We arrived in Paris on Thursday evening and went directly to the hotel. Friday morning, the agenda was a bus tour of the city to give us a general introduction. Our Spanish guide was on the bus but a local, Spanish speaking guide did the narration on the tour.

I have photos (quite a few taken through the bus window) but I’ll share some of my favorites here.

Our first view of the Seine as we cross one of the many bridges

Notre Dame cathedral

Saint Etienne du Mont, a Roman catholic church from the 1500’s

Dome de Invalides, from 1600’s, tomb of Napoleon and enough other interesting history that it’s worth looking up

Our tour bus, the daytime home away from home. You can see the Eiffel Tower in the background

There were lots of contrails in the sky, and I liked the way the sun caught them here

Paris Military School

Interesting tree trimming in front of the Eiffel Tower

Yes, that’s Eiffel Tower!

I think this was at the entrance of a bridge, but I don’t remember for sure

Looking down the Champes Elysees towards the Place de la Concord

Place de la Concorde, formerly the Place de la Revolution where many lost their lives by guillotine

The Seine again

I think this is the school of fine arts, as seen from the river Seine

The plaza in front of La Louve museum

the Comedie Francaise, the oldest active theatre company in the world

A metro stop near the Comedie Francaise

a nearby square

The afternoon was free time, since we didn’t choose to take one of the optional tours. We mainly wandered around the Arc de Triomphe and La Louvre area, and we visited some of the many tourist shops in the area. We were very lucky, as you can see, with the weather. It was chilly, but sunny and bright which made wandering around outside very pleasant.

It was such  whirlwind trip that many things blur together in my mind. Did we taxi home, or go on the metro? I know we took the metro one day and it was quite easy to navigate. Anyway, we made our way back to the hotel, and then explored the shopping center nearby and the large supermarket.

There was a very impressive selection of cheese!! This isn’t even all of it.

The produce department was excellent too with large selection of fresh, affordable options

When in France, one must have baguettes! This is about half of what was available in the bakery department

Our purchases, 4 kinds of cheese, 4 apples, 2 pears, 2 baguettes, 2 bottles of wine, and some delicious smoked ham product, total about 32 euros.

Yeah, dinner in a Paris hotel, wine, cheese, fruit, and baguettes… oh and smoked ham. La vida dificil.

Thank goodness for photos to help me remember what we did as saw each day, and thank goodness for internet searches of pictures, which has helped me identify and research many of the buildings we saw. I have a lot more photos so little by little I’ll make my way through them.

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Meanwhile, back at home, we seem to be doing a little better today with the jet lag and fatigue, though I still am waking up before dawn. You get more done though when you’re up early, so there’s that. We are staying in per health department instructions, and we continue to get daily calls to check on us. As far as I know everyone in our group is doing ok, and there are no cases of coronavirus in the country. News from the rest of the world seems to change by the hour though, and things don’t sound good in (USA) Washington state and California. I’m pretty sure I’m not travelling as planned, especially now that my daughter’s exchange student guest has been cancelled so she’ll have more free time later.

Here in Panama it’s the height of summer and the afternoons have been beastly hot! Without the sun though, it cools off nicely. It’s been chilly when I get up at sunup, and now that it’s 6:15pm it’s getting downright pleasant out here, and I’m enjoying listening to all the birds while I work on this from my terrace.