April 26
Okay, so where are we on our last night in Paris? The laundromat!! But we found a cycle on the washer that’s only 34 minutes instead of 56 so hopefully we’ll be out of here in an hour.
We actually did have a nice last day. Peter went to the Museum of the Army at the Hotel des Invalides (Hotel of the Invalides) which was originally built to be a home for injured war vets. Now it’s a museum. Lynn really wasn’t interested in another war museum, even if it was primarily a different war (Napoleonic) so she sat this one out. While Peter was at the museum, Lynn went to the café for hot chocolate and a snack, then waited for him in the Dome Cathedral where Napoleon is buried. Just as she was starting to wonder where he was (it had been 3 ½ hours which, even for Peter is a long time in a museum), he showed up.
He said the museum was filled with weapons, uniforms, miniature soldiers and even Napoleon’s horse (seriously; it was stuffed but it was there). While it was mostly about Napoleon’s era, there were sections on WWI and WWII. Here are just a few of the 100 pictures he took.
This is one of the enigma machines from WWII. It was what the Germans used to send coded messages. The Allies captured it from a Uboat and the Germans never knew. Having it helped end the war.
St. Louis Cathedral is a fairly small church within the compound.
Then we walked about 2km to the tourist information where we arranged for a cab to the airport for the morning. Unfortunately, Lynn was confused about which airport, so the taxi thinks we’re going to Orly when in fact we need to be at Charles DeGaulle. Hopefully we won’t run into problems in the morning, but we’ll deal with that if it happens.
We did enjoy a delicious last meal in France at café near the tourist info office. We splurged on drinks, dinner and dessert…it was wonderful.
So, this is our last night of the second leg of our European adventure. We thoroughly enjoyed our time here. We spent about 3 weeks in France with the remainder of the time in the Benelux countries. The weather was much better, even summer-like for a few days in Paris and we spent quite a bit of time driving through the French countryside. We don’t feel a big need to come back to Paris, but we would like to explore the Alabaster Coast and Brugges a little more. We’ll add it to our list of places to revisit but that will only happen after we see places we haven’t been before.
Tomorrow we’re off to Copenhagen. We were planning to spend 3 nights, but we had difficulty finding lodging so we’re only staying 2 nights before moving on to Malmo, Sweden for 2 nights. The biggest difference on this leg of our adventure is going to be traveling by train instead of car and the money. For the last two months we’ve been using the euro. Now we’re moving to countries that have their own currencies so for the next month we’ll be switching between the Danish Krona, the Norwegian Krona and the Swedish Krona. A pain in the rear but it’s what it is. I’m sure we’ll manage just fine. We’ll let you know how it goes.
Laundry! Too bad you can’t just leave it and buy new clothes when you need them. We are now in Green Valley. House sold in 3 days and we had 3 weeks to move out, but it was a cash offer above our asking price. We are waiting on the home inspection, which is April 27, on the home here we made an offer on. If all is good we’ll be moved in by end of May or sooner. Green Valley has been named the No. 2 place to retire to.
Three days!! Good for you. Fingers crossed that the inspection on the new house goes without a hitch. Yes, laundry in Paris not all that exciting and I have thought about tossing clothes but we still are here for another month. We’ve already shipped home 3 small boxes of stuff we’ve bought plus clothes we didn’t need anymore. We’re down to only about 5 days worth of stuff. That’s why we have to do laundry so frequently. We’re at CDG waiting for someone from SAS to show up to get rid of our checked luggage. Flight is on time so we should be in Copenhagen by 1pm local time. Good luck on the move. We’ll see you in January.