After a few wrong turns, a few circles and directions from a kind woman at a gas station, we were on the highway smugly heading north. Friends had told us about Eze so that is where we exited. Following the signs we wound down to the coast, then we saw signs to Eze village that wound us back up to the level of the highway. We went to the Eze tourist bureau and asked for their assistance with finding a hotel. After an incredible first meal in France at a little bistro, we set off to look at the two recommended hotels that had vacancies. One glance at the rooms and we quickly left. The dollar was certainly worth less here than in Thailand! Realizing that we were getting close to exhaustion, we knew that we needed a hotel quickly. We headed down the windy hill to the coast again, turned south on the coastal rode and immediately found a 3 star hotel overlooking a yacht harbor in Beaulieu-sur-Mar that was in our newly acquired price range. Our room looked out over the harbor:

After a much needed nap, we drove a few kilometers along the coast to the quaint town of St. Jean-Cap-Ferrat for dinner. The coastal rode between these towns was filled with incredible mansions that looked like they were only used as summer homes. We were certainly in the heart of the French gold coast.

After a good night's sleep, we wandered through the town of Beaulieu-sur-Mar - had espresso at one shop, picked up baguettes and pain du chocolate at another. All the necessary ingredients for a French breakfast on our balcony overlooking the Cote-de Azur. Even the pigeons joined us to clean up the crumbs. Looking at a map over breakfast we realized just how jet lagged we had been the day before when it turned out that after our day's drive, we were no more than 15 kilometers from the Nice airport! The first lesson from the day was that we needed at least six hours of sleep in order to read a map. The second lesson was to start all future hotel searches with those that were rated at least 3 and preferably 4 to 5 stars.

Fully awake and well fed, we headed up the coast, driving through all of the towns whose names are so well known - Monico, Monte Carlo, all the way to the French-Italian border. Go to the Italy page for the continuation of our drive.

We're back to France after our month in Italy. Our first stop is St. Paul de Vence, 15 kilometers from Nice again but this time inland. What a beautiful spot! St. Paul de Vence is a perfectly preserved hill village with ramparts rising above green terraces of vineyards and bougainvillea. The old streets are lined by galleries, workshops and boutiques. Of course when we arrived in St. Paul we have ran into another countrywide holiday, but fortunately our second choice hotel had the perfect room for us. We have a phone that can connect to the Internet, a "car wash" shower and a balcony that overlooks the pool. We are set! The owner of our small hotel made dinner reservations for us at a restaurant in St. Paul, The Color Purple. Only 10 tables, two staff (one is the cook) and a menu to die for. The food was the best and the presentation of the food reflected the art focus of the town - almost too nice to eat, but we forced ourselves. Duck, salmon, and lamb accompanied by a rich cabernet. Yes!

The next morning, after weeks of religious art in Italy, we were ready to see some modern art even if it meant a hike up a long hill. We went to the Foundation Maeght, a private foundation/museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. There is a fabulous Giacometti courtyard, Miro labyrinth peopled with sculptures and ceramics, mural mosaics by Chagall, pool and stained glass by Braque, and a fountain by Bury. We loved the pitchfork sculpture - too bad you can't see what adorns the rest of the sculpture! It is in keeping with the barnyard theme. Totally strange, but great!

We are off to the Provence area. We were lucky to get three nights at the Hotel Chateau Des Alpilles in St. Remy de Provence. We actually rearranged our itinerary so that we could stay at the chateau. They only have 15 rooms and are booked through August. When we turned off the main road and saw the entrance to the chateau, we knew that we had made the right decision. Below is the view of the chateau we saw:

Built in the early 19th century, the chateau belonged to one of the oldest families in Arles, the Pichot family. It became a rendezvous for politicians and writers who stayed here. Situated just outside St. Remy the building nestles among numerous rare old trees on the old road. The grounds are vast and include a private chapel converted into apartments, pool and poolhouse with a sauna, fountains, fishing pond, etc. We have what they consider to be one of the small rooms - bigger than what we are used to. Our room is the one with french doors leading out to the balcony directly above the front door. Below is the view from our room, the perfect spot to sit and work on the website with a vase of tulips, a glass of wine and a loaf of crusty French bread:

The town we are in, St. Remy, is where Van Gogh painted 150 works including several of his most famous - the iris and haystack series. Our timing is perfect, the iris are in bloom. Everywhere you look, there were fields of wild iris and red poppies. St. Remy is a very small town, filled with enticing shops and restaurants. Things are done on a small scale. A restaurant we went to had eight tables and locked their door once the tables were filled. They were only interested in one seating of customers and when people rapped on the locked door the owner turned them away with the phrase, "Complete." Quality over quantity.

St. Remy is centrally located in Provence. It is 30 kilometers south of Avignon and 30 kilometers north of Arles. We drove to Avignon to see the French home of the Pope and the Musee Angladon. We learned that when a Frenchman was selected as Pope, he moved "Vatican City" to Avignon.

Avignon is a beautiful walled city with the Papal Palace (above) still a dominant part of the landscape. We toured the immense palace and the gardens. .Also in the very heart of Avignon, in an elegant city mansion, is the Musee Anglandon. It contains the prestigious collection of the art works gathered by the heirs to couturier Jacques Doucet - including paintings by Van Gogh, Cezanne, Modigliani, Picasso, Manet and Degas. Imagine what it was like to live with all of those paintings in your home.

One morning we decided to drive to Arles. To get there we needed to go around the town of St. Remy. As we headed down the street that leads from our chateau to St. Remy, we ran smack into the St. Remy market day. Whoa! The streets were packed. We quickly put our plans on hold and looked for a parking spot. We ended up ignoring the cost of a ticket and parked on the sidewalk 3 blocks from town. Walking to the edge of the main square we were absorbed into the swirl of people. All of the streets and parking lots were filled with merchants selling everything "Provence". Who could ask for more?! Realizing that this was bigger than we had expected, we stopped at the closest cafe and fortified ourselves with an espresso and croissant. Jane was so impatient that we didn't even sit at a table, we just stood at the bar and downed our coffee. First stop was the area filled with tablecloths, placemats, breadbaskets, and bolts of fabric - everything in the traditional Provençal patterns. Next to the fabrics were the soap vendors: lavender soap in blocks, in cubes, in the shape of bees... Then straw baskets and bags and finally the food. We immediately decided to have a picnic lunch and were faced with the impossible task of deciding what to buy. Roasted chickens, rabbit and duck. Cold meats and pates of every kind. So many cheeses - ones that we were familiar with and ones that we had never heard of. Barrel after barrel of olives all with different flavors. And the breads - baguettes, olive breads, rustic loaves, herb breads, rolls, croissants. Then we were faced with the produce section. Fruit that was picked ripe that morning - strawberries, apricots, cherries, grapes, raspberries. And sunflower seeds and pistachios. We wanted to buy enough for picnics for the next month. And to think that market day occurs in St. Remy every Tuesday! This was enough reason to stay for another week or for the entire summer.

By now it was almost noon and Tim decided that we had had enough. We lugged our bags back to the car expecting a ticket, but instead found someone waiting to take our "parking" place. Back on the road to Arles, we got sidetracked by a sign pointing to Beaux and stopped outside of the old town to picnic. What a feast! We never did make it to Arles. It started to rain and we jumped back into the car and returned to our room at the chateau, spending the rest of the afternoon reading and happily nibbling on our morning purchases.

We received an email that our good friend Diane would be joining us our last evening in Provence . As soon as we read the email, Tim looked outside and saw the usual parade of people driving down the path asking about vacancies. He immediately called downstairs to see if they had a room available and we were fortunate that the chateau had one room not booked that night. We knew that we had become trusted guest and we were given the key to the chateau since we would be returning from the airport a bit late and they usually lock the main door at midnight. Sort of like having the front door key to your house, if your house is a French chateau!

After taking Diane on a quick tour of St. Remy we left we did a long day's drive to reposition ourselves in the Dordogne region. While we covered quite a distance, the scenery was beautiful. And you never knew when you would round a corner and find a castle straight our of the Crusades. This is the view from our lunch picnic spot.

In the Dordogne region, we centered ourselves outside of Sarlat. Sarlat features the highest concentration of medieval, Renaissance and 17th century facades of any town in France. It also has one of the best food markets in France since Sarlat lies at the heart of the nation's foie gras and walnut trades. These typical Perigord products absorb much of the town's attention and supply a good portion of its revenue. And they became a part of our every meal! Everywhere you went you saw signs and store windows advertising fois Gras:

Other local specialties are black truffles and wild mushrooms. All of the basic food groups! Needless to say, we did our best to eat our way through the Dordogne.

We did stop eating long enough to visit some of the famous towns in the Dordogne, in particular Rocamadour. Built on a rocky peak above the Alzou Valley, Rocamadour has been a center of pilgrimage since the 13th century. It is a phenomenal view as you round the last turn in the road - a. cluster of medieval houses, towers and battlements seem to sprout from the base of the cliff.

Pilgrims would climb a broad flight of steps to the chapel on the top of the mountain, on their knees, stopping at the beautiful little alcoves with the stations of the cross. We walked the stairs.

On our way back from Rocamadour we saw a small farm that was selling foie Gras We realized that their sign advertising fresh foie Gras was authentic - the geese were in a yard across the road!

Further along the road we stopped at a small shop that had a sign outside advertising truffles. It turned out that this shop not only sold truffles and foie Gras but it also had a small room where they put these delicacies into tins and sold them for export. After a quick improvised tour, we made our purchases and headed back to Domme for dinner!



We did our best eating and sleeping at L'Esplanade in Domme, right in the heart of the medieval village, L'Esplanade is a homey hotel with quiet rooms that have gorgeous views over the Dordogne Valley - see the picture above that was taken from our room. The hotel and the restaurant are run by Chef Rene Gillard and his wife Monique, their daughter Sophie and son-in-law Pascal. The hotel restaurant also has the panoramic view of the valley but somehow the incredible recipes distract you from the view. This was our first experience with a Michelin-starred cuisine. The presentation of the food was absolutely beautiful. It was even served on Limoge china! But that didn't keep us just looking. The food was so incredible that we ate there two nights in a row. What a feast! We ate hot fois grois, cold fois grois, fois grois in a terrine, fois grois in a salad, duck, lamb, truffles, fish, elaborate desserts and luscious wines from the Bordeaux region. Picture a dish of lamb stuffed with foie Gras and truffles baked in a puff pastry with a reduction sauce of wild mushrooms - that's what Jane ordered the first evening! This was the first time on our trip that our dinner cost more than our room! (OK, our room was under $75!!)

Our last morning in the Sarlat area just happened to coincide with the Saturday market day. What timing! Diane and I sent Tim off for a bike ride and we took the car to town, agreeing to meet up at our favorite wine store 3 hours later. I quickly learned that market days truly reflect the individual regions. Unlike St. Remy, there were no Provençal fabrics, but a few stalls with clothes and straw baskets but mainly a heavy emphasis on food: oysters, mussels, snails, smoked duck, fois grois, mushrooms as well as breads, cheeses, meats and produce. Market day in Sarlat attracts locals and tourists from throughout the region which we found out as we walked shoulder to shoulder through the streets picking out the choicest foods for our lunch. Food is definitely taken seriously here!

Leaving Sarlat, with another basket of food, we drove to the 13th century medieval village of Cordes-sur-Ciel to find our hotel, Le Grand Ecuyer. The hotel was an ancient hunting lodge of the Count of Toulouse, complete with a suit of armor in the entryway. Le Grand Ecuyer is a classified historic monument transformed into a comfortable, elegant and atmospheric hotel with only 13 rooms. The dining room is medieval in style, with old stone walls and tiled floors, dark beamed ceiling, etc. We were able to continue our exploration of fine French food since the restaurant has a star from Michelin and two toques from Gault-Millau. Chef Yves Thuries, who owns the hotel, has his own cookbook and gourmet magazine. Not only was the village fascinating and the food outstanding, but the view was also great. We were so high up that we were above the morning mist. This was what we saw from our room early in the morning:

After four quick but wonderful nights with Diane, we said good-bye to her at the Toulouse airport and drove north to the town of Limoge. Stopping at a payphone we called to see if there was a room available at the Chateau de Nieuil. We were happy to hear that they had 2 rooms left. We told them to hold the less expensive room and hopped back in the car, only to promptly get lost and not arrive for another hour!

We finally saw the sign pointing to the Chateau. Driving through a large iron gate in an imposing stone wall we headed down a long private road, past stables, until we finally reached the circle drive in front of the chateau. This is what we saw!

As you can imagine by now Tim was asking me where I had taken us and how much the rooms were! He didn't get any reassurance when a gentleman in a blue blazer came over to welcome us - the owner of the chateau. A nice touch that you don't find at the Hyatt! He took us inside, had staff show us the two rooms available (not really believing that we would want the less expensive room) and then led us to a table outside for a drink of sparkling wine to refresh ourselves after the drive. We could get used to this kind of treatment! By the time we had finished our drink our luggage was upstairs and our room prepared. We took a walk around the grounds and promptly decided to stay an extra night. Then Tim was off for a bike ride and Jane for a swim. Check out Tim finding me at the pool in order to show off the Bianci bicycle and the Bianci shorts topped off with a Tech Museum shirt and hat:



This was the most elegant place we had stayed on the entire trip. It is truly a castle, it even has a moat. This was the home where the French King Francois I received his guests for hunting parties back in the 16th century. The chateau is located in the middle of a vast estate with 40 hectares of woods, far from any noise. There are 15 rooms and suites. Steep-roofed, turreted and surrounded by parkland stretching away beyond its formal garden and ornamental moat, it is the picture of elegance.

Inside it is appropriately furnished throughout with antiques, porcelain and tapestries. It could be embarrassingly pretentious. but the good news is that it is not at all pretentious or intimidating. The chateau has been in the Bodinaud family for over 100 years and the hotel is very much a family concern. All of the staff got to know us. Everyone we talked with, in the restaurant and at the reception area, knew about Tim's twice a day bike ride and always inquired about what he saw. They even found a place in the stables for Tim to store his bike and gave him the key in case the door was locked.

We enjoyed this chateau so much that I hope you forgive me for going on about the place - skip the next few paragraphs if it bores you.

You enter the large reception hall and discover an impressive marble spiral staircase that leads to the guest rooms. Ours was on the third floor (otherwise known as the attic!).

Richly decorated mantelpieces, giant gilded mirrors, impressive wooden paneling, wallhangings and crystal chandeliers recall glorious days long gone. Swallows nest at top of the reception hall guarantee their graceful flight in and out during the day. The stained glass windows in the entry way dates to the 17th century.

The garden is surrounded by a moat and there is a 10 acre pond for fishing in the park. Nearby, shaded by trees, are the swimming pool and tennis courts, herb garden and vegetable garden. Mrs. Luce Bodinaud and her assistant Pascal Pressac make extensive use of the vegetables and herbs in the chateau restaurant which has received a Michelin star since 1978. In the hall, Jean-Michel's extensive collection of over 300 cognacs takes pride of place. And there is even an art and antique gallery in the old stables of the castle.



We decided that since we were so far from town, and since the restaurant had a Michelin star, and since we were getting lazy, that we would take the half board and eat our breakfasts and dinners there. It was the perfect choice! Dinner was a multi-course affair which included puff pastries, shrimp and avocado, foie Gras (again!), smoked salmon with caviar, entrees of lamb and beef in truffle sauce, a cart of cheeses, almond cookies and strawberries in cognac. And that was only the first night!! The wine list equaled the incredible food with bottles from the Bordeaux area. We splurged on this bottle and knew that we had made a good selection when Jean-Michel came over and expressed his approval of our choice! If you see this wine in your local store - buy it!

We thought that nothing could equal dinner but we had to rethink that when we had breakfast on the front lawn under a huge magnolia tree.

The only thing that could pry Jane away from the chateau was the lure of Limoge. We went off in search of her favorite limoge boxes, starting at the Haviland china museum. Boy were we sure surprised when we found entire streets filled with shops selling "Limoge china" and a third of them had the little boxes that we were looking for. Lesson learned: limoge is not the name of a shop or a brand but an entire city of porcelain shops, all with dishes and boxes. Jane was in heaven! The shop pictured below is an example of what we saw. It extends for another four rooms with plates, bowls, cups and platters stacked in huge piles on the floor and on racks. It was impossible to see them all, but Jane tried! Of course all of the shops were happy to ship your purchases for you.

Having had just a taste of the richness of the Chateau de Nieuil and the Limoge/Cognac area, we headed to the Loire Valley to continue our exploration of how the French royalty lived. The extravagant châteaux are scattered throughout the route from Cognac to Paris as the Kings and Queens built a new countryhome or hunting lodge whenever they tired of the old one. And of course one chateau had to be bigger than the previous one. The chateau below was our view from our lunch spot, the third chateau that we had seen that day!

Getting on chateau overload (which Jane did not think was possible!), we headed for our next small motel. We found it between the beautiful châteaux of Amboise and Chambord, the Domaine des Hauts de Loire (pictured below).

This was once the magnificent hunting lodge of Count of Rostaing, built on the site of a feudal castle in the last century. A splendid 70 hectare wooded park and forest paths invite you to stroll in the grounds. The hotel even provides a helicopter landing area. Once again we requested their smallest room. Our window looked out to the pond with the swans and the forest beyond. Not bad for another attic view!

Leaving the chateau and hunting lodge life behind, it was finally time for Paris. We were looking forward to 8 days in the city, but first needed to navigate through the notorious Paris traffic is notorious and one-way streets to find our hotel in the center of town. Going on blind luck, with only 1 missed turn and 1 stop to ask for directions we found the Hyatt Madeleine in the Opera Quarter. We were so happy to see the bellboy that we almost hugged him. He on the other hand almost ran when he saw that our luggage filled the entire car and included a bicycle.

While not a chateau, the Hyatt Madeleine was the next best thing. It is a small hotel for a Hyatt, only 80 rooms, located in the most exclusive neighborhood. The hotel is so popular that when I called to book a room 4 months prior, these two nights were the only consecutive nights available for the entire month of May.

We were looking forward to Paris not only to see the city but also because Tim's daughter Michele was joining us for the week. We drove to the airport to pick up Michele and to "sell back" our car. The great arrangement through which we bought the Peugeot a month ago in Nice allowed us to sell back the car at the airport in Paris. When we handed in the paperwork they didn't even look at the car, just thanked us and wished us a happy holiday. Hertz was never this easy.

We met Michele outside of immigration and took our first of many trips using public transportation. Little did we know that we would all soon become experts on the Paris subway system.

Even though it was late afternoon by the time we got back to the hotel, we were in Paris and we were not staying in a hotel room. We walked to the Place de la Concorde ( the site where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were beheaded; now a 20 acre square with a ferris wheel and 3,200 year old obelisk from Luxor) and to the Seine. We walked by the exclusive clothing stores and stared at the Hermes store windows. We walked until it was time to clean up for dinner.

The next day it was time for a bit of culture. We bought a three day museum pass and took off to see a bit of the Musee du Louvre. The Louvre is incredible - 30,000 works of art divided into 7 main collections. These pictures show the size of the building (all of the buildings below are a part of the Louvre) itself and the controversial pyramid entrance:

We started our Louvre experience with some of the most famous works - the Mona Lisa, painted in 1504 by Leonardo di Vinci and the Venus de Milo, carved in the 3rd century BC.

Just as we were getting on museum overload, we left the Louvre and walked to the Seine to catch a boat tour. It was the perfect way to get our orientation to this amazing city.

Late in the afternoon we headed back to the Hyatt Madeleine but were stopped short when we ran into the Fauchon, the famous food shop of Paris. Tim took off for the hotel while Michele and I went inside and walked the aisles looking at all of the exotic foods for sale. When we finished with the many small shops that make up Fauchon, we wandered into the other specialty food shops on the block. Two hours later we made our way to the hotel marveling over what we had seen and comparing it to our grocery stores at home. Sort of like comparing Motel 6 and the chateaux we had been staying at.

The Hyatt was extremely nice, but it was another hotel and we wanted to experience Paris as much as possible. Before leaving home we had rented an apartment for a week. After a great deal of debate on which arrondissement would be the best location for a week, we ended up selecting an apartment based upon its view of the Seine. We left the Hyatt and moved to our apartment on the left bank, directly on the Quai Augustine, alongside the Seine. Look at the picture below, find the Seine and the double arched bridge over the Seine. Our apartment is in the middle of the block between the building with the orange bottom and the bridge. (This picture was taken from Notre Dame. Like the Eiffel Tower in the distance?!)

Moving all of our stuff to the apartment was no easy task. It took two taxis to move all of our luggage! We were quite a sight, unloading suitcases, boxes and a bicycle on the street outside of a tiny door; punching in a code into a box on the street; pulling all of the luggage into the entryway and then trying to find where the key had been left for us. This was not a modern apartment building, but rather one of the old buildings that "look" like Paris. We found the keys and tried all of them to finally find the one that fit the door that led out of the entryway and into the actual building. That's when we realized just how old the building was. The elevator was an old rickety thing that was so tiny that it was a squeeze for one person. One person and a suitcase was a claustrophobic trick. And no way would the bicycle fit inside. Of course our apartment was on the third floor, which was actually four floors up. It was clear from the way that the wood on the stairs was worn thin in the middle of each step that most of the building's residents avoided the elevator. After each of us experienced one elevator trip, we also opted for the stairs!

After repeated trips up and down the stairs we were finally in our Paris apartment. Below you can see the view from our windows:

The apartment has two sets of French doors that look out to the Seine.

There is a queen size bed in the room behind the striped couch and both couches convert into beds.

The kitchen has modern appliances and even a combination washing machine/dryer.

Once we settled into our apartment we went back to the Musee du Louvre for another round of culture. Then it was time to act like a Parisian and shop for dinner. What an experience. Rather than a single grocery store we bought our food from the different vendors that line the streets - white asparagus, baby lettuces, perfect tomatoes, freshly baked bread, roasted chicken. We ate dinner looking out our windows at the sunset over the Seine. We were set for the week!

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The next morning we all woke with new understanding of what it means to live on the tourist route. While we loved being on the Seine, we didn't realize that it would mean that our apartment would be caught in the floodlights from the dinner cruises that floated down the Seine until midnight! By the time the week was over we were able to identify the more popular boats and even the ones preferred by private parties and wedding receptions. It was a small price to pay for such a great location.

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Since we were going to experience all of Paris, we needed to find the little things that aren't in Fodors. Well we found them. The postal workers in our arrondissement were striking and not picking up any mail. (That's why your postcards were late.) Then the security guards went on strike which prevented the ATM's from being stocked with money and they actually ran out of cash. To top it off, the day we went to the Arc de Triomphe, Basque independence protesters took over the monument unfurling banners and jumping over the side to hang from ropes. While it was exciting, it also effectively closing the monument for the day. Welcome to France!

France is easily the country that wins when it comes to the extremes of the sublime to the bizarre. Take the Pompidou Center. The Picasso Fountain outside should have been enough of a clue as to the unusual works of art that we would find inside. Too bad this picture doesn't capture the twin sprays of water coming out of the mermaid portion of the fountain! The Pompidou is the modern art museum filled with works by Matisse, Picasso, Miro and Warhol. We all agreed that the strangest was a work of art that consisted of two blankets on the ground that appeared to have someone sleeping underneath. The blankets moved as they seemed to breath. That one made the fountain pictured above seem ordinary!

Needing a bit of traditional art after the Pompidou, we headed for Notre Dame Cathedral. The Cathedral is huge and the stained glass windows are incredible.

After walking through the inside of the Cathedral, we climbed the 387 stairs to the the south tower where the famous bell is housed and the legendary gargoyles gaze menacingly from the cathedral's ledge. Not even Disney could have come up with such evil looking characters, and on a church?!

By now we had convinced Tim that we had postponed our shopping long enough. We took the subway out to Marche aux Puces de St. Ouen, 15 acres of antique stores. Amazing! After a full morning of antiques, Tim ran back to the apartment and Michele and Jane, having just gotten started, took off for a special antique show that had been advertised in all of the papers. We quickly saw that the French view this type of show as a place to extend their daily walk. The show was held in a series of tents, close quarters with the hundreds of people and the stalls crammed with furniture, china and glassware. But that didn't stop the locals from bringing their dogs! Not just the little poodle dogs that they carried in bags over their shoulders, but also big hounds pulling at their leashes. Big dogs and antiques inside tents? Not in the U.S.

What is a trip to Paris without the Eiffel Tower? We used our accomplished metro skills and trained over to the ET. It is huge! We decided to skip the line for the elevator and we took to the stairs - 345 steps to first tier, another 359 steps to 2nd tier. By the time we got to the observation deck on the second tier we were 376 feet in the air. This is the view of Paris from 376 feet up:

The Eiffel Tower was so incredible that we decided to come back at night. It was well worth the return subway trip to catch this view. Voila!

Now that we had seen the Louvre, the Seine and the Eiffel Tower, we needed to take it over the top with Versailles. We got ahead of the crowds and took the early train to the Chateau de Versailles, picked up an audio guide took off to explore a small portion of the rooms. We saw the chapel,

the main apartments on the first floor (this is the canopy of a bed)!

and the famous 233 foot long Hall of Mirrors where the treaty of Versailles was ratified in 1919 ending W.W.I.

We saw enough gold and crystal to hold us for months. It was time for something less ostentatious. On the way back from Versailles we stopped at the Musee Marmottan, a private museum filled with paintings by Monet. The perfect balance for the elaborate Versailles. Never before have we seen so many of Monet's paintings in one place. And they were some of Monet's best including Impression - Sunrise (from which comes the term Impressionist), a painting of the Rouen Cathedral, several from the Waterlillies series, The Weeping Willow, etc.

Enough culture! We decided to devote a day to real shopping. We all started out at Galaries Lafayette and then each of us took off in a different direction. Between us we covered all of the major French department stores - Au Printemps, Au Bon Marche, Galeries Lafayette and La Samaritaine. French department stores are a trip, especially the lingerie department. They take their underwear seriously! Counter after counter of beautifully displaced bras and matching thongs, couches for you to rest while making a selection and men having serious discussions with saleswomen about lingerie sets without their wives or girlfriends present. It takes a while to remember to convert to the metric system when trying on lingerie - 36 inches translates to 95 centimeters!!! What a way to impress someone at home!!

We hated to end our time in France but Michele had to return home and we were longing for some sun. France was a perfect compliment to our time in Italy. The similarities and contrasts kept amazing us. But there is no place like Provence, Burgundy, Loire Valley and, of course, Paris.