Notes from our two days visiting Paris, and the flight home.

Friday

• We took the metro from Gossainville to the city, about a half hour ride on an impressive, easy to use system.
• We spent all morning at the Louvre - very impressive, but a bit wearying because of the vast scope.
• We spent all afternoon at the Orsay, where we took in the Barnes Exhibit, on tour for the first time in history.  As impressive as this extensive collection of impressionist paintings is, it was overshadowed in Rachael's viewpoint by the shock of realizing that she was standing next to Paul and Linda McCartney!
• It poured all day - a good day for museum hopping, and left us feeling very grateful for the timing.  It has been a couple of weeks since we were rained out in Provence.  But we also got quite wet, jumping from awning to overhang trying not to drown.  By the end of the day we were both quite soggy.
• We had a good dinner at a Greek café in the market area near Saint Denis station.

Saturday

The rains broke.  The day began overcast and ended up sunny and beautiful - a fine fall day for sightseeing and shopping, but somewhat chilly.  Highlights included:

• St Chapelle  church
• Notre Dame cathedral
• the Eiffel Tower
• lunch at a creperie
• Walking along the west bank from Saint Denis to the Eiffel Tower, then back again on the other side of the river along the Champs Elysee until dusk, when we took a subway south to the Hotel de Ville area for a restaurant dinner.

Sunday.  Leaving

We awoke very early and set off for the airport in a very cold pre-dawn, leaving our room about 6:45.  We wanted to be sure to allow abundant time for our flight, which was scheduled to depart at 10:20.  The roads around DeGaulle are labyrinthine, confusing and even at this early hour beginning to bear significant traffic.

(Ed: one final surprising omission from the journal - the story I've probably told more times than any other from this tour.  On the ride to the airport we came to a large, six spoked traffic circle, completely unsigned.  Two of the spokes looked plausible for the route to the airport, but it would just be a guess.  We looped the circle twice looking for a sign we might be missing in the dim pre-dawn light, without success.  About when we resigned ourselves to just guess and hope we were lucky, knowing that if we guessed wrong we might miss our flight, a semi truck stopped in the middle of the circle, leaned out his window, and gave us directions.  We both felt like this is something that would never happen back home, and was evidence of how bike centric France is - either the driver is a biker himself, or his mother is).

All of our arrangement at the airport went smoothly - no bike problems, an efficient boxing job - but with all of the necessary encounters for security, customs, baggage checking and so on we still ended up with less than an hour to spare - but safely on board on our return flight from our first Tour de France.  Already though, I feel wistful for the experiences of the last six weeks, and anxious to return.  We have become awfully spoiled.

Heart

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