Last Day in Paris

On Wednesday slept in, went to the little café up the street for a late breakfast, packed up our suitcases and prepared to leave the hotel. We left our bags in the hotel luggage room because our train did not leave for Madrid until seven that evening.

We stopped by the Pantheon which was just a couple of blocks from our hotel. It is an impressive buildings and I was able to see Emile Zola’s tomb. He is not exactly a popular hero in France because of his political activities, so entry to his tomb was blocked.

After the Pantheon we walked through the Luxemburg Garden to Saint-Sulpice, one of the locations featured in Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. However we were unable to crack the code in the short time we had at the church.

We spent our last afternoon in the Bastille. This is the neighborhood surrounding the ruins of the prison made famous by a revolt on July 14, 1789, to begin the French Revolution. Now it is the center of Parisian nightlife and is home to an array of popular restaurants, clubs and cafés. It also is an artsy center with studios and stores. Unfortunately we were there during the afternoon siesta time, so the stores were all closed.

We did find a little café run by two ditzy gay women with a poster in French for the Vagina Monologues. When we arrived they were running to the store because they had run out of bread. They explained that they were closing the next day and going on holiday. So I suppose they were trying to keep supplies low and not waste food. We were told we could order whatever they had left and they were willing to special build our lunch with a little of this and a little of that. I had escargot again and a salad with a mixture of whatever they had in the kitchen. It was quite good. Escargot is served with these pincers to hold the snail shell and a little fork with two long prongs to pull the meat out of the shell. I hope all my vegetarian friends are enjoying this description. Worse yet is that with the sauce they are sort of a bright forest green color. As we were about to leave the restaurant a friend of the owner’s came in. She explained that he was an opera singer and had just performed at the opera house. She asked him to sing for us and so we were treated to an impromptu opera performance. Though I know next to nothing about opera, I could appreciate his fine voice.

After our meal we went back Pick up luggage and go to train station. They did not have a special lounge at this train station either. However the wait was not bad and we were soon ensconced in our train cabin. We settled in and went to the dining car for dinner, then to bed. I love traveling on trains. In the morning we went to the dining car for breakfast and met a young couple from Oregon who were at the beginning of a two month journey around Europe. After breakfast we got our things together and watched out the window as the train pulled into the Madrid train station. We took a taxi to the airport and while waiting for our plane we did a little shopping in the duty free shops and exchanged our remaining euros for dollars.

On the plane from Madrid to Newark we had our own little TV screens in front of our seats and we could pick which movies or TV shows we wanted to watch and when. It was much nicer than having the one screen where everyone watches the same thing at the same time and the time flew by. We met a young man from San Francisco who was in the window seat in our row. Then we landed in Newark. I think Newark is not our lucky airport. Because it was our first stop in the US we had to collect our luggage and go through customs. Well there was something wrong with the baggage carousel because it took an hour for the luggage to come out and they kept changing the number of the carousel. We finally collected our luggage and went through customs. But, then we traveled all over the airport trying to recheck our baggage. What we eventually found out was that all of the baggage conveyor belts were not functioning, so no one knew what to do with the luggage. We finally found an employee willing to accept the luggage since it already had tags to take it through to Los Angeles. We dropped the luggage and prayed we would see our luggage again. Leea was convinced it would be lost in the ether. But when we landed in Los Angeles our luggage came off the conveyor belt. Yea!!! We were home!