Au revoir

Rodin's "The Thinker" statue

Hmmm, as I was looking at Rodin's statue "The Thinker" today, I was thinking that today will be my last post and that means that I'm heading home soon. As much as I miss everyone, I am not yet ready to come home. Is there any way I can get another 6 weeks vacation?  Mais non, all good things must come to an end so I'll just have to accept my fate. It's been a great 6 weeks and we're already planning on next trip.

The Rodin Museum

It's so sad to see what's happening at home with the riots. We were walking around today and encountered a large protest of civil servants marching to protest reduced salaries and pensions. It seems to be happening everywhere in Europe. They were using smoke flares and flash bombs and the crowd was growing quite large. The riot police were setting up around us so we figured we'd better take cover so ducked into the peaceful Rodin museum and walked around the gardens for awhile. By the time we came out, the crowd had moved on.

The Eiffel tower

And again ....

Other than the protest, our last day in Paris has been quite lovely. Even the sun has been shining for most of the day. The breeze blew the clouds away. We walked over to the Eiffel tower today to see it up close in daylight. It's quite impressive in the daytime as well. On our way, we encountered two separate scammers who found a "gold" ring on the ground and offered to sell it to us for cheap. I'd read about the scam in the travel books but was quite surprised to have it happen twice to me. I'm sure they find an unsuspecting tourist who is willing to buy the ring for a great price.

We toured the Musee de l'Orangerie that displayed works of great artists like Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, etc. It was really great to see such wonderful works of art and it was a nice change of pace from the Renaissance paintings that we've seen so much of recently.

Au revoir mes amies. Until next time. Thanks for following our blog. We hope you have enjoyed it.

Sue and Ira