Friday and Saturday……

Friday we set off on our first trip into Paris….armed with our rain coats….the weather here has been as bad as Vancouver I’m thinking.

We are about 20 minutes by the RER south east of Paris…..the RER is a faster inter city rail line…..we bought the all day Moblise pass for 10.55 Euro that we could use on any public transport all day. We need to look for the Green D!

The Louvre

We got off one of the main metro stations and came up form underground and we started walking. We had decided to take the day to walk and get our bearing in the city. We went by the Louvre…..we noted the long line-ups for tickets and the security line up. (we are going to get a Museum pass in a couple of days so that we can skip the ticket line ups in most of theise places)….Then across a pont (bridge) when it started pouring with rain….not just sprinkling but mega rain……it rained for about 15 minutes and then it stopped. We felt right at home!

So we kept walking…..past the Orsay museum (where I found my first French cache). Then on to the Eiffel tower…..by this time we must have put on about 5 kms. We snapped some pictures and I found another cache. The line ups for these these attractions are very long and one of the elevators is not working…..another day. We then continured walking up to the Arch de Triomphe (another cache) and then down the Champs-Elysees. We were all getting tired when the rain started again….so we quickly figured out how to get back to the house and headed “home” We got home between 8 and 9, made some dinner and headed to bed.

I’m thinking that I should have brought a pedometer along on this trip, and kept track of just how much I have walked in the last 6 weeks.  The city is really big and there is so much to see.

There was supposed to be fireworks in the town of Yerres on Friday night….it was the night before Bastille Day….we were going to go, but a kind neighbour came to the door to tell us that it was cancelled because of the weather…..I think we all sighed a collective sigh of gladness….we were tired. We did see, from the bathroom window in the house that there were fireworks going on in a few places.


Saturday we decided to go to Provins, a medieval town about an hour SE of here. This car is a standard ….I can’t drive it but Paul can….so we are driving. First though we were gong to the Macron factory sale on Saturday morning….but it wasn’t open….we were very disappointed to find the gates locked.

We arrived at the city about 10:00 just after it opened. Paul had managed the car, the roads and highways, and the tollbooths wonderfully!
Provins is a World Heritage site, one of the best preserved walled medieval towns. People still live in the walled part of town today. (it must be annoying in the summer time with all those people walking through your town everyday) There were many great display of life in the middle ages, a bell tower that we climbed up, a museum and an underground tour. Again walking up and down hills all day. Stopping for a lunch of crepes (Sheryl and I had ham, egg and cheese and Paul had one with scallops)  It is a place that is well worth visiting.  We drove home and stopped at the grocery store in town to pick up a few things.

Saturday was Bastille day so there was major fireworks going on down town. The biggest going on for an hour….we don’t really know where they were being set off….we think it was the Arc de Triomphe. We could see them from the back patio and hear the music playing with it and when it was over we could hear the clapping.  All this while Sheryl and I were planning the last week of our stay.

PS  I was going to try to catch up to Sunday....but I am just too tired....so please excuse any mistakes in typing and spelling.