Daylight Savings Time started in France today. We start later (and end earlier) than the US, which is kindof nice. For a couple of weeks, we were an hour closer to everyone’s timezones back home. Now, we’re back to a six hour difference from the east coast of the US.
Time zones in Europe are pretty wild. Everybody wants to be in the same zone, so Central European Time is huge. There are large swaths of it that are actually west of the prime meridien and are still UTC+1 (I’m looking at you, Spain). Poor Portugal is fully west of the UK, so they have no choice.
(Look at that little bit of green on the left side of the map)
I mean, I get it. Where do you draw a line through France or Spain? Whole wars have been fought over lines through France and Spain. The upshot of it, though, is that we’re so far west in our time zone that it was light out past 8pm tonight. As one of those people who gets incredibly depressed when it goes dark before 4pm back in Boston, I’m not complaining… exactly.
I did promise to dye Lilian’s hair tonight and then almost run out of time because I thought it was about two hours earlier than it actually was. It will also be dark out when we all get up tomorrow.
But, nope, not complaining.
Definitely not complaining.
It was supposed to be awful weather all weekend. It rained yesterday, but today was surprisingly sunny, if a bit cold (about 40-45 freedom degrees). It’s kindof funny to have your plans turned upside down by sunshine. We were going to hit up a museum, but it didn’t feel right.
Instead, we took a half hour walk over to the Parc Sergent Blandan. It’s not as shmancy as the Tête d’Or, but it does have the advantage of being walking distance away.
(Any distance is technically walking distance if you have decent shoes and enough free time. But an hour each way is more of a time commitment than we were into).
Parc Blandan is the site of some old military barracks. It’s a relatively new park (about 13 years old). It’s nicely laid out, but the trees are all fairly young. Honestly, not a bad place to wander around on a day that felt much warmer when you were in the sun.
It has a couple of epic slides, so if you have kids and come to visit, please remind me to take you for a visit. I think they’re a couple of stories tall, and there are all sorts of fun ways to get up to them.Lilian gets annoyed by how many kids try to climb up the actual slides backwards, but she also forgets she’s an angsty teen when we can see them. “Mom, can I go down the slides? Can I, mom?”
We brought a blanket and set ourselves up in the sun. Kristian wandered around with Lumi, but I was in lizard mode. I was all bundled up with a vest and a knit hat on, but with my face turned up towards the sun like a flower. Lilian even let me use her like a pillow! (for at least a little bit of time)
It’s going to hit the 70s next weekend, so ask me in a couple of weeks if I still feel like being a lizard. ?
