We are back home at last, decompressing and trying to get reaclimated after two weeks of travel and sightseeing. I was sick yesterday, the accumulation of 11 hours on a plane, and the time change and post-vacation letdown, I think. I’m feeling better today, so am posting more pictures on Flickr and catching up with the blog.
When last we left our intrepid adventurers, we were headed to Paris where I thought we’d have Internet access. We did, but it turned out to be WebTV (sorry, that’s msntv now and it doesn’t work any better with the name change), which is just this side of as bad as dial-up. Worse, in some ways as there is no mouse with which to navigate. Argh!! We were only there for a day and a half, so I basically decided to give up and post the whole thing when we got back.
The train trip from Florence to Paris was uneventful. We slept great, arrived in Paris at around 10am, and took a taxi to our hotel (the Hotel Balzac, located about two blocks from the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe). I had booked us nice rooms that ran about $500US a night, but they overbooked the hotel and ended up giving us MUCH nicer rooms on a higher floor that had spectacular views of Paris and in particular the Eiffel Tower. The hotel was really beautiful with all marble bathrooms and TOTO toilets (Skip and Diane’s had a heated seat and a built-in bidet that had an oscillating setting). We spent one afternoon walking around, visited a few churches, stopped at a sidewalk cafe for a glass of wine, and had a delicious dinner in St-Germain-des-Pres at Le Temps Perdu.
The next day (our one full day) we took the RER to Versailles and spent the day touring the chateau and exploring the grounds. On my first trip to Paris 25 years ago, my friend Cheryl and I spent a frustrating afternoon in bitterly cold weather searching for Le Petit Trianon and the Queen’s Hamlet. We failed that time, but this trip we succeeded, and saw both Le Petit Trianon and the hamlet. We also saw the disgusting carp that live in the man-made lake by the hamlet. People were feeding them breadcrumbs which would trigger really gross feeding frenzies. We got semi-lost on the way back to the train station and ended up seeing a lot more of the town of Versailles than we expected, but it was worth it. Our final dinner in Paris was spectacular! We ate a gourmet meal and spent a lot of Euros at Restaurant Dominique Bouchet. We went back to the hotel and stayed up until midnight to watch the light show on the Eiffel Tower. It was a pretty perfect way to end our trip.
The next day we flew home. My lucky streak of being stuck behind idiots held true on the return trip as well as our flight over. On both legs, the people in front of me immediately moved their seats as far back as possible and left them there the entire flight – through meals, on bathroom breaks, you name it. Grrrrr. Next time we go, I am really going to investigate how to get bumped to business class. Flying with the unwashed masses just isn’t working for me anymore. Either that or the airlines need to make new coach seats that don’t recline. You want to fly cheap, you can just sit up straight the whole way, okay? Nobody said world travel was easy!