Last Tango in Paris

Well.  This was it.  Our last day.  Overcast.  France was weeping and sad because we were leaving.  Right.

The day was really fun because we met our new french friends for some visiting and settle up a few things.   So here we are!!!

Rachid (dad)is looking serious.  He has a great sense of humor as does the whole family.  We had a great time together and decided we would keep in touch!!

When they left we headed to our hotel and waited for our friend, Gary and Flo, to arrive from the U.S.  They are just starting their great adventure.  We planned to stay in the same hotel and go to dinner.  They arrived and needed some quiet time.  This gave me an opening to drag Ray to Printemps (I know I am spelling this wrong, sorry.)  It’s a huge department store.  Blocks and blocks.  So we were duly impressed.  And while they were very upscale, I was able to find two scarves to buy!!!  And we had a bite of lunch and watched all the beautiful people prance around the store.  The most amazing thing is that there was a line to buy Givency (I think that was it) purses.  There were about 20 people in queue just to get into the store.  What gave?  Who knows?  Another Parisian mystery.

To find this store was an exercise in patience.   When you emerge from an undisclosed unground location (read Metro), you have no idea where you are in relationship to were you are going.  At least that was the way it was for us.  So at my urging, we asked for directions in a tobacco/lotto/bar because we had gone in to buy a calling card (good move!).  They told us to go up the hill.  When not finding this store, I asked two women on the street.  They looked at me like I was speaking swahili (why does that happen to me all the time?).  Third time was a charm.  Got those directions.   In Paris, it is not so easy.  It’s a huge city.  Lots of people in a rush.  When you visit Paris, you do not visit France.  It’s all together different than the rest of our trip.

But I digress.  We found our way back to the hotel and we all went to a seafood restaurant for dinner.  This did entail some more getting lost but this time we had friends to lead astray.  And we forgot the name of the restaurant.  I knew it started with Le.  Big help.  But we searched and searched and found it and we were happy we did.  It was fabulous.  This was a recommendation from Kris’s (a friend from Lincoln) bother and sister-in-law.  They own Hayes Street Grill, a famous fish restaurant in San Francisco so I knew ahead of time it was going to be a winner.   We are pictured below enjoying a bottle of wine at a sidewalk cafe before dinner at Le …….

See my new scarf?   Below is Flo’s red snapper.  The guys got salmon.

I forgot to take a picture of mine.  And I didn’t take pictures of the first course.  However, I did snap a picture of our last dessert in Paris, first for friends…of course.  And look at our last picture!!  Voila!!

And the trip came to a close except for one thing.  I locked my jewelry in a safe in the room.  This is all the jewelry I brought and never wore, except my fun watches.  Well, couldn’t get the safe open.  Tried and tried.  To no avail.  Finally at 10:30 p.m. went down stairs and got the secret code.  It took one more trip down and a few, “gosh darn it” and “fiddlesticks” to get it open.  We tucked ourselves in after 11.  Had a taxi coming at 4 a.m. so we needed our beauty sleep.  And that was our trip to France!!!

 




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