Monday in Paris

This morning I cooked my first meal in over a month.  Oh sure, I've made some sandwiches, toasted some crumpets, and more stuff like that.  But today I used a pan on the burner and everything!  When we arrived at this wonderful little apartment we found a fresh loaf of bread, a baguette, milk, orange juice, butter, tea, coffee and other things for the kitchen.  We used the baguette right away for sandwiches.  We saved the loaf of bread for some French Toast.  It was good!

Today we went to the Cluny Museum.  This museum is full of art and artifacts from the Middle Ages.  The main draw of this museum is the Lady and the Unicorn series of tapestries.  There was also stained glass swords, jewels, and the decapitated heads of statues from Notre Dame, amongst other things.

We spent 2 1/2 hours at the museum.  When we came out we decided to get a bite to eat.  We headed for the street I stayed on during my last trip to Paris, Rue de la Huchette.  We had gyros, for something different.  They were pretty good.  

I hardly slept at all last night, and I was exhausted.  We knew we were going to be doing a lot of walking later in the day, so we decided to go kick back at Luxenbourg Gardens.  It was a beautiful day today, although it was fairly windy.  When the sun went behind the clouds it was cold!  This was my view for most of the time we were there -

I actually tried to doze off, but there were so many people around and it was noisy.  Doesn't anyone go to work?  This is what I had to do to keep warm -

Jim enjoyed relaxing too!

Knowing we wouldn't be eating until very late, and realizing that we have been in Paris a few days and haven't gotten a street crepe, we decided to remedy that situation.  We both got dark chocolate crepes.  I love chocolate as much (or more) than the next person, but it was almost too much for me.  It was good though!

We had an appointment at 5:45 p.m. to meet with our Paris Greeter, Christophe.  He proposed to show us around the 8th Arrondisment.  It's an area that we are only vaguely familiar with, so we are excited about what we will learn.  We met him at Concorde Place.  I was expecting it to be a small Place, but it is HUGE!  The biggest Place in Paris!  He explained what the different buildings and monuments were.  Then we started walking down streets.  Amongst other things we saw St. Honore, the most expensive shopping street in Paris.  No, make that France.  We saw the U.S. Embassy, which is highly guarded.  And we saw where the President of France works.  Christophe thought that Mr. Hollande lives elsewhere in Paris, but some presidents chose to live at the office, which is also a home.  Similar to the White House, but I could have gone up and touched the building.  Well, maybe not touch it. There were police officers in front.  But the house/office was right up to the sidewalk, as opposed to the White House which is fenced off.  Besides police guarding the house (we saw two, but there were probably more), the only other visible precaution was that no cars were allowed to park on that part of the street.

We spent about two hours with Christophe, learning about the history, but also learning about modern places too.  As we got close to the metro station to take the train home, we saw the Eiffel Tower a little bit in the distance.  It was just one minute until 8:00, so we stopped to watch what will probably be our last light show.  Of this trip anyway.  I hope that some day we will return.  After the lights stopped sparkling, we headed back to our neighborhood by Gare de Lyon.  We got dinner, and walked home.  I'm so tired.  I hope I sleep tonight!  Tomorrow is our last day in Paris.  We have to make it count!