Carolyn: Paris in four days doesn’t allow for much sauntering nor lingering over a coffee in an outdoor café, but we covered most of the big sights, and the four younger people have a sense of the city and of what they’d like to return to see.

They climbed the 284 worn steps up the Arc de Triomphe on a tight circular interior stone staircase and the 720 steps of the outside staircase up the leg of the Eiffel Tower to the 2nd level. I guess that I admire them for being able to climb these steps, but the elevator at both sites worked well. I did have to go up the remaining 46 steps to reach the top of the Arc.

FYI, the second deck of the Eiffel Tower is 377 ft. and the top observation room of the Tower is 899 ft (and reached only by elevator). For comparison, the observation deck of the Space Needle is 520 ft. Three of them climbed to the top of Sacre Coeur in the Montmartre area while Judy and I explored a nearby much older church, and Tim and Steve made it up the 400 steps at Notre Dame while we women shopped. The two men also went to the Place de la Concorde because it is part of the route of the Tour de France – right at the end.

Judy, Cathy and I started out on Thursday to visit some of the smaller clothing and gift shops in the Marais area where we were staying, but most didn’t open until 11 am, so we headed for a nearby department store, BHV, on the rue de Rivoli. It is a huge store, but doesn’t carry shoes which is one of the items Judy was looking for. (Judy was successful in her shoe shopping later in the day at a separate shoe store.) We also wanted some signs and sort of by accident went all the way down to the basement level where we found an amazing array of hardware items. I actually managed to ask in French for directions to the “signetization department” tucked up against a far wall. Included was a display of standard French signs that one sees everywhere like “no stopping in front of the garage”, but of course in French, so we all picked out several.

We watched with amusement some of the scam artists operating throughout the city. On our way up the long steps to Sacre Coeur we had to discourage a bunch of super pushy men why wanted to tie "friendship bracelets" on our wrists. In Montmartre within one block, four men had separate little tables set up doing that old shell game – the kind that used to be done with walnut shells and you had to guess under which one was the little token. We’d also read about a scam in which someone spots a ring on the street, picks it up and approaches a tourist, asking if it is his or hers. When the tourist says no, the man points out the good quality of the ring and offers to sell it to the tourist. Steve and Tim were approached twice with this one near the Place de la Concorde…

I had not been to the Pompidou Museum on past trips and was eager to go. It also is in the Marais area. You may have seen pictures of it with its exterior escalator which takes one to the sixth floor and more great views of the city. Not only is the escalator on the outside of the building, but so are all the pipes and heating ducts on this “exoskeletal” building. The building’s design goes well with the modern art collection. While there were a number of abstract paintings, we also saw Picasso, Chagall, Rouault, Matisse, Cezanne, Van Gogh, etc. And as I think about viewing all these great paintings at the D’Orsay, the Louvre and the Pompidou, I wonder again at the rigid restrictions here at home when it comes to cameras and art. These priceless paintings in Paris are photographed hundreds of times a day, mostly without flash, but even when flash is used, the guards rarely admonish anyone.

The other place I'd not been to previously was Sacre Coeur. I can still see an old postcard that my dad sent from Paris, probably early in 1945. The postcard was one of this basilica, and I've always wanted to visit it. We didn't spend much time in Montmartre, except to see Sacre Coeur and grab a quick crepe, but it did give us a sense of the area.

We found a small restaurant, Camile, not far from our apartment on our last evening. The food and the experience were both good and the waitress and waiter very attentive. Other nights we brought food in, primarily because the restaurants are incredibly expensive but also because we didn't want to make time for a long dinner. Our neighborhood was great for food stores and for those having food “pour emporter” – to carry out. After our Thursday dinner, we headed for the metro and the Arc de Triomphe from which we could see the illuminated Eiffel Tower which Judy described earlier. With some frenzied packing when we got home, we were all in bed by midnight, or was it 12:30??? Anyway it was late, and we needed to be up and ready for a shuttle to Charles de Gaulle airport on Friday morning. The van was late, but the driver did a great job getting through the crowded streets of Paris on a Friday morning. And now we’re home and trying to stay awake...