If It’s Tuesday, We Must Still Be In Paris!

Tuesday, 11/8/16

Today is our Paris Greeter Walk in the 12th arrondisment. We were to meet Gisele Gamelin at 10:00 a.m. in front of the McDonald’s at the Ledru Rollin metro station. Jim wanted to get there a little early to get breakfast. I had no desire to eat breakfast at McDonald’s, so I got a pane au chocolat before we left our neighborhood. We arrived at around 8:30, just to discover that McDonald’s doesn’t open until 9:30. Oh well. There was a cafe across the street. That worked out okay for him.
Gisele was very nice. She lives in the 12th, so she proudly showed us around her neighborhood. We saw the Bastille, the market Aligre, Canal St. Martin and the marina, and even Rue Cremieux, the picturesque street we stayed on in 10/2014. This is not a touristy area and the market was clearly geared towards the locals.

Like many people we’ve met, Gisele talked about the election. Today is election day in the U.S. Will it be the first woman elected president, Hillary Clinton, or the first unqualified orange man, Donald Trump? The newspapers and magazines here are full of articles about our election, and specifically about Trump. Gisele took us to a shop to see the window, offering the feelings that they have here about Trump.

Trump appears to be pretty unpopular throughout Europe. People have expressed confidence that the Americans are not stupid enough to fall for Trump. I’m not so sure about that.
After our walk ended we went to the Marais and had lunch. Then we walked to the Musee D’Orsay. The museum is actually in an old train station. We’ve been there twice before, in 2006 and 2008/2009. It was time to go back. We bought our 4 day museum passes there and enjoyed the museum.

I like the Impressionist paintings and this is where to find them.

After we got our fill of art it was time to make our way to the location where we were to meet Philippe for dinner. He was coming from work in the 19th arrondisment, so we decided to eat at our friend Susan’s favorite place on Ile St. Louis. The plan was to meet at the Hotel DeVille metro stop. He started walking right by us, only stopping when we said something. I don’t think we’ve changed that much in 2 years! We had a wonderful dinner at Le Flore en I’lle. I can’t believe we didn’t take any photos with Philippe! We did take some pictures on the way back to our hotel at the end of the night.