2nd day in France (Paris). It has been warm here so far. And the apartment we are in does not have air conditioning. So I had to get creative on how I opened the window last night. They all have security bars but know screens. So you can reach out and touch someone if you wanted to scare them as they past by. Anyway, we had a small fan that I placed near the window to circulate air. It helped and by the time we woke up, the room felt nice. Now I slept pretty good. But Denise says she slept quite hot. But honestly, a bomb could have gone off and neither of us would have woke up. I did get 6 good hours but woke up at 3 AM for a bit. Body clock still on Utah time. But I did fall back to sleep after an hour of texting and stuff.
Mike and Josh were out the door by 8 AM to go back to the airport to rent the van. It is an hour metro\train ride to the airport. B it it took longer for them to get back driving. But we were loaded up and on the road by about 10:30 AM heading to Versailles. Prior to leaving Paris and our AIRBNB, I did hit the corner bakery for some nice pastries for breakfast. Gotta love Europe and the baked goods over here on every corner.
We drove about an hour to the Palace of Versailles. Brings back some nightmarish memories when we were here last time. Not to fear, however, very few tourists here today. And Denise and I did not want to go through the Palace again. So we just bought a garden ticket and headed off into them. The rest of the group bought tickets for it all…Palace and gardens.
The gardens are quite pretty. The area is huge…lots of walking to cover it all. Unfortunately, only a few fountains were flowing. Most were not on which I find to be very disappointing. It’s like buying Broadway play tickets only to find out the actors only perform on Tuesday and the Weekends! You just get to enjoy the theater. Pretty lame. Anyway, we walked around a bit then found the cafe and stood in a very SLOOOOWWWW line to greet some crepes and a sandwich to split later once the Hunters hooked up with us. After an hour or so, they appeared, we ate and then went with them to see some of the gardens. At some point, we had to make a decision how to do this as Riley likes these type of gardens and wants to look every plant. Most of us…seen one…you’ve seen it all. So we decided to leave Riley at the gardens while the rest of us went over to the temple which is about a 5 minute drive from the palace.
The temple is unique to me here as it fits into the city block that it is found in. It doesn’t stand out much. It is somewhat like New York City in that way. We went right into the Visitors Center there and struck up a conversation with Elder and Sister. Gilchrist from Mesa, AZ. They have been out for 6 months and having a very nice time. But like Denise and her Spanish, Sister Gilchrist does not speak French and is working hard to conquer it. But not easy. We visited and took pictures for about an hour. We then put the signal out to Riley that we were returning to pick her up to begin our journey over to Le Havre on the West Coast. We are really excited to see the beaches of D-Day (Normandy).
The van we rented is beautiful. New, large and very roomy. Mike did a wonderful job getting this nailed down. It will cost a bit. But at least we are comfortable and we will be doing a lot of driving in it. I’ll try to get a picture of it and post it. Mike drove early and Josh is driving now as I type this on our way to Le Havre.
Well, I’m finishing this at 10:30 PM sitting in the van with Denise. We just complete a very nice seafood and steak dinner on the beach watching the sun set across the English Channel. The name of this village is Etretat. The white cliffs and 3 arches are what attract folks to this place. It is a really cute little village nestled up to the sea. We arrived here at about 7 PM. After driving around a bit, we found a place to park the van.. Getting the van into one of the small spots was a bit of a challenge. But eventually one worked out. We then headed to the beach and to the base of the cliffs and headed up the trail to get to the top. It was a good climb for Denise and I but we made it.. The view was really nice.
We sat down to eat dinner a little before 9 PM. We ate right on the beach and watched the sun go down. The food was pretty good. Mike went large and got the cold seafood plate that had crab, snails, all kinds of different shell things, shrimp with the eyes looking at you and so on. Everyone enjoyed watching Mike try to take down some of the ‘bottom of the ocean’ stuff. Me….I ordered a pail of muscles in a nice cream sauce. I really liked it….very tasty. Once the sun had set, however, it became extremely cold. I noticed they had space heaters under the umbrellas. But there were not turned on. Our server told me it was illegal to use them in France. I thought, but did not say, ‘Then why have them?’. Anyway, the Hunters were going to order dessert and I was frozen. So I paid the bill and with Denise, we walked to the van to get out of the cold. So here I am.
It has been a fun day seeing the things that we’ve seen today.
More to come tomorrow….
Some pictures:
No comments:
Post a Comment