and Dutch paintings and a tiny portion of the enormous, ego-sapping, manhood-robbing avalanche of French paintings. Every few rooms, there would be a student sitting at his or her own canvas, attempting to duplicate (or pay homage to) one of the masterworks on the wall; I took photos where it was allowed.

After a small, mediocre lunch in one of the Louvre's cafes, we went to Les Jardin de Palais Royal, the Academie de Musique (the old opera house), a pillar that Napoleon had stolen and/or built to honor himself, a park called Les Tuilleries, and then after a break for drinks at a cafe in the park, a far smaller museum called L'Orangerie, where we saw some interesting works. Then, a stop at Iglese Madeleine (the Church of Mary Magdelene), and back to the hotel by way of a rather tony street full of shops and boutiques.

Tonight we walked to dinner nearby at Tante Louise (literally, "Aunt Louise"), where we had another lovely bottle of red wine (this one a Pessac-Leognan from Chateau de Rochemorin). I had a pan-fried foie gras and spinach appetizer that was really wonderful, and a roast duck breast entree that was very good, followed by a dessert similar to (but not quite as good as) last night's - rhubarb ravioli with mascarpone ice cream in raspberry juice. After dinner we thought to walk a few blocks out to a very nice part of town we'd passed earlier today to watch the city as it lights up, but we misjudged the timing and would have had to wait another hour to hour and a half before it got dark enough (the sun sets really late in Paris!). So then we took a scenic route home, and my feet were killing me.

Even before dinner, Mark's pedometer claimed that we've walked about 19 miles since arriving in Paris early yesterday morning, and if I doubt its accuracy, I do not doubt the degree of magnitude. We've walked an awful lot, and it's been quite nice out - so Mark and I have both gotten some sunburn. His seems a little worse right now, while I think I've just built up a good base on what I retained from the lacrosse game in Princeton on Saturday. But I will probably try a little harder to remember to put on some sunscreen tomorrow, when it's supposed to be mostly sunny and 81 (today's high was 77). Either way, it'd be kind of funny if I showed up in Ithaca after five days in Florida a slightly more interesting shade of alabaster, yet I came back to New York City from France with a deep beach-type tan. [Ed. note: I came back with a slight tan; too much rain during the second week to sustain any really good color.]

After we returned to the hotel and made our plans for the morning (8:30am for real, this time), I decamped from the room with my laptop to the hotel bar and did some writing over Scotch for a couple of hours as British businessmen got their drink on.

Our flight was on-time, smooth, and uneventful; we even arrived in Paris a half hour early. I sat next to Ede, a woman from northern Arkansas, and behind us Mom sat next to Erin, Ede's daughter, who was on her way to San Sebastian, Spain for a five-week study abroad program. Ede has been in the "constituent relations" department of the University of Arkansas's development office for several years, and was pleased to encounter for the first time someone else who knew what she was talking about.

In any event, she was the best kind of long-flight seatmate; she never had to get up to use the lavatory, and she slept for 80% of the flight. Of course, since she slept with the help of an Ambien, she also slept through her dinner - while trying to eat it. I helped ensure she didn't end up wearing her beverage, and she went right back to sleep.

I didn't sleep at all, because I knew how painful it would be to awaken after only a brief nap. I got some writing done, and watched "Following" via Netflix; it's a brief but clever noir piece from the same writer/director as "Memento." I also watched the in-flight edit of "Dirty Dancing" (which followed "Mrs. Potter," in which I had no interest), and was constantly annoyed by the scenes they'd cut to make it palatable for airline audiences. If you'd never seen it before, you'd have been completely lost. At least the music and dancing are fun.

The cab right into Paris from De Gaulle Airport was long, and made a bit worse by it being morning rush hour, but we arrived at our hotel by 9:30, the Hotel Astor Saint-Honore in the 8th Arrondisement. We were lucky enough to have one of our two rooms ready at that hour of the morning, so we briefly made camp, then enjoyed the hotel's buffet breakfast. We then embarked upon the first day's adventure - we took the Metro to the Trocadero stop, wandered briefly in the vicinity of Le Musee del Hommes, and then caught our first sight of Le Tour de Eiffel. It's really rather tall - and I know that may sound odd coming from a resident of Manhattan, but the Empire State Building is surrounded by others at least half to two thirds as tall, so it doesn't stand out against its environs the way the Eiffel Tower does.

We waited on line for over an hour to ride the elevator up to the first and second landings, and then took in the spectacular view. Unfortunately, to our surprise we discovered there was another wait of at least a half hour for the elevator to the top landing, and after Dad's brief attempt to find a manager, we descended, weary, physically sore, and disappointed. He found a manager at ground level, hoping to get a refund for the difference in price between a top landing ticket and a second landing ticket, but to our pleasant surprise he offered to send us right back up and put us at the front of the line. Mom declined, as she was just too tired, but Dad, Mark and I went back up, and it was really worth it - if for no other reason than not to have to say I went all the way to France and only went halfway up the Eiffel Tower. The view was all that much more spectacular, and we really did get up there relatively quickly.

After sandwiches from a street vendor, we made our way back to the hotel by Metro, only to find out that at 2:30 our second room was still not ready. A brief ten-minute wait, and then Mark and I could finally secure our own space. We napped for a couple of hours, then set out again. This time we braved the crowded, smelly rush hour on the Metro (with two line changes) to the Luxembourg stop, where we visited Le Jardins de Luxembourg, a lovely public park where many native Parisians were relaxing after a day's work. At one point, a gentleman asked me to take pictures of him and his girlfriend, to which I obliged - only to find that he was pulling out a Cartier bag, opening a ring box, and asking her to marry him. I think Mark alertly got more, and better, photos than I did - including with the gentleman's own camera (I probably ruined my chances of getting any truly good photos by trying to get photos with mine at the same time as his). The couple both spoke English, so Mark gave them his Flickr card and offered to send copies of any shots they liked.

We then wandered out the far end of the gardens, to find ourselves in the neighborhood of the Odeon Theatre, not far from where our concierge had made dinner reservations for us, at Le Bastide Odeon. I chose my entree poorly, as the "braised breast of pork" turned out to be basically an undercooked brick of bacon meat. But the artichoke heart and goat cheese appetizer, and the dessert of rhubarb pastry with ricotta ice cream and strawberry syrup, along with the lovely house red wine, made up for it.

A cab ride back to the hotel, past some of the more interesting landmarks we'd be visiting, and we were done for the evening. Mark and I got a good night's sleep to prepare for Day 2.

(By the way, apologies for all the French spelling errors I'm sure to make. It ain't my second language the way it is Mark's...)