| NOTE: You'll like this page better if you set your browser so that this text is all on one . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . line! |
Gael and I decided to leave later and spent much of the day at the Musee' d'Orsay (the Impressionist museum).
Impressionist museum? Impressive!
When we were in Paris before we were too stupid to know that The Louvre has no Impressionists hung there -- the Musee' d'Orsay has them all -- and it was just a few blocks from our Hotel.
After the museum we stopped in a sidewalk cafe for lunch. The server spoke no English, I speak virtually no French. So I took this picture of what the guy across the room was having, showed it to her and indicated that's what I wanted. She decoded it to french bread pizza. Gotta love the technology!
Almost everyone else followed the "leave Paris at 1PM" plan. In getting through Paris, several of our number visited the Eiffel Tower -- where they drew the (now) usual crowds:
Gael and I were on our own leaving Paris about 4:30PM -- good timing (NOT). Gael drove, I navigated with several Paris maps. We finally found our way onto the Peripherique (Paris' perimeter highway) and found the A6 highway south toward Bordeaux. But I had fixed in mind that we wanted the A11 highway to Curzay. Sadly it was the A10 highway we should have taken. A11 goes from Paris to Le Mans. Once the error was discovered it was too late to go back -- and Gael was really enjoying driving 120 MPH even if it wasn't in the right direction.
All was not lost; at least we could map out and time the route necessary to go from Curzay to Le Mans (even if we did it in the opposite direction). No one could have driven it faster (I'm convinced) and it took two hours, fifty minutes. That's important because we have to do it several times later in the week.
We finally reached Curzay at about 9:15pm tonight. It's just like the picture!
Everyone else was having dinner so we joined the group and received the richly deserved razzing about our Le Mans detour. At least we were the first in our party to actually get to Le Mans. BTW, this is the view from our window at the Chateau Curzay:
Dinner was a challenge for the Chateau since no one told them that 40 people were going to have dinner with them. With a few exceptions they were equal to the task. We all turned in at about 11pm to get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow we're meeting at 8:00am for breakfast and to drive to Cognac for a tour of the Hennessey cognac distillery. Mo' later....