Europe 2018 - June 21 - Paris Jet Lag Recovery Day

This blog was long delayed. We were having so much fun with our daughters that working on this blog was low priority during the trip. No problem, we'll do it when we get home. One week after we returned, our upstairs toilet pipe broke in the middle of the night and flooded the bathroom and we had a waterfall out of the ceiling into the kitchen below. A year later, a full kitchen replacement and 450 sq. ft. of floor replaced and we finally finished the recovery process. The other thing that made it emotionally hard to return to this blog was the burning of Notre Dame in April 2019, then the untimely, sudden death of our Paris friend Becky in June. Daughter Megan also tore her ACL skiing and had to have knee surgery in May and could not join us for our annual Daughters Bike Trip in 2019. Then we spent the summer bike touring in Ontario, Canada. It is now a year and half since we returned home from this trip so the stories will be relying on our journal as so much has happened that the memory bank is a little faded.....Donna, February 2020

Thursday - June 21 - Paris
When we finally woke up, finding food for breakfast was our first task. This large outdoor market was just a couple of blocks away.

Our jet-lagged bodies told us to lay low the rest of the morning so we didn't venture out again until lunch time. We are headed to find the Gare de Bercy train station where we plan to depart Paris in a few days.

On our way, we came upon this protest, perhaps one of the beginnings of the Yellow Vest protests of summer 2019? They were protesting the end of a electric car-sharing program.

Doug went into his photo-journalist mode and had a great time until the police indicated that he should move on.

Art is everywhere in Paris.

We returned to our neighborhood by way of the Coulee verte Rene Dumont, an elevated path that is an urban oasis.

We finished our wandering at the Bastille roundabout before heading home.

Megan took this opportunity to practice her French.

Dinner was at the very local Italian restaurant.

It seems that festivals can happen any day of the week too. This street music festival started at 8:30 just a half block from our apartment.

The street has packed with musicians and audience.

Our wonderful, cozy home away from home. We could hear the music from the comfort of the living room. It lasted until 1:30 the next morning but we didn't!