À bientôt

Well it’s my last night in Paris and I am back at the hotel trying my best to keep from getting a cold. I can feel it coming. Oh no! I want to have my taste buds for Italy. The pharmacist nearby gave me some little supplements to try and keep it from arriving. Fingers crossed, but I do believe I am at the point of no return. Drat!

Here is a short version of my last couple of days…

Yesterday I left early in the morning to Montmartre to see Sacre Coeur and walk around the area. The church is so high on a hill that you can see all of Paris from it. Since I went early in the morn, most of the city was still under a haze, most likely pollution.

On my way back to the metro station I saw the Moulin Rouge. I took a photo, but it doesn’t look that great in daylight. Plus, there are so many strip joints and sex shops on that street. It’s kinda seedy. Sorry, I didn’t get a picture of the sign for Pussy’s strip club. I wanted to, but too many people around. It was a great sign though, trust me. 😉

I then went to Centre Pompidou, but I was way too early so I ended up walking down Rue de Rivoli and I never got back to it. Oh well, I wanted to see it, but I guess you can’t fit everything in. Although, I did fit in another trip to Berthillon, the ice cream parlor. Yum!

This morning I bought a ticket to the Monet exhibit from the concierge at the hotel. I’m glad I did because it put me second in line. The line up to buy tickets went around the block. Whoa nelly, that exhibit was amazing!!! Definitely a highlight of my trip. They had paintings from London, Toronto, Ottawa, New York, Chicago, Boston, Harvard, Yale, etc, etc. What a treat!

They also put all of Monet’s series beside each other so you could really see how he painted the same subjects at different times of the day. It was just stunning. There must have been around 100 of his paintingsf. Some of the highlights for me were his series of haystacks, London’s Thames river, woman with parasol, and of course the waterlilies. He had one still life of chrysanthemums that I also loved as the colour was so vibrant.

So, that was Paris. Didn’t get to see as much as I wanted, but did get to thoroughly enjoy a beautiful, artistic, laid back city. I loved it!

Oh yeah, I cannot even count on one hand how many times I saw people walking down the street carrying a full baguette and just taking random bites from it. Just something you don’t see back home.