Time to go home.

Monday, June 29

Our last day in Paris, and the last day of our vacation.

We visited Napoleons Tomb and the Military Museum.  It's fun just wandering around Paris.  Gus stumbled on an interesting shop; the  owner bought up scrap airplane parts and polished them up as art.  Too bad, but there's definitely no room in our bags for a propeller.

We wandered through Le Bon Marche where a pair of plastic sandals with a bit of bling were €400.

After supper we wandered around and walked through the Louvre – well the grounds.  Then through the Tulerie Gardens which I had wanted to see.  There was a small herd of goats there.
I think we're ready to come home.  I'm dying for a grilled cheese sandwich!

Anniversary Day - June 28

Sunday, June 28

On this day, 35 years ago, I said “I do” and married Gus.  The best decision of my life (after becoming a follower of Jesus of course).  And what a great place to spend the day – in Paris!

We started the day at Eglise Sacre Coeur church in the Montmartre area – which is a little hill overlooking Paris.  A beautiful view and different perspective.  Yes, we climbed all 300 stairs to the top of the dome, but went during Mass, so there were very few people and we had the place almost to ourselves.  It was an interesting climb, as part of it was outside on the roof.

We visited a Parisienne evangelical church where the DeWitts are.  The contrast between all the cathedrals we’ve visited over the past 4 weeks and this earnest group of 45 believers in an un-airconditioned, rented room, with the windows closed because the neighbours complain about the music, was really poignant to me.  It is true ; “the church is the people, not a building”.

Then we finished off the day by visiting the Eiffel Tower, which is always impressive.  This time we walked down from the second level,  so got to see inside the girders.

We witnessed a young man prepossessing to his fiancée underneath the Tower.  Gus - I'd marry you again.  It's been an incredible 35 years.

Paris is unique

Saturday, June 27

There's just something special about Paris.  It's noisy, inconvenient, Café tables blocking the sidewalk,  bicycles everywhere, smelly at times, lots of street people and scammers – but you find yourself so happy just to be here.  Paris is just an exciting place to be!

We started the day off at Sainte Chapelle, the picture in our dining room.  It's just as impressive As the first time I saw it.  I don’t think I remembered it was built in the 1200s.  All that glass!  Hand painted.

It's 26 Celsius, perfect weather for a Bertheillon ice cream.  Small scoops, but the most flavourful ice cream you’ve ever tasted.  We’re happy to have some warm weather; we get to wear our shorts.

We took a sightseeing boat tour on the Seine, which gave a different perspective of the city.  There are so many converted/floating restaurants, cafes and even gardens and parks!  But I don't think that camping area under the Alma bridge was legal.

I’ll add a picture at the bottom of the blog page of Stravinsky park, each item in the pool representing one of his works.  I think I picked out Patroushka and Firebird.

Stockholm and Copenhagen second time

As you can tell, I 'm getting behind in my blog.  This cruise really was exhausting.

Stockholm was nice and we really enjoyed the Vasa museum where a ship built in 1628 and sunk on it's maiden voyage and was preserved in the cold water of the harbour until  few years ago.  Lesson learned?  Don't let the king make alterations to the plans.  He added too many canons and port holes and it became top heavy.

Our day At Sea was well used sleeping in and napping.

We are presently in Copenhagen for the second time.  We had 7 hours before our flight to Paris, so we visited Tivoli Gardens.  This is a very old amusement park (1900) where Walt Disney came for his inspiration.  You can really see the influence and it was a very pretty place.

We're currently in a long line up at the airport because Norweigan Air is having trouble with their check in machines .  There's even a crying baby and yapping dog!

Helsinki

We are pretty exhausted after St. Petersburg and so we kept it pretty low key in Helsinki.  The city is fairly modern and ver clean.  We took the tram into town and found our way to the upscale shopping on the Esplanade and to the waterfront.  The city reminded me of Montreal; some older buildings (2 hundred years), but lots of modern architecture.

We took the Ferris wheel ride which looked like a mini London Eye.  The views were awesome, but the pictures are blue from the window tint.

We watched the movie FOCUS which was all about scamming and pickpockets.  It's a miracle we haven't lost anything yet, guess we'll hold on to our stuff a little tighter.

St. Petersburg! We loved it!

Tuesday, June 23
An amazing city with an amazing history.  The architecture, the canals, the opulence of the castles, the museums so full of art treasures; I don't know where to start to describe it.  What an experience.  One of the highlights was the garden fountains in Peterhopt – I can hardly wait to show you the video.  Words cannot describe it.

We were in port for 36 hours and we were off the boat for about 29 of those hours.  We also got to see the Tchaikovsky Ballet company perform Swan Lake which I thoroughly enjoyed, and even Gus stayed awake.

There has been lots of restoration of their historical buildings and most of the history the guides talk about is pre-revolution.  She did tell us there is a large storage yard for all the Stalin and Lenin statues that used to dominate the city.

Today we are in Helsinki.  We're still recovering from SPB, so I hope we can drag ourselves off the ship to see it.

St. Petersburg

we're presently in the Hermitage museums.  Wow