Bear Jesus' Pilgrimage

Hi, I'm TXchick, and I don't have a podcast or a blog of my own. But, I've been posting on a certain message board with Venus and Nicole for years, and I volunteered to take our Ursine Savior on my Spring Break trip to Italy and France. (I'm a high school history teacher and my husband and I took 11 students on this trip. I can't remember when this sounded like a good idea, but it must have at some point.)

First stop, Rome.

Well, boys and girls, Rome was not kind to Bear Jesus. It had something to do with a bottle of Absinthe....

This was the night before we were supposed to go to the Vatican....

Let me tell you, it was not pretty. I went to bed long before BJ did, so I don't know details, but he did leave the hotel at some point.

The next morning we were supposed to meet BJ here by this sign to go to the Vatican Museum....

Here are the kids waiting....

And Bear Jesus never showed up. I was not happy, to say the least, and I was also a little worried, but he dragged his doughy ass back to the hotel late that afternoon and crashed for hours.

Here's an interesting bit of sculpture from the Vatican Museum.

And could this be the Pope himself?

Then, it was on to Florence. BJ has a special interest in Renaissance sculpture, as you can imagine! Here he is admiring the replica of Michelangelo's David that stands outside the Ufizzi Gallery in the Palazzo della Signoria.

The real David is housed in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, and they don't allow photography inside, so I had to take a shot of BJ posing with our ticket stub...

That night we took an overnight train from Rome to Paris. Here's a shot from the train...

It wasn't at all glamorous or roomy, but a bear's gotta do what a bear's gotta do, and this bear had to get from Italy to GAY PARIE!!!

The French are known for their cuisine, and BJ loved shopping at the open-air market for fresh produce and other goodies. We were all intrigued by this interesting variety of cauliflower...

And BJ just HAD to try on these fabulous furry boots...(He was actually in one of these boots; he slipped and fell down out of sight just before I snapped the shot.) Don't you love the bottle of wine sitting in the back of the truck?

The highlight of Paris, of course, is the Louvre, and BJ was very excited to get to see all the famous artwork. Here he is admiring the Mona Lisa. It was impossible to get close to it, due to the large number of people in the room. It was the same way last time I was at the Louvre, 22 years ago. You'd think the French could have figured out a better system in that time, but no.

BJ enjoyed his trip to Europe and came home exhausted and needing a few days in "rehab." As soon as the glue dried, I packed him off to California to visit Nicole's sister.

Ciao,
TXchick