Paris to London, August 3

This was our last true day of vacation. We'll spend all day tomorrow (from @ 2:00 AM PDT until 8:00 PM PDT) enroute from London to Portland. Oh, how I'm not looking forward to that!

Today, however, we flew from Paris to London and arrived @ 11:00 AM. It took us longer to get from Heathrow to our hotel than it did to fly from Paris to London (@ 2 hours via the Tube). Tomorrow morning we'll take a taxi from our hotel to Paddington Station where we can catch an express train to Heathrow. That should cut our transit time to @ 40 minutes.

We spent the afternoon at the British Museum amongst Egyptian pharoahs and mummies and Greek gods and goddesses. Although we saw a huge statue of Rameses II, 3 rooms of mummies, and pieces from the Parthenon, the most impressive thing was seeing the original Rosetta Stone. We also spent an hour or so at the British Library, where they have one of the original Magna Carta manuscripts, as well as some of Shakespeare's handwritten plays.

Dinner was at a typical English pub down the street from our hotel. Although this has been a wonderful trip, both Rich and I are ready to come home (although not quite ready to go back to work)!

Last Day in Paris, August 2

We spent our last day in Paris shopping, primarily at the Gallerie Lafayette and Bon Marche department stores, but we also stopped at some of the smaller boutiques along the way. The picture is the interior of the Gallerie Lafayette.

Paris weather the last few days has been chillier than what we've been used to and quite overcast. At one point this afternoon, just as Rich and I were about ready to leave our hotel for another round of shopping, the skies opened and it started to downpour. We scurried back into the hotel and spent the next few hours reading (I think Rich much preferred this to the shopping I had planned).

We had also thought about taking a Seine River cruise on our last night in Paris, but decided against that also due to the inclement weather. Instead, we had dinner at a small bistro in the neighborhood and spent the rest of the evening rearranging our suitcases for the trip home.

Chartres, August 1

We took a train trip to Chartres today, a small town @ an hour outside of Paris with a stunning, world-class cathedral. I've never seen so many stained glass windows (although the church was so dimly lit, our pictures aren't the best). Notre Dame is nothing compared to Chartres!

We wandered around the town a little, had lunch, and then headed back to the train station to catch the 2:30 train back to Paris, hoping to have time to see the Orsay Museum in the afternoon. Little did we know that admission to the museum is free the first Sunday of the month and it was mobbed! We both decided we didn't want to see Impressionist paintings bad enough to stand in line for an hour. Instead, we wandered to the Tuilleries Garden and the Place de la Concorde and sauntered back up the Champs Elysees toward the Arc de Trimphe. This is definitely not my kind of street - way too crowded!! In fact, I think I'm done with Paris. The big city is getting to me (it's either that or the weather's taking its toll - 60 degrees and overcast). I think I've reached that point in our trip where I'm ready to come home.