Touring the Aisne region

Becky, a college friend of mine, came to visit us this week after vacationing in Italy. We enjoyed her visit, and this gave us the chance to see some more things in our region that we weren't familiar with yet.

We started on Wednesday with the ruins of the 13th century Chateau de Coucy, which was destroyed in 1917 by the Germans.

We found some unexpected tourists there.

On Friday we visited a champagne cellar. We asked if we could have the visit in English, and they said no because the English tour was earlier in the day. From that simple question, they decided that our friend was a high school exchange student visiting us to learn how to speak French. (Flattering, I suppose, when you consider that we graduated college together 10 years ago.) We didn't correct them, and it was pretty funny to see how they invented this whole story out of thin air.

Saturday we treated Becky to a Real French Lunch. She helped with the preparations, which started at 9:15 am Saturday morning (not including the strawberry cream cake, which we made the day before). The Real French Lunch's menu included:

before dinner drinks and zucchini cheese garlic bread,
chips and salsa, petits fours
tomato, corn, and tuna salad with vinaigrette
chicken and beef tacos and burritos
green salad
assortment of cheeses
strawberry cream cake, served with champagne from the aforementioned cellar
coffee

Lunch began around 12:15 when the first guests arrived, and was not over until the last guests went home around 9:15 pm!

Frederic encouraged our guests to work on their English by having them read Fox in Socks.

And Benjamin had a great time playing with his cousin Nina, even after she beaned him in the face with her shoe, and he was "not very happy" when she had to go home.

Also seen this week: Benjamin teaches Noah not to bite the hand that feeds him.