Day 5

Day 5 (April 4, 2006)    Paris, France

On the day of the Parisian strikes, we woke up and had to be packed and ready to go by 9:30 a.m. By the time we had the luggage locked up in the luggage room, it was 10 a.m. The Michigan gang decided to go to the Museum d'Orsay to see the impressionists art. The Metro was working, but only 2/3 of the lines were running.

We noticed that everything was slowly done, which is another way to show displeasure. It took longer to get to Orsay, and we took the route that included the train station. When we went up to the museum, they were finishing taping a sign up that said closed for the day due to the strikes.

We figured the Eiffel Tower would be in a similar situation, so we decided to try to make it back to our rendezvous point for lunch. We stopped for a rest and a drink before moving on. The big joke was that we had seen more of the underground of Paris then we have of the outside.

The gang at the metro (from left to right, Don, Bob, Ruth, Linda, Arielle, and Patricia)

We had a nice chicken/potato dinner. I was pleasantly surprised at how cultural our meals had been. After the meal, we went back to the hotel area and bought food for our train ride to Florence, Italy. We got our stuff and went to the Gare de Bercy to leave for Italy. We managed to get on our train and settle down in our cars. The Murphys and Helsings were in one couchette while the JeRues, Mike, and I were in the one next door.

On the train to Italy

We enjoyed the train ride and had good fellowship before settling down to sleep. The train was going to Rome and we had to be ready around 7:30 a.m. to get off at Florence.