Thursday night, we had a tasty dinner in the 6th Arrondisement at L’Ami Jean. A friend and many guidebooks recommended L’Ami Jean (merci, Annamaria) for dinner. So we enjoyed a three course Basque feast ending with the “best rice pudding of our lives”, as the waiter put it.
On Friday, we woke up surprised to discover that it was 11am. We had lost almost half a day in Paris! Nevertheless, we salvaged the day and fit in a full agenda of Parisian sightseeing. We started with a tour of the city on bus #69 past the Latin Quarter, over the Seine, towards the Louvre, where we visited Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, through the Marais, past the Place de la Bastille and back past the Tulleries garden.
We headed back to Hotel Beaugency, but the view of the Eiffel Tower lured us to the Champ de Mars Park and the second balcony of the Eiffel Tower. Just after reaching the balcony, the blue lights on the tower started to sparkle. From high up, we could see the entire city and its glowing monuments.
Today, we prepared for our train trip to Avignon on the high speed TGV. On this train, it only takes 2.5 hours to get from Paris to Avignon!
Once again we packed everything into the stupid Rick Steves backpack bags and headed out to the bus. Paris really does have a great transportation system and we paid only about $1.40 each to travel by bus from one end of Paris to the other. The Gare de Lyon was bustling with activity when we arrived, no time to take photos, so we found the platform for our train and climbed on to the first class car. It seemed like a luxury car interior compared to the miniature sized seats on the Boeing jet we flew on from Seattle to London. The country side began speeding past the window right on time and I do mean speeding. The train can reach speeds of just under 200mph. The terrain actually is very much like Oregon. Lots of green rolling hills, cows and sheep. vineyards. The farmhouses are a bit more quaint and we have seen a couple of chateaus. It is beautiful, weather is overcast but it doesn’t matter because tonight we are staying in our splurge hotel, La Mirande. This hotel is in a castle across from Pope’s palace. We are going to have dinner there and rest up because our walking tour begins tomorrow at 9 am sharp, no sleeping in!
1 comment:
Oh, it sounds and looks like you are having so much fun!! I am jealous. Hmm, stupid rick steves backpack bags???????????????? what does that mean.
Have fun walking tomorrow. Hope you brought your pedometers.
Hugs,
Marcia
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