July 2008. The Eiffel Tower was illuminated in blue to celebrate the French presidency of the EU. This was taken from atop the Arc de Triomphe. You can hear everyone gasp as the lights come on. The photos at the end were taken from Trocadero a couple of nights earlier.

Street performers in Les Halles area of Paris, July 2008. The song is catchy. The police made them leave right after this performance. Can anyone name that tune?

The best breakfast cereal in the world is Chocolate Cruesli.

The slogan in French is "le plaisir croustillant", which is roughly "crunchy pleasure", which in my opinion is not hyperbole. It's not like Cocoa Krispies or those other fake chocolate cereals - it has real pieces of chocolate in it. Just holding the box, you can tell by its weight that this is no ordinary cereal.

And - one of life's great injustices - you can't get it in North America.

I've checked everywhere: dozens of U.S. grocery stores, numerous Google sessions (could only find a Dutch store that will ship it for an arm and a leg), international food markets, Trader Joe's -- I even made my family wait while I ran down the aisles of a Canadian grocery store during a brief visit to Toronto.

I don't get it. It's made by Quaker, which is an American company (owned by PepsiCo). There's got to be a market for it. My family's Cruesli consumption alone could keep a grocery store or two in the black. I even wrote Quaker an empassioned letter. No reply.

So, I have to resort to stockpiling. And begging friends and family to send or bring some from Europe. Two of my brothers were missionaries in France and I would send them $20 to ship me some on occasion. One of the young men from my current ward is a missionary in Paris and sent me a couple of boxes a few months ago. I got some in Barcelona with Wendy. And in Amsterdam and Paris on business trips, much to the confusion of my co-workers.

Ryan and Cheyney surprised me with three whole boxes when they visited us a few weeks ago after their whirlwind tour of Paris, Turkey, Amsterdam, and Greece. I have two boxes left.

Here are a few photos of my relationship with Cruesli au chocolat over the years:

1993 - It's too small to see, but many of the boxes on the top shelf are Cruesli - 

1994 - Elder Tobler shows off his cereal collection - 

2005 - In our crummy but memorable hotel room in Barcelona - 

2008 - In Paris last July - I brought an extra suitcase just for Cruesli. Glad I didn't get stopped by Customs.

When I go to a restaurant, there's a 95% chance that I will order the same thing I ordered last time. And when I went to Paris a couple of months ago at the end of a business trip, the things I wanted to do most were repeats of what I did 15 years ago.

July 20, 2008, was my last day in Paris - I went to church in my old ward, Paris-Lilas. I regretted that I hadn't made it to Versailles or Pere Lachaise, the latter being a large cemetery filled with the famous (and not-so-famous) dead. I decided I could afford a speed tour after church and before my 4pm flight. I had already checked out of the hotel, so I had my luggage with me. Bad idea on cobblestone. I eventually abandoned my suitcase and hid it behind a gravestone.

I scurried to the site of Chopin's grave, snapped a couple of photos, and then followed the crowd to what must be the top attraction at Pere Lachaise: Jim Morrison's grave. It's a boring one (as graves go), but you somehow feel you have to make a stop. 

On the way back to my suitcase, I passed this headstone that caught my eye. Valerio was his name and he died in 1988. The text says,

Il aimait Stendhal, Pavarotti, Gamine, les Pink Floyd
Mais à 29 ans. . .

Stendhal - I looked it up - was the pen name of a French author. And I know Pavarotti and Pink Floyd. "Gamine" is the feminine form of urchin or waif, a mischievous kid, but I'm not sure who it refers to. Wikipedia says it might be Audrey Hepburn but could be several others - or maybe a pet name for his girlfriend.

In any case, I had just run past hundreds of graves with nary a thought of death and I suddenly found myself sad for the passing of this young man. 

It's been 15 years since I was a missionary in Paris. One of my favorite places to wander on a "preparation day" was the grounds of the Pompidou Center. It's a modern art museum that looks like a hamster cage with escalators in colored tubes climbing the sides of the building and overlooking a large square usually filled with musicians, performers, street hawkers, caricature artists, and the like. A few of us sang Christmas carols there once while our tone deaf companions handed out pamphlets.

Elder Mattoon and I were there on a particularly miserable day and came across a musician singing Creedence, Tracy Chapman, and The Beatles. We stayed and listened for a long time - because pagan tunes are not against the rules if you just hear them on the street. I can still hear his accent -- I wa-a-no ha-you-evah seeeeen the rain. When he moved on to Here Comes the Sun, I swear the sun broke through the clouds! (See some photos from that era, including a fire-breathing caveman who let you throw darts at his belly for 10 francs.)

Jump forward 15 years to last month. I passed through the Pompidou square trying desperately to find a grocery store that sold Chocolate Cruesli cereal. (I finally found some and bought six boxes to cram into my luggage. I have 2 1/2 left.) And there he was! Singing Tracy Chapman's Baby, Can I Hold You. His accent and guitar prowess hadn't improved a lick in 15 years, but it was still beautiful music to me.

Here he was 15 years ago -

The Eiffel Tower had a bit of a makeover to celebrate France's six-month presidency of the European Union (starting June 30). I tried to get some slow-shutter photos to catch all the lights, but I didn't have a tripod so there's a bit of a blur. This one is from atop the Arc de Triomphe:

And another from Trocadero with a slower shutter:

It's coolest if you imagine some street performers off to your right dancing to the Jackson Five. I'll have to post some video later.

I used to have a plaster model of this gargoyle from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, but it fell down the stairs and shattered when I was clearing out my desk at the end of my Delta Air Lines career. Seems like that might have been an omen, but I haven't been able to make sense of it. I finally got to see the thing up close last month after waiting in a 2-hour line to climb the cathedral tower. (While in line, I was approached by half a dozen gypsy girls whose gimmick was to ask, "Speak English?" and if you nodded, they'd show you a note written in English asking for money.)

I hadn't noticed before that the gargoyle was female. In the plaster model, you can see the the little hands of whatever is being eaten - they're wrapped around the side of the larger creature's mouth in futile resistance to being consumed.