Deb,
Just returned from our wonderful 7 day trip to Paris with my son and daughter. It was a great experience. I think we walked about 100 miles during the stay. Attached is a photo of us on a very nice dinner cruise ship. Live entertainment, floor to ceiling windows. You can’t look out windows here and see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Napoleon’s Paris home all in one night! From left to right, that is me, my daughter Lindsey (20), my son’s fiancée Michelle, my son Justin (23) and our friend from Paris Antoine. Antoine stayed with us for the summer of 2001 and 2002 at our home in Chittenango. We had not seen him for 6 years. He is now a nuclear engineer working on France’s next generation of nuclear reactors.
My son Justin has been going out with Michelle since the 7th grade and he proposed to her while we in Paris, so that was another exciting development. Burned through a lot of cell phone time notifying all of the family and friends about that. The engagement was a long time in the planning and our family kept the secret well. Everyone had a camera and we took hundreds of digital photos and a few rolls of 35 mm, those however are in question because the security guard at the Paris airport refused to hand inspect them and insisted on x-raying the lot. My daughter was near tears over that.
Our rented home in Paris was stunning, one block from the Louvre, very large (by Paris standards) and exquisitely decorated with antiques and very beautiful tapestries. Based on the number of decorating shops that we saw I would say that the French are into home decorating in a major way. Certainly based on what we saw at Versailles the Kings and Queens were!! We had a private tour guide for the Versailles tour so we were able to gain access to some areas not normally open to the public which was fun. Since we were there on Sunday we also got to experience the classical music and fountain display. Hard to believe that they folks were living like this when we were still living in log cabins. No wonder that did not take us very seriously.
The weather was mostly great, a few cloudy days, some light sprinkles, in the 70’s almost the entire time. As you will see in the Versailles picture that I attached, the sky looked very menacing, but an hour later it was bright sun.
We ended our visit with a great dinner at the ultra modern Georges Restaurant atop the Pompidou center. From the terrace where we ate we experienced a sweeping view of Paris. On the way back home in the Metro we ran into a very talented string ensemble from the Paris fine arts school playing some Vivaldi, not something that you see every day.
One final thing. We watched the most impressive fireworks display that I have ever seen from a bridge over the Seine River. This was in celebration of Bastille Day on Monday July 14th. It must have costs millions to put on.
All in all it was a simply spectacular vacation.
Just returned from our wonderful 7 day trip to Paris with my son and daughter. It was a great experience. I think we walked about 100 miles during the stay. Attached is a photo of us on a very nice dinner cruise ship. Live entertainment, floor to ceiling windows. You can’t look out windows here and see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Napoleon’s Paris home all in one night! From left to right, that is me, my daughter Lindsey (20), my son’s fiancée Michelle, my son Justin (23) and our friend from Paris Antoine. Antoine stayed with us for the summer of 2001 and 2002 at our home in Chittenango. We had not seen him for 6 years. He is now a nuclear engineer working on France’s next generation of nuclear reactors.
My son Justin has been going out with Michelle since the 7th grade and he proposed to her while we in Paris, so that was another exciting development. Burned through a lot of cell phone time notifying all of the family and friends about that. The engagement was a long time in the planning and our family kept the secret well. Everyone had a camera and we took hundreds of digital photos and a few rolls of 35 mm, those however are in question because the security guard at the Paris airport refused to hand inspect them and insisted on x-raying the lot. My daughter was near tears over that.
Our rented home in Paris was stunning, one block from the Louvre, very large (by Paris standards) and exquisitely decorated with antiques and very beautiful tapestries. Based on the number of decorating shops that we saw I would say that the French are into home decorating in a major way. Certainly based on what we saw at Versailles the Kings and Queens were!! We had a private tour guide for the Versailles tour so we were able to gain access to some areas not normally open to the public which was fun. Since we were there on Sunday we also got to experience the classical music and fountain display. Hard to believe that they folks were living like this when we were still living in log cabins. No wonder that did not take us very seriously.
The weather was mostly great, a few cloudy days, some light sprinkles, in the 70’s almost the entire time. As you will see in the Versailles picture that I attached, the sky looked very menacing, but an hour later it was bright sun.
We ended our visit with a great dinner at the ultra modern Georges Restaurant atop the Pompidou center. From the terrace where we ate we experienced a sweeping view of Paris. On the way back home in the Metro we ran into a very talented string ensemble from the Paris fine arts school playing some Vivaldi, not something that you see every day.
One final thing. We watched the most impressive fireworks display that I have ever seen from a bridge over the Seine River. This was in celebration of Bastille Day on Monday July 14th. It must have costs millions to put on.
All in all it was a simply spectacular vacation.
