Carcassonne

Yesterday was a long day in the car.  We drove to Carcassonne (a fortified city), about 2.5 hours away.  It was cold and windy but worth the drive.  Carcassonne is one of the day trips we'll take this summer with the kids through our business Raison d'Art.  I just read that on the 14th of July (Bastille Day) they do an amazing fireworks show and with lights show the fortified city going up in flames.  We might have to go for that, even though I read there were 700,000 people there last year.

Montauban

We live about 40 minutes from Montauban.  It's not the most beautiful city, but we seem to go there a lot.  When we need to visit the Brico Depot or the big supermarche or our climbing gym.  Yesterday we decided to play tourist in Montauban.  We visited the Natural History Museum and then the Ingres Museum.

The Natural History Museum was pretty funny.  Rooms full of stuffed animals...that was it.

Then we went to the Ingres Museum.  We've been before, but thought Eric would enjoy it...and he did.

A great afternoon.

Our first guest and super bugs

Eric getting a shot of Cordes Sur Ciel

On the 21st our good friend Eric came to visit.  He has never been to France before and he turned 40 on the 23rd.  The first 2 days were great.  We visited villages, ate great food and drank some good wine.  Then on the 23rd we went to a holiday party and it's been downhill from there.  Come to find out about 3 people at the party had been sick, but not too sick (in their minds) to miss a good party.  The next day 4 people were in bed sick.  The day after Bruce got sick.  But it wasn't too bad.  The day after that Eric got sick and it was bad.  Before his visit (actually 2 weeks before) he had bronchitis and this sickness went right to his chest.  After 3 days he went to the Dr. and got put on steroids, antibiotics, etc.  But he continued to get worse.  Bruce was only sick for a few days, nothing big.  But then I got sick and it hit me hard.  I was in bed for 3 days.  My head hurt, my body ached and I couldn't eat.  Eric was still bad and getting worse.

New Years Eve our neighbors had a great party.  Eric and I stayed home.  Bruce went to the party without me.  First time we spent New Years apart in 14 years.

I finally starting feeling better a few days ago.  Still have a nasty deep cough but other than that I'm ok.  Eric on the other hand isn't well.  We took him back to the Dr. yesterday and he has pneumonia.  Not fun when you are on vacation.  He now has more powerful steroids, a machine that he has to put this medicine in and put a mask over his face and breath in the stuff.  Today he actually feels tons better.  But he leaves on Monday.  We are heading out today, after being stuck here in the house for days.

The Dr. told us that the bugs here in France are different from the U.S. and that our bodies just don't have the antibodies to fight them, so we get it worse than people who live here.  I thought working with kids for 10 years had made me pretty resistant to stuff, but now I'm starting all over again.  Hopefully this will be the last sickness for us for a while.

Walking up to the top of Cordes

Eric taking a picture of us...and holding the 3 dogs

me and my big smurf hands