On to Paris, a new apartment, and old friends

Day 18 France 2012

Our B&B in Le Bardon was interesting.  Our bedroom was upstairs two steps down from a little sitting room, but the split bathroom was downstairs.  The toilet was in a little room at the foot of the stairs and the shower and sink were down a hall, through a family kitchen, and past the communal dining room.  The door to the shower room had frosted glass and no lock.  I was a little nervous about walking down in my PJs to take a shower with other guests just on the other side of the bathroom door.  However, our host and hostess, Dominique and Nicole, were delightful and very helpful in making suggestions about things to do in the area.  

The courtyard:

Nicole recommended that we stop by a chateau that was not far from Le Bardon.  It was only 10 km away, so we went to see the Chateau of Talcy.  Just outside the town, there was an interesting windmill. Apparently the whole windmill turned into the wind.

There was a group setting up a grandstand getting ready for a concert in the courtyard of the chateau, and the chateau itself was closed, but we were able to get some photos of the outside.

  We saw fields of wheat, oats, sunflowers, corn, and rapeseed along the highway to Paris.

Rapeseed is on the left and wheat on the right.

About 90 km south of Paris, we saw wind turbines as far as you could see on both sides of the road.  There were two rows on each side of the highway.

We arrived in Paris, and Helen found our hotel with no problems at all.  Leon managed the city traffic just great.  The apartment manager met us at the apartment, and we brought up one load of our stuff, then they followed us down to drop off our rental car and brought us back to the apartment and we unloaded the rest of our belongings.  Our apartment is one block from the Eiffel Tower.  

Mark and Vicki got here just a couple of hours after Leon and I got settled in.  We were so excited to see them!  We went down to a little boulangerie/patisserie and bought sandwiches, pizza, and apple tarts for dinner.  We opened a bottle of our St. Emilion wine…goes great with ham sandwiches!   

After dinner, we walked down to the Eiffel Tower.  The sun was just setting and the glow on some of the buildings was really nice for photos.

We came back to the apartment and talked and talked.  They had been awake for 24 hours straight since they had flown from San Francisco to Amsterdam and then on to Paris.  We had a lot of catching up to do.