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This was the first stop on our tour.I have wanted to go to Europe since I was 13 and I was finally there. Yahoo!!! It was worth the sixteen hour flight with a drunk snoring man sitting next to me for half of the trip. He magically woke up everytime the bar cart passed by.
I met the other tour members at 5:00 p.m. The place we are staying, Hotel Beaugency is nice. I have a view of the Eiffel Tower from my bathroom window. It is good to be Dawnya. I was a little anxious about the whole tour group thing. I am a fly by the seat of my pants kind of gal. But, the tour guide, Christoph has a great sense of humor and the other tour members are a diverse and fun group. We had dinner together and then a Seine river cruise. The Eiffel Tower sparkled like a Christmas tree at night. Beautiful.
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The next day we went to St. Chapelle, Notre Dam and the Louvre. My favorite painting was "The Coronation of Napoleon". It had amazing detail and use of color. In the afternoon I walked the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe then to the Eiffel Tower. I managed to get lost, but according to Rick Steves, getting lost is part of the adventure. It was fun and forced me to use the french I learned in high school to get directions. Airhead, me , I left my phrase book (and all my other tour books) in Idaho. Man, were my legs were tired by the end of that day. Bon Dieu!
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We visited the Orsay museum on our last morning in Paris. It is full of the Impressionist painters, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh, etc. I knew about many of these famous paintings, but it wasn't a painting that made the biggest "Impression" on me. It was the Salle des Fetes (Grand Ballroom) that transported me to another time and place. The opulence and beauty of the marble, chandeliers and sculptures let me know I wasn't in Idaho anymore! After the pleasure of the Orsay, we met our great Belgiun bus driver, Ronnie and headed for Beaune.
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"How ya'gonna keep'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?"
Sam M. Lewis and Joe Young
World War I song
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