Day 10 - Tuesday

To see our photos from today, click here.

Our last day in Paris started out drizzily, but turned out to be a beautiful one. I had wondered what all of the cafes do in the bad weather (stack the chairs and tables and bring them inside?). My question was answered when we went to Cafe de Marche for breakfast; as you can see in the picture, the have a whole awning system to make the patio area enclosed.

Two of the museums we had wanted to see, the Rodin and the D’Orsay, were in walking distance, so we headed toward the Rodin. August Rodin was a sculptor most famous for his statue “The Thinker.” After exploring the grounds, we walked to the D’Orsay Museum, however after seeing the very long lines, I decided that I could visit this museum when I come back to Paris with John :)

Lunch was crepes and panini on a park bench and then back to the hotel for our daily afternoon rest. I had read about the Montparnesse Tower, which some people claim provides a view as good as, if not better than, the Eiffel Tower. It is a skyscraper (56 stories high) that looks out of place in Paris, but the view was fantastic (looking at the Eiffel Tower from this building is nicer than looking at this building from the Eiffel Tower!). We then walked to the rooftop of this building, which reminded us of “Top of the Rock” in NYC.

A shopping mall borders this building and the girls were delighted to see price tags with single (or at least smaller!) digits on them. Chelsea bought a shirt. I had promised the girls that I would treat them to a nice dinner on our last night, since they had both been so great about traipsing all over the city. We had a dinner which was not only delicious, but very entertaining as well. At the table next to us, a very well-intentioned gentleman was giving English language lessons to a young French women. He had a list of words he was defining for her and would give her a sentence using each word. We could hardly contain ourselves with some of his examples: “cart” - “I cart my mobile phone with me wherever I go.” and “darn” - an expletive, as well as a verb “Your grandmother darns your socks.”

We made our way back to the hotel, where we finished packing, played six games of B.S. (Chelsea won 4, Jana won 4, and YES, I lost all of them!) We had a wonderful trip and are glad you shared our journey with us!