Sunday May 26th, Paris France-
Arrived in Paris on the TGV after about a 2 hour ride. (Train Great Velocity) and arrived just in time for the protest du jour in Paris. Huge crowds of people men, women and children all protesting. (Side note -- we always see a protest in Paris reliably. It's funny and must be in the Parisian blood.) [Photos here a click-able to see them in a larger size.]
Monday May 27th, Paris France
Tuesday May 28th, Paris France-
Walked around and shopped. Went to the Bon Marche store which was a wonder. Just as an example of how splendid it was follows. We went to the sock department because looking at it I saw that they literally had a rainbow of colors of socks. Every color of mens socks that you can imagine (You mean there's more than blue,brown and black?). Didn't buy any socks but it sure was amazing. Plus like 5 people there to help customers out. (Looked like a few too many at least when we saw it.)
Lynne got the most amazing scarf that she is super happy with and just fits her to a T. Chet got a scarf also making him look a little French. (Apparently they're in style. Not that Chet would know this.) Went to the Jardin du Luxembourg museum and saw the "Marc Chagall during the War" exhibit there. Lynne really enjoyed this and covered his career from his early days to his fully established artist point. And yes if you recall this is the 2nd Marc Chagall exhibit we saw. The first one was the same named museum in Nice which really enjoyed.
Jardin du Luxembourg front entrance. |
| Outside of the Jarden du Luxemburg |
Later we had dinner at Cafe Cassette where we had a modest dinner and a great desert of Pain Perdue with caramel sauce. Kind of like the French toast that Chet makes but better. Somehow they made it crunchy on the outside which really added to it's flavor.
And lastly after dinner we went to one of the bridges crossing the Seine to see the sunset which was nice with great whispy clouds which really enhanced the colors of sunset. Nice reds and oranges. We didn't have enough time to get to the Monparnasse building which is supposed to have the best view of the city and you can get the Eiffel Tower in the photo as well.
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| Vivid reds over the Seine at sunset |
Wednesday May 29th, 2013 Paris France-
Got up late (as usual) and went shopping to get some things to bring home. We specially like the Hediard brand of preserves. (Not an endorsement.) We also saw "snoop the wonder dog" who might be the equivalent or our Joey cat shown below-
We came across this statue of Thomas Jefferson who was the USA ambassador to France from 1801-1809. One can only imagine the great time he must have had back then. In those days most everything that was any type of luxury item came from Europe so it must have been an incredible experience for him. I've been listening to a book about George Washington and hence reason I knew this.
Went to the Monparnasse building around 9pm to try to go to the top of building to catch the view and sunset. The building is 56 stories tall and is the tallest building in the area and is perfectly situated for a great view of the Eiffel Tower with the sunset very near it. There were showers in the area and we thought it would be nice but it ended up we had some rain squalls, but I did manage to get some nice night shots of Tower Eiffel. Every hour on the hour the tower sparkles like a gigantic sparkler and it's pretty cool to see. You can see the little sparkles on the photo below.
Thursday May 30th, 2013 Paris France-
Got up and tried to check-in for the flight back. (24 hours in advance.) Tried to do this on the iPad and no luck. We tried for like an hour plus. Then we went to the FedEx drop-off point to ship a box out and got done with that and went to the Air France office. The agents there spent 45 minutes trying to check us in to no avail but they assured us there would be no problem when we would go to the airport the next day. It was now past 1:30 pm and we decided to go to the Orsay museum. We enjoyed the Orsay quite a bit as the collection specially the Impressionist collection is so amazing. We both really enjoyed the Van Gogh works as well. The central hall is specially nice because of the amount of natural lighting illuminating the statues that line the hall. We even saw some people who we had met earlier that day at the Air France office who were from El Cerrito which was funny because the last time we were in Orsay we saw our friend Paul Brande's brother and wife in the museum and exchanged hellos.
Then we walked directly to Cafe Cassette and found the same waitress we had before and now it was Basque food theme night. It's a fun little cafe and they seem to specialize in food versus being a bar that has a side aspect of food. We had a first course of Squid, Tomato sauce, Noodles, Bell Peppers and Pimento and it was very good. The main course was Pork, Potatoes,Tomatoes, Bell peppers and a light sauce. (Great for dipping a baguette into and, of course, Lynne asked for no Bell Peppers and they mostly got that right.) The waitress came by and told us they had three guys who were Basque singers. The Basque singing was great and sounded very different than the French we were used to hearing by now. We really enjoyed the whole event and then when we left said goodbye to the super friendly waitress who had helped us out. We shook hands and said "Are Revoir until next time"
Basque singers - guy with beard and #5 on back. |
| Basque singers at Cafe Cassette |
Friday May 31st, 2013 Paris France to San Francisco, CA-
Travel day. Got to airport no problem and then got to Air France counter and they calmly told us our tickets were canceled. Lynne was incensed after we had spent 3 hours yesterday trying to check-in and also going to the Air France office where they spent 45 minutes trying to check us in. (And the same thing had happened to us on a previous trip with Delta Airlines.) To make a long story short it appears that Air France overbooked the flight and then since we weren't checked in they bumped us off the flight. They claimed they had notified us we were bumped but we didn't find any evidence of that.
Luckily we made the flight albeit in different rows of the airplane. We went to the Delta Airlines counter and talked to a gentleman who looked like the station manager and he walked over to Air France with us and they discussed our situation and he really pressed the AF person to do something but she just hemmed and hawed and the Delta manager even said to her that "she (meaning Lynne) speaks and understands French so you better be careful what you say" because the lady was not taking ownership of the issue. The Delta man stayed with us for a good 30 minutes to try to help us out. We were quite grateful for his earnest help. It's rare when a person at the airport goes with you and spends a solid amount of time helping someone out.
Bottom line if you can't check in - DO worry about it. You could be bumped if the airline has over-sold the flight and if the flight is a code-share be ready for infinite loop finger pointing. We suspect they had just over-booked the flight and then bumped people who hadn't checked in because the aircraft type had not changed from what it was planned to be to what it actually was. We ended up flying on a 777-300ER which while economy is tight if you're in the middle seats (we were) it was bearable. The food was even good (French origin) and we even had what tasted like real Camembert cheese with a meal.
this is a test of the
command that I don't know how to use
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