Le Seau Francais

 AU REVOIR November 1 The Cross of Lorraine at La Patine/Juno Beach Time to say, "Goodbye" to the land of our bucket list trips and head home. We had done a commendable job of packing and getting ourselves ready. Susan decided that to complete the experience of Paris she should check out the little balcony outside our 5th floor window ... and did. Given my healthy respect for (some might say  fear of ) heights, I did not feel such a need.  Our Albar balcony Instead I went down and "settled up" with the hotel, then we wheeled our luggage down and awaited our driver. This one had had a charisma bypass and didn't seem particularly interested in earning a gratuity, but he got us to Charles de Gaulle inside of an hour. The lines at Air France were daunting, and I was a bit apprehensive about the checking in and boarding process. Fortunately I remembered that our Delta Sky Priority membership, courtesy of my wife's dedication to flying business class, translated t...

    ONE DAY MORE October 31 Some of you may recognize the phrase used as today's title. It's a song from the powerful musical based on Victor Hugo's classic,  Les Miserables , of which the last 3 lines are ... And that's what we had -- one more day to enjoy Paris and France. We had planned to taper down our pace, and today the only thing to which we were committed was a visit to the Palace of Versailles. We had our tickets, courtesy of the Museum Pass, and we had a reservation to begin our tour at 10:00AM. According to all sources, it would take us about an hour to get from GSL to Versailles, and we'd begin by Metro before transferring to a suburban train. We had a light breakfast, then got away on time. Traffic on the Metro was heavy because it was rush hour, but the train was not crowded. Oh, and as I had mentioned, we were out of days on our Metro Visite pass, so had to buy round trip tickets to Versailles and back, which again were reasonably priced (though ther...

  MUSEES & MONUMENTS October 30 Having slept a tad later than our Paris norm today and having fortified ourselves with strong French coffee (me) and tea (Susan), we readied ourselves to use the last of the 3 days of our Metro Visite pass. We would be getting our money's worth and convenience from it and from the Paris Museum Pass we bought before leaving, visiting two of the major art museums, the Musee de l'Orangerie and the Musee d'Orsay this morning. In terms of reputation and attraction to tourists, these 2 art museums are seen to be "nipping at the heels" of the Louvre. [ I should add that although Susan and I are both the children of mothers who painted and drew, we inherited none of their talent. Our knowledge of art is likewise limited (although like most who took the "crip" course, I did make an A in an art appreciation elective in 1967), but we fancy ourselves art  appreciators ,  i.e. , we know what we like. ] Disembarking after the 10 min...