les vacances de Toussaint

I went to catholic school for only 8 years, so I had to do some Googling to confirm that All Saints Day falls on November 1st.  The French, on the other hand, are good Catholics from way back, and they approach the Toussaint with appropriate reverence.  French school children, which by some glorious oversight includes military officers studying at the Ecole de Guerre, are given a week's vacation, while the rest of the devout masses make do with a 48-hour bank holiday.  Taking advantage of this time off I left Paris a week ago, riding the train under the English Channel to London.  An old friend, Scott, was in town on a ten-day training exercise with his Marine Corps Reserve unit.  Scott owns a moving company in Minnesota, where he lives with his wife Tami and their four kids.  He puts in long days running his business before heading home to play hockey and crunch pizza with his boys under the watchful eye of their precocious older sister, Reagan.  Reagan is six, and she does not hesitate to point out to dad areas where he has room for improvement.  When Scott forgot to hide the eggs for an early morning practice Easter egg hunt (in October, don't ask) Reagan was beside herself.  Days later, as Scott was reading her a bedtime story, Reagan said: "Dad, you forgot to hide the eggs.  How could you forget to hide the eggs?  Here's what you need to do: After you put me to bed go hide the eggs.  Do it tonight and you won't forget in the morning."  Hard to argue with that. 


In London we stayed at the Victory Services Club in Marble Arch. The VSC was founded in 1907 as a club for retired military personnel, expanding it's charter in 1970 to include active duty service members and their families.  Foreign military of all ranks are also welcome.  Scott had stayed there before and knew it to be a decent hotel at an affordable price - perhaps the only one in London.  Repairing to the bar on Friday night we met Chris, a Canadian Army medic recently wounded in Afghanistan.  As Scott and I were ordering drinks Chris walked up and asked: 


"You guys American?  You just get back?"  As if everyone in London had just arrived from Afghanistan.
"Yeah, we're American," I said, "but neither of us has been deployed for a long time."


Chris was jumpy, and he called us "sir" no less than 20 times in our five-minute conversation.  He told us how he was "clipped" in Kunar, rushing across an area that had not been checked for IEDs to give medical treatment to a wounded soldier.   An IED exploded.  He was rescued by an American Special Forces team and he swore he'd buy drinks for the first Americans he met after being transferred out of Afghanistan for convalescence.  His injuries resulted in a medical discharge from the army, though the look in his eyes made me think that for Chris the war is far from over. 


Scott and I walked around London for two days, going nowhere in particular. On Saturday morning we set out from Marble Arch, through Hype Park, down past the Wellington Arch and Buckingham Palace, through St James' Park and across Westminster Bridge.  Turning left, we passed the London Eye Ferris wheel, re-crossed the Thames via Hungerford Bridge, and made our way up to Leicester Square, stopping on the way to bring aboard a plate of fish 'n chips.  Central London was buzzing and the weather was unseasonably warm and sunny (for any season in London).  We found a pub in Covent Garden, had a pint (or was it two?), and then hoofed it back toward the hotel down Oxford Street.  Fighting the crowds of late afternoon shoppers and tourists we turned onto Edgware Road, passing the hookah bars and shawarma stands that dominate the neighborhood from Hyde Park up to Marylebone Road. 

Horse at Water, Marble Arch, London 

Statue of Achilles, Hyde Park.
Made from melted down canon captured in battle.

This guy is making bubbles to entertain the kids.
 His shirt says: "I am only two girls short of a threesome."

On Sunday morning we got up early to watch the final match of the Rugby World Cup. The match was a classic David v. Goliath, with an overachieving French team facing the vaunted All Blacks of New Zealand on their home turf in Auckland.   We watched the match at the Carpenter's Arms, a pub in Marble Arch managed by a Kiwi.  At 9:00am the pub was full of enthusiastic rugby fans decked out in All Blacks gear.  I neglected to mention to the crowd that I live in Paris and was rooting for the French.  The French put on a gutsy performance but lost 8-7. 

On Monday morning I went for a run in Hyde Park and then took the train to Gatwick Airport for a flight to Rome.  I had planned (poorly) to go to Iceland for a few days of trekking.  Apparently late October is not a good time for trekking in Iceland.  As we say in Naval Aviation, if you're flexible you're too rigid.  You have to be fluid.  So, with graceful fluidity, I went to Rome instead of Reykjavik.


Seeing the sights of Rome I had the same reaction as when I first saw video footage of killer whales beaching themselves to catch seal pups in Patagoina: this should be on the news!!  It is a naïve and dated observation; naïve because many millions of people are already aware that Rome is extremely cool, and dated because the "news" doesn't exist anymore, at least not the way it did when I first watched that VHS tape from David Attenborough's The Trials of Life in 1992.  


Rome, whoa...

We meet again, old friend. 

Shield of the Roman Legion?  Nah, sewer lid.