Grandchild in Paris, Day 3

Our Paris Hotel, Hotel Moderne, was situated beautifully. Near the metro (subway), The Sorbonne, Notre Dame. There was a big buffet breakfast which included: ham, cheese, croissants, french baquettes (Josh’s favorite), yoghurt, juice, coffee. They also had a computer with free internet so Josh was able to Instant Message back and forth to his parents and friends in the U.S. Everyone got a big kick out of that. View image Another important part of each morning, was racing to the Internet to checkout White Sox scores. This was Labor Day Weekend, 2005, and both Josh and ex-Marine are BIG White Sox fans!

Some internet sites I used to help with this trip were Paris Info, and France Guide. Lots of information.

Today, we were heading out to Fontainebleau. I wanted Josh to see a real chateau, and have a chance to get out to the countryside by train. And, since he is interested in Napoleon…thought it would be interesting.

It took several metro connections to get to the Gare de Lyon….RER train to Fontainebleau/Avon…then Bus A to the Chateau.

Josh was most interested in Napoleon’s throne, View image

and bed

Napoleon’s little bed

Fontainbleau is much smaller and intimate than Versailles. The gardens were beautiful, and there were some couples having wedding photos taken by the fountains.

After that, we trained back to Paris and shopped for souvenirs…what else….and sat on a curb in the Student Quarter to eat Gyros. It was Saturday night – you could barely walk down the streets, and restaurants were jam-packed!!

THEN, Josh had his heart set on seeing the illumination of Paris’ monuments. The kicker is they don’t begin illuminating until 9:30 pm and THEN continue at intervals until Midnight. Fortunately (for our exhausted bodies), The Eiffel Tower was one of the first to be illuminated….thank goodness! Unfortunately, the spot I choose to watch Eiffel’s lighting up was right next to Princess Diana’s monument – where the accident took place. This called for lengthy explanations of the accident, how, why, yadda-yadda.

There was no way that I could wait for anything else to light up so we metroed back to Cite (Notre Dame area) for some Haagen-Dazs and people watched until Midnight.

Tomorrow….