TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, OUR LAST DAY IN PARIS

Charlie had done all the work necessary with Harsha, so we had the day for the two of us to tour about.  On Tuesdays a lot of the major museums are closed.  The Museum of Modern Art (of the town of Paris), however, is open, so that became number one on the list.  It's located on Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, which would take an hour to walk to.  We decided, in order to have energy to see the museum, and not over tax Chuck's game leg, we'd take Le Metro.

Our first activity was cafe creme and croissants with Geoff.  There were three local cafes we've gone to while we've been here.  Their chairs had different colors - yellow, red, and white.  The cheapest with the least nice coffee and croissants was yellow (the cactus).  The nicest was the white chairs which is where we went.  After breakfast we went the short distance to Hotel de Ville (town hall) where we got Metro 1 line to Franklin Roosevelt.

When we first got out of the Metro station we discovered we were on Champs d'Elysee.  Every major expensive clothing store, shoe store, and miscellaneous store was along our walk.  We found a lovely avenue that led to the museum, and found, the Canadian embassy - and more lovely shops.

The museum, itself is free, if we stayed with the permanent collection.  There was a special exhibit, so we decided, given we had the whole day, to see that too.  This museum is the place where a huge art heist took place a few years ago.  Major impressionist paintings were stolen (5 in all), with a value of millions of Euros.  The permanent collection was very nice.  We then trudged upstairs to see the special exhibit.  WOW.  The artist was called David Altmejd.  He's from Montreal, Canada.  I haven't seen art that I've liked as much as his works in a long time.  He's a sculpture that works with resin, plexiglass, quartz crystals, and lots of other things.  He had lots of figures of almost human form, and a huge piece called "the Flux and the Puddle".  I have a couple of photos of this wonderful work.

The photo above is just a piece of the huge sculpture

Many of the rooms had mirrored walls - the photo above gives a bit of perspective to the size of this work.

After our tour we had lunch at the museum cafe.  Then, because we were very close, we strolled across a bridge and wandered around the base of the Eiffel Tower.  Below are some photos of our stroll.

The outside of Le Musee d'Art Moderne

Charlie near the "Fields of Mars" Champs du Mars

Me

We were at the base of this.  Given the enormous crowds trying to get into it - I'm glad we were just there for the stroll.

We took the Metro back to Geoffs, and relaxed.  For dinner we went to my favorite local restaurant.  We kept referring to it as the restaurant near the doll museum - it's called Le Hangar.  The food is excellent - perfect way to end our Paris trip.

The next day, Wednesday, we took a taxi to Charles de Gaulle airport - flight to Chicago - through Chicago customs.  The immigration has been computerized and isn't too bad.  The customs was chaos.  We had to pick up our bags, go through customs (at every airport I've ever been to, this involves handing a declaration form to a guy and walking out).  In Chicago, there were two interminable lines that snaked around the outside of the luggage carrousels.  A couple of people were told they could go to the front because they had Global Entry.  The people behind us began to go too, and I decided it was our only way to make it to our next flight.  When we got to the customs man, he said that we weren't Global Entry, but didn't have the heart to dump us to the back of the line.  My obnoxious self saved us probably a half an hour.  We need to sign up for Global Entry too!  We made it to our California bound flight with about 15 minutes to spare.  We had to change terminals and go through the TSA line again (it was very strict in Paris).  Easy flight back.  Now we're home.  I believe I need a croissant.  I'll sit out on a chair and a tiny table on Garfield to recreate Paris.