Wandering Lyon

Today was a day for wandering. All types of wandering. We first had to repark our car. Apparently (we discovered) the entire City Center is “Payant” parking. Which means “PAY UP” (loosely translated). After lengthy phone and text discussions with our host, we learned that meant regardless of how many euros we wanted to spend,

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Bye Bye, Paris!

So, it is Thursday eve. and we have successfully managed Paris. Hopefully we will also manage leaving Paris (which will happen tomorrow AM by rental car) – with our heads! A lot of people didn’t in former days. But we spent NOT ONE MINUTE in jail and as far as I know, did not leave

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Decorating Research…

Today (Thursday,  I think) dawned nice and sunny, which is a big change from each of the preceding days. We hopped on a train (Which stops across the street from our boat) and visited the City/Palace of Versaille. I guess I would say that Paris isn’t opulent enough, so we had to up the ante

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Not just the tourist stuff….

Misfits report another 8 miles walked today. However to expand our range we included the METRO in our excursion. We saw: the Bataclan and offices of Charlie Hebdo, as well as the Place de la République. The latter especially was quite moving, with many memorials and apolitical statements of sympathy and solidarity. Although most were

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Paris Tourists…

According to our “Misfits” (like a Fitbit but for people who are non-conformist, left-leaning and free-thinking) we walked 10 miles today. I think that was entirely within the Louvre.   We saw the usual suspects there: Mona, Venus, Jesus (x100) et al.   Amazingly, we  saw a Roman Statue (2nd century) that reflects the advanced Roman Culture of

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Paris: Random First Impressions

Pre-Paris: our flite left about 2 hours late. And we realized we don’t care. . What an AWESOME and unexpected summary of what we are trying to accomplish in retirement! Train from the airport could have been in Chicago – except a bit more graffiti. Overheard spoken: German, Hindi, Italian, Spanish, Russian…and perhaps just a

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An Auspicious Start!!!

Well, we haven’t even left Chicago and our trip is already off to an EXCELLENT start! Over the years, we have had “discussions” about the volume of accoutrements (practicing my French) we travel with (i.e. suitcase size). One of us wants to do carry-on, the other steamer trunks [ed. Note: plural intentional]. These discussions haven’t

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