Friday, September 27 -  Morning is breaking, we are finally at home

Actually we got home in record time. Our flight left Paris on time at 9:25am (3:25am Easton time). It was smooth, with the most professional crew that we've encountered in a long time.

The happy travelers 

Food on board was plentiful

And we walked in our front door a few minutes before 4pm Easton time. This speedy trip was made possible by our ability to make use of our new Global Entry and TSA Pre-Check status. As we de-planed in Newark, we were among the first at the Global Entry kiosk. Since we had all our baggage with us, we re-entered the domestic flight secure area using TSA Pre-Check, left our shoes on, and moved on to the flight to Baltimore. We were able to catch a 12:20 flight instead of the 4:30. Things moved along on time; our good friend and neighbor Frank was kind enough to meet our van at the Easton airport for the final leg of the trip. Whew! It certainly was an adventure.

Some final observations:
1. First of all, thanks for reading the blog. It was serious commitment, but as it turned out, it was an excellent way to document for lasting memories. I recommend the process. Thanks to my friend Katie for pushing me to take the "Blogging" plunge and for her advice along the way.

2. Would we go back to France in September again? Of course, if I win the lottery, but I will answer that two ways. We'd definitely return to Beaune (Burgundy) in September but probably not Paris. As you can tell from the blog, we avoided most museums and monuments, because they were just too crowded.

3. Another two week trip? We found that we quickly tired of eating in hotel dining rooms and restaurants. It was certainly nice to move into our "own" apartment with kitchen facilities so I could drink coffee in my jammies and we could enjoy casual dinners while watching TV.

4. Speaking of the apartment: there were several things I loved. One was the towel warmer in each of the bathrooms.

I might ask Santa for one of these for Christmas

Another was the little grocery cart that identified one as a "local" in the grocery store.

This was the most colorful one we've had so far.

 

Paris Perfect supplies each apartment with liquid hand soap, body soap, and body lotion that has a fresh fragrance is quite memorable.

I wish I could have taken some home.

 

Apparently pigeons are a problem all over the world. This building tried to discourage the messy little flyers by installing spikes on the window sills and roof lines. I can report that they aren't foolproof.

Ouch!

 

5. I had earlier mentioned that bicycling is a popular means of transportation and touring However, not all trips result in a safe return.

Oh, dear (too much wine, perhaps?)

 

As I bring this blog adventure to a close, I want to again say "merci beaucoup" for checking in each day. I will leave you with the following image and promise to return again.

A bientot!

Thursday, September 25 - Travel Day!

An early call this morning, but we spent the night at the Paris Airport Sheraton hotel, so all we had to do in the morning (at 6am) was scamper down to the lobby, check-out, and take the tram over to the airport. This routine worked very well.  We arrived at the check-in locale at 6:15, and watched while the French employees contracted by United milled about and chatted with each other. No, sir, these folks know their rights. Apparently they were told that check-in was three hours before flight time and they were not going to start a minute too soon, in spite of a long line of waiting customers. So, at 6:25am, (our flight was scheduled for 9:25am) they opened the counter--let the goat rodeo begin. Fortunately the flight was scheduled to depart on time. We soon had our doubts however, because as we were sitting in the waiting area, there were several pages for a particular passenger. Then, when we boarded the flight, the gate agent came on board and called the same passenger name. Hmm-m-m What was going on? In short order, the pilot announced that there would be a "brief" delay because a passenger had not shown up for the flight, but his luggage was already on board, so of course, the luggage would need to found and removed!! Oh, no, nightmare city--this is what happened on our flight over to Paris. Could it possibly happen again!?
Stay tuned......
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You may have noticed that this post has only verbiage and no photos. That's because after a full day of traveling, our most recent photos are not yet uploaded, so I am unable to finish today's blog entry. Therefore my final thoughts on our French adventure will be recorded tomorrow. Thanks so much to all of you who have followed along on this blog.  More later.....

Wednesday, Sept. 25 - On the Way home--almost

Today we checked out of our Paris Perfect apartment early this morning, left our bags at their office, and walked over to Catherine Reed's restaurant, REED--clever name, don't you think? We had signed up for a cooking class because our flight is not until tomorrow, we're spending the night at the Paris airport, and we decided to not just 'schlepp' around the city for the day. Besides, we had heard that Catherine's classes are fun and informative. The class was everything we expected and much, much more.

JoAnn and Catherine meet up outside her restaurant 

There were four other participants and we quickly became BFF's while Catherine readied the prep area.

Ready to go--Catherine is very organized 

We soon donned our crisp white aprons and we were off to the races. Catherine is an excellent chef (we've eaten at her restaurant several times) and it turns out that she is an excellent teacher as well. The menu consisted of  violet artichokes as an appetizer, an interesting chicken preparation with a mushroom garnish with four different kinds of mushrooms, and strawberry shortcake for dessert.

Lloyd attacking the chicken

JoAnn tries her hand at boning the chicken leg - what a challenge

Catherine "refines" JoAnn's boning technique

We cleaned artichokes, peeled potatoes, chopped shallots, and even learned how to bone a chicken. We also learned how to clean mushrooms (not with water) and how to cook them for maximum flavor.

Hard at work

Everyone agreed that you can't go wrong by adding some butter to a dish.

The final "piece de resistance" of the day was the construction of strawberry shortcake--none like I'd ever had before. Catherine started the the morning by teaching us how to make the pastry and alerting us to how we would learn to use all our senses. For example, she doesn't time the shortcake pastry. She uses her sense of smell to determine when to remove it from the oven. (Mushrooms sing to her as they saute, raising and lowing their 'voices' to tell when they are ready for the next step.) After the shortcake cooled and while the chicken was cooking, we worked on our individual desserts. Catherine made a sample for us:

Catherine's

Lloyd has to practice a little bit on his technique

Finally we were ready for our feast. It was a delightful morning; we all agreed that we had learned a lot and we would certainly recommend investing the time to spend a morning with Catherine.

Cheers!

We are at the airport hotel; this year's adventure is about to come to a close. I will post some final thoughts about Paris in in my next blog entry, probably tomorrow or Friday. Thanks for following along. Au revoir!

Tuesday - September 24 Ah-choo!

Before I start on today's activities, I will explain the title. Somewhere between Beaune and Paris we both picked up colds. This is a first; now I wish that I had gotten a flu shot before I left. So last night, as you might have guessed, we opted to dine in last night. (Besides not feeling 100%, a steady diet of dining out demands a break.) The choice was between carry-out pizza or carry-in frozen food. We flipped a coin and Picard's won. Don't cringe! Off to the frozen food store--yes, creepy. It took forever to make a choice, but we ended up with lasgna Bolognese and a small pack of four different flavors of ice cream cups. A quick stop at the local grocery store for lettuce and salad fixings--we still had vinaigrette dressing from Friday night, and we were set for a quiet, restful evening.

Today we both felt a little better, so we hit upon the idea of heading up to Sacre Coeur for photos and a side trip to fabric stores on Montmatre with a side trip to Notre Dame (we still needed to light our candles) on the way. As we were exiting our building, Lloyd struck a deal with me. Background: before coming to France, I had heard that the coiffures in Paris were tops in the world. But who is comfortable with a new stylist?! I made up my mind to live the adventure and get my hair cut in France!) Well, the deal was this--if I could get an appointment (clearly I've been dragging my feet), we'd (I'd) skip the push to go to the fabric stores on Montmatre and instead seek out an old favorite quilting store near Notre Dame.  I won't prolong the story....I got an appointment (now it was nail biting time) but it wasn't until 5pm! I had all day to think about it.

 

BEFORE

 Off I went to Thierry Elias' salon at 4:55pm--he was waiting for me.....voila! At 5:45 I walked out with a new French 'do'. Hoorah! I like it, and best of all, Lloyd does also.

 

 

AFTER

A happy 'camper'

Another view

The pictures don't do justice to the care Thierry took with my hair....and did I mention the way he massaged my head when he washed my hair!!! Worth the price of admission.

That was the big adventure of the day--for me, at least. We did make it over to Notre Dame again. The line was Disney-like again, but I convinced Lloyd that we would move along swiftly and we did. Only seven minutes in a double line--thank goodness. As always, the windows are exquisite.

One of the many stained glass windows

 

A deal's a deal--so now we're off to find Le Rouvray, the quilt shop I visited last March. Lloyd had read on a TripAdvisor post that the owner plans to close the shop in early October, so I was thinking that maybe there would be a closeout sale. It took us a while to find it, and when we did--what a surprise.....

all closed up!

But it wasn't as I thought. It was 11:45am, and the shop doesn't open until noon. I suppose we could have waited, but since I had already "shopped it up" at the Ines patchwork store last Friday, I decided that I had enough fabric for this trip. (After all, I still have to carry all this stuff on board!!)

I wanted to mention a few things. As one walks around Paris in the morning, it is fun to see the shop owners prepare for business for the day. Here is one patisserie who specializes in little coconut covered cakes--big and tiny. Talk about being specialized.

The work begins

 

The finished products

 

Speaking of boulangeries, I finally got a shot of the little kitty in the bread shop two doors from our apartment that sometimes sits in the window and waits to be stroked.

What a life.  

 

Besides walking, taking the Metro and the autobus, there are other ways to see the city. One can sign up for a Fat Tire Bike Tour that seem to be gaining popularity, especially in the beautiful weather we've had the past few days.

A group gathers for their Fat Tire Bike Tour on colorful, blue bicycles

Another popular way to independently see the city is a Velib (Velo-libre-something-or other). Anyway, it's the huge system of bicycles that are positioned throughout the city that one can rent with a credit card and then return in another location. And they said it would never catch on!!!

 Very convenient

That's about enough excitement for one day. We had a quiet dinner at a favorite restaurant, Bistro P'tit Troquet. I wish I had had my camera--I ordered what I thought would be escargot in a traditional serving dish. What arrived was a small brioche bun covered with butter and parsley with the little snails stuffed inside. Lloyd said it looked like a snail burger--I ate it anyway.

Bonsoir!

 

 

Monday, September 23 - Where Has the Summer Gone?

What a surprise to wake up this morning and realize that we missed the arrival of fall. We've been so caught up in our French touring adventures that we forgot all about it. When I get home, I'll pay more attention.

Some of you who were anticipating a peek at more of the Paris monuments will no doubt be disappointed, but on this trip we've decided that since we've seen so many of the major attractions that we would focus our activities on other things, mainly because the major attractions are so crowded with tourists. What did we expect! So today our objective was to do some shopping and to visit some of the 'foodie' places around our neighborhood. We started at Rue Cler, a favorite of locals and tourists.

Here we are.

There's a huge selection running the entire length of the street

The street consists of mostly food, but one must look at shoes when they appear.

 

Next stop was the "epicerie" at Bon Marche, one of the most upscale of the Paris department stores. We've been there several times for scarves, stationery, etc., but never to the epicerie/food store section. The inside reminded me of a very fancy Whole Foods, but it was the size of a Costco. And it wasn't even at full strength, because large sections were in the process of being renovated.

 

One of my favorite places to "hang out" and look.
 

These were rosebuds that could be made into tea.

Next door to Bon Marche is Conran's. Many of you will recognize the name. It started in NYC in the 60's, I believe, but now it has gone international. While it's not a foodie place per se, it has numerous household items, many of which are beyond my budget. For example, we looked at a wine cooler that was listed at 11, 230 Euros--I'm thinking that if you buy two, there might be a discount. Any takers? But I didn't get the impression that the salespeople knew the word "discount".

Some of the specialty designer furniture

All that focusing  on food made us hungry, of course, so we stopped at a new place (for us) for lunch. The restaurant is Les Deux Abielles, a delightful tea salon (they open at 9am and close at 7pm) that was really buzzing. Since we weren't sure of our exact morning plans before we left the apartment, we hadn't made a reservation. It seemed that everyone else had made one because as we walked through the restaurant almost every table had a 'reserve' sign on it. Fortunately they found a place for us near the back and within 20 minutes, every seat in the restaurant was full. Nonetheless, service was efficient and the food was oh-so-French and so very delicious. Lloyd had a spinach and ham gateau with mixed salad and I had a salad and a mushroom omelette, the first I've had since being here. We will definitely add it to our list of favorites.

A very "French" restaurant run by a mother-daughter team

Late in the afternoon, we were still strolling the neighborhood. On many of our trips, we've read the Paris Perfect recommendations for a frozen food store called Picard. Additionally there were several recommendations in the guest book, so since we were nearby, we decided to see what all the fuss is about. Well, it's interesting. It's like walking into a freezer chest--every item in the store is frozen! And what a selection there is--a complete menu of appetizers, entrees, desserts, and everything in between. I'm still not sure what the fuss is about. We'll let you know.

Picard's--this place is a little eerie because it is freezing cold and very stark inside.

One of the 'popular' ways to view the sights of Paris is on a Segway. We ran into a group while crossing in front of Napoleon's Tomb. I'm sure it saves on your tootsies, but I think the people look silly. It clearly isn't for me.

To each his own--not my cup of tea.

Speaking of things that we usually don't see in Easton on the scale seen here are the beautiful, upscale autos driving around Paris. On a daily basis, we see specialty Jaguars, BMWs, Porsches, Aston Martins, and Lamborghinis. Our heads twirl at the sight of them regularly. The interesting thing is that the majority of these models are not imported into the USA. Lloyd thinks it may have something to do with the emission controls and other safety items.

Ooh-la-la. If you have to ask the price of this Lamborghini, well,.....

A cute little thing. More my style, but we have no idea what it is.

It's hard to get lost in our neighborhood--basically one can just keep walking and keep looking upward. The Eiffel Tower serves as a landmark day and night.

In this neighborhood, all streets lead to the Eiffel Tower.

Bonsoir!  More musings tomorrow......

Sunday, September 22 - Thwarted!

Our objective for today was to make our way over to Notre Dame. Traditionally we like to visit on a Sunday morning so that we can light "remembrance" candles for loved ones who are now gone. We had heard that the entire plaza in front of Notre Dame was filled with platforms and bleachers in preparation for festivities to recognize the 850th anniversary of the cathedral. (It was in 1153A.D. that the cornerstone of Notre Dame was laid.) Sure enough--as we crossed over the Seine, there was the cathedral of Notre Dame and there also were those offending structures!

What are they thinking!

Couple that with a hoard of Sunday morning tourists, and we concluded that we'd need to find another church in which to light our candles, since there was another Disneyworld line stretching across the plaza. (Those of you who know him, know that Lloyd doesn't "do" long lines).

 

The crowds at Notre Dame

We were pleased that the "Point Zero" disc was not covered by the bleachers. Long ago we heard a story that if one lightly touches the brass plaque in front of Notre Dame, then the touch-er is guaranteed to return to Paris. Is it true? We're not sure, but we don't like to take a chance, and so far, it seems to be working. Factoid: "Point Zero" is the point, it is said, from which all distances in France are measured. Before there was a plaque, 2300 years ago, it was the center of Paris when the Parisii, a Celtic tribe, fished where the east-west river crossed a north-west road. But the Romans conquered the Parisii and built their Temple of Jupiter where Notre Dame stands today.

If you look closely, you can still see the designation as "Point Zero"

Lloyd was pleased that even though his photos of Notre Dame are partially blocked with large blue structures, his favorite statue of Charlemagne still stands guard at the side of the front plaza. Lloyd snaps this same photo on every visit--could there possibly be a French connection? 

Charlemagne the Great

On the long walk over to Notre Dame, a brief shower managed to find us in the city. Of course, after checking the weather forecast while still back at the apartment, I had convinced Lloyd that we didn't need to carry our umbrellas any more. What was I thinking! So the only logical thing to do was to pop into a café for a brief café au lait. We were beside Le Pre au Clercs, known to be one of Hemingway's hangouts, not that that really mattered to us. We were just happy to stay dry until the shower passed us by.

JoAnn enjoys a mid-morning coffee break

 

Lloyd, too, enjoyed the break.

Usually we would spend the remainder of the afternoon strolling up the Champs Elysees, but since the day had grown cloudy so we decided to take a bus back to our 'hood and re-plan the day. On previous trips, traipsing about the city was usually accomplished by both walking and taking the Metro.  But recently, Joan Grace, a good friend and frequent Paris traveler, convinced us to try the local bus system. We are now converts. It's like taking a tour bus around the city. Whereas the Metro travels completely underground, the bus route allows one to see all the sights along the way. We boarded the #69 bus across from the Hotel de Ville (city hall), in front of the BHV department store that is closed on Sunday, proceeded up the rue de Rivoli , turned left in front of the Louvre, and across the Seine to our "side" of Paris.

The Louvre Pyramid from the window of the bus.

Everyone had to exit the bus about 4 blocks before our regular stop and we couldn't figure out why.

I've been fighting off a sore throat, thanks to those brisk winds we experienced in Flavigny. So, after lunch, rather than wear ourselves out, we decided to spend the afternoon reading, journaling, and blogging.

More Sunday observations:
On our walk to Notre Dame, at a park in front of the Invalides, typically there are groups of men who gather for a weekly game of boules, the French version of bocce. Given the sunny morning, today was no exception.

Why aren't these men in church on Sunday morning?

We see dogs (chien) everywhere. The most popular are small ones, and though I've not done an "official" survey, within that category, it seems that the dachshund is the favored breed. So it was a surprise to see this beautiful white Standard Poodle--the first poodle we've seen since we've been here.

Trust me, this dog (on the left) was a real beauty.

And speaking of things we rarely see, this 4-piece jazz ensemble playing on rue Buci, very near the open-air market, drew a crowd (and hopefully a few spare Euro coins.)

We may see these fellows on "France Has Talent", if there such a thing. They were very good.

Bon nuit. (Good night)