Nearly over.

Monday 7^th October.

Our last full day in Paris and of our holiday. We had a bit of fun in Passage Brady last night, running the gauntlet of all the touts trying to get us to eat at their restaurants. We chose one and settled in, and slowly realised that they didn’t serve alcohol. Bugger! Oh well. We have a complimentary non alcoholic cocktail that’s very tasty and watch while diners at nearby restaurants sip on their wine and beer. Our meals arrive on those large round metal plates divided into sections. The waiter had a bit of a snicker when we asked for mild curries, so we’re worried about what we’ll get. Turns out it’s fine.

Saw a lot of bad parking, this is probably the worst.

We had a Plan A for today, but on the way back upstairs from breakfast, I’m distracted by the display of tourist brochures in the foyer, particularly by the one for the canal boat. It sounds really good, possibly even better than the one we took in London because this one actually goes through locks. We’d love that! And it runs every day, even better! The map on the brochure is a bit small so we jump on the website to find a notice that there will be no service today due to service works on the canal. Can you believe it??!! Mondays will ever after be listed in our itineraries as a ‘rest day’. So it’s back to Plan A, checking out our return route to the airport for starters.

monument at the centre of the Place de la Republique as seen from our window.

Republique metro station is just up the road and it will take us directly to Gare du Nord where we will connect to the RER B for Charles de Gaulle. We figure out the best entry to take with our luggage (fewest stairs) and then catch the metro to the Eiffel Tower to go to a clothing shop I spotted last trip, Ulla Popken. The top I really like is too expensive, and probably too warm for our climate, but I find a ¾ sleeve t-shirt that I quite like, so there’s my Paris souvenir. Le Royal Café is just across the road, it’s the place we sat and had a beer while we waited for the Eiffel Tower to sparkle a few weeks ago. We stop in to have a beer and study the menu for dinner tonight, and wind up eating lunch there as well, a ‘sandwich’ aka baguette, after walking around to the Tower to see it in the sunshine. It’s 22 C today, more like the Paris I came to see!

That's more like it!

After lunch we metro it back to the 2^nd arrondisement to find some more Passages that I read about on the plane from Paris to Copenhagen. They’re OK, but I don’t think they’re as nice as the arcades in Melbourne. There are a couple of window displays that catch our attention, some objects d’art, old books and a toy shop. It’s probably about 20-30 minutes back to the hotel, so, needing our afternoon rest, we walk ‘home’, window shopping on the way. Dinner is going to be back at Le Royal, so there’s another ride on the metro. We bought another 10 pack of metro tickets when we got back and it looks like we’ll have 2 tickets left over. Dinner is as good as we’d hoped, I had the Confit du Canard and Trevor had the fixed price menu, 3 courses. I ate his dessert. I would have liked to try a ‘proper’ French crème brulee but they didn’t have that, so I had the crème caramel, not bad, but not as nice as I’d hoped. After we finished our mains a small tour group arrived and we seemed to be in the way. Trevor asked the staff if they’d like us to move and they were really grateful. We were finished when a group of 4 walked in and there were no spaces together for them, so we made moves to leave. The staff were horrified, obviously not wanting us to feel like we were in the way again, so they offered us a complimentary coffee if we’d like to move to the bar. Yeah, no worries, that’d be good, thanks. If we ever go back to Paris and I’m sure we will, we’ll definitely go back to this café. A total fluke discovery. Probably the best we’d been to, with Le Marathon a close 2^nd. There are 3 miniature Statue of Liberty's in Paris. We saw the original model created by Bartholdi, in the grounds of the Musee de l'Art et Metier, just down the road from our hotel.