Paris Treasures

Team starrett is flagging a little and welcomed a later, 9am start today. Our tourist French is improving and I successfully requested a coffee with milk from the waiter. Of course when he spoke back in French I was useless, but it arrived as ordered, so I think I had it right. Our first destination was Notre Dame Cathedral. We arrived in the middle of a service when a soloist was singing. The music continued for most of our visit. it was very beautiful and made it quite special. For Easter, their main relic, the crown of thorns, was on display, so I lit a candle there. The boys scrounged two euros for a souvenir coin with Pope John Paul on one side and Pope Frances on the other. Who knows what they will do with that. We continued on to the Louvre and spent about an hour and a half there viewing the highlights including the medieval walls underground, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory and of course the Mona Lisa. it is a beautiful building with wonderful treasures, but crowded as it was the Easter break and it was raining. We elected to go back to the hotel after the tour rather than stay at the Louvre. We headed out to the food hall at Galleries Lafayette for lunch. It is quite similar to David Jones in Sydney, or Harrods in London, but the cheese section and the meat sections were huge. We were interested in the giant white asparagus too - it's the thickness of a large carrot and about a foot long. Our lunch selections were from the little cafe there - and it was all quite nice. They sneakily had put bits of cauliflower in the prosciutto mac and cheese and Flynn was unimpressed. We bought some fancy eclairs that looked better than they tasted and headed back to the hotel for some down time before our farewell dinner. We fit in a quick cocktail at the bar using our Tauck voucher. The farewell dinner was in the Marais district, which looked interesting and would have definitely been a Starret destination had we known it was there. Unfortunately it will have to remain unexplored until next time. Dinner was a series of cocktail courses, followed by a magic show. For the finale of the show the kids all did one trick which they had prepared earlier while we ate. It was quite funny, with Josh taking the prize for showmanship. We arrived back at the hotel five minutes before the hour, when the Eiffel Tower "sparkles" so we walked down half a block or so to watch that with a few of our fellow tourists. I headed off to bed but Jason and the boys went with a few of the older teens to top up their food intake at a local cafe.