September 18: Fortunately, the Paris discussed in the following post was not typical of our experience of this wonderful city. Suffice to say that it did not disappoint.
Paris is a city that invites walking, and we certainly did our share of exploring on foot. After figuring out how to use the Metro system to reach our starting point, Kate and I wandered for most of the day through Luxembourg Gardens, past Notre Dame, around Montmartre and Isle de la Cite. at the end of each day we had memorable meals, the first at Bofinger and then on our last night at Restaurant Paul in the Place Dauphine. Paris can be a wonderfully romantic city and having Kate with me to share the city added an exciting new dimension to my time there.
That said, it is also a city that attracts thousands of tourists. We visited Trocadero on our first day and there must have been 5,000 people looking across the Seine toward the Eiffel Tower. Accessing the Tower required running a gauntlet of dozens of people all hawking the same souvenirs of the city: all of it schlock. Understandably, there was security everywhere we went, and crowds of gawking people were omnipresent. While this may add something to the “excitement” of the city, after a while I found it very tiring and irritating. I was ready to leave when the time came.
As Kate, Sava and Christy were flying home, I made my way to Avignon on the TGV and then to St. Remy to get my bike out of its’ brief rest in storage. I then spent 2 days in Venasque a hilltop town not far from where we had rented the house. There is one hotel, two restaurants, a couple of artists selling their works from galleries, several cats and not a lot more. The focal point of the town is the fountain, and the adjacent small cafe. At night, the only noise I could hear was the steady trickle of water from the fountain echoing through the streets. After the intensity of Paris, it was a welcome relief.