France Summary

We arrived in Paris after less than two hours on the high speed Thalys train, which reached speeds of over 180 miles per hour (we know this because of Todd's GPS unit - if you don't know what GPS is, click here).  On arrival, we took the Paris subway (called the Metro) to our hotel, La Residence Bassano, which was more like an apartment and one of the nicer places we stayed with a huge marble bathroom.  After settling in, we found a small grocery store and stocked up for the next few days.  Most of the shops and restaurants were closed because it was Bastille Day weekend, so we stayed in for dinner.  Afterward we took a walk to the nearby Arc de Triomphe and returned to continue reading the Harry Potter book.  The next day we met an old family friend of the Holdcroft’s, Joan Hamrick.  She was in town visiting her son Hugh who is an artist/painter and has live in France for many years.  We met Joan and walked to the Eiffel Tower, which had a long (two hour) wait to go up.  We decided not to do it and instead walked around and took pictures.  We ended up at a sidewalk café for lunch.  It was wonderful to see Joan after so many years.  The Hamrick and Holdcroft families were good friends when they lived in together Ethiopia and Washington DC in the late 1960s and 70s.  The next day Cheryl, Lauren and Katie got up early and headed off to Paris Disneyland while Todd stayed back and worked on the website.  They had a fun day, going on rides and making comparisons to the other Disney parks.  They returned to the hotel after 1am, tired but satisfied.  The next evening, we had dinner at Hugh's place with Joan and Hugh's partner David.  We did more catching up and reminiscing about our Ethiopia days.  In Paris, we visited among other places, the Louvre Museum and Notre Dame Cathedral.  The Louvre is a massive place.  It would take a person several weeks to get through all the exhibits, but we were there to see the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo sculpture and the Winged Victory sculpture.  We did not go inside the Notre Dame.  Like the Eiffel Tower, the line were long, more than two hours, so we walked around the outside.  Paris is a beautiful city: clean with lots of parks, charming old buildings and grand monuments all over the place.  We met Hugh one more time for some great French food while the girls stayed back at the apartment.  Hugh was a great sport and translated the entire menu for us without complaining.  We could have easily spent another month in France, but our flight to London was booked.