Playing tourist

So what DO you do with one afternoon in Paris? Run madly from one museum to the next, barely registering what you're seeing? Sit in a café drinking coffee while you sketch and look pensive? SHOP? The café sounded most appealing, since I had been on my feet in the museum since 9:30 in the morning and it was now 3:30, but it felt like a waste to sit in one place on my only afternoon left.

So I sat, but not in one place. I yielded to impulse when, upon exiting the Orsay, surfeited on art for the time being, I saw, right there at the curb, a bus stop for the double decker red tourist buses, and then one pulled up right in front of me and opened its doors. I got on, climbed to the top, and spent the next two hours with earbuds in my ears, craning my neck and holding my phone precariously out over the road to take a series of photos of all the hot spots we passed in our trek to the sights of Paris. Not a very imaginative use of my time, but I did get to see a lot and pinpoint a few places I'd like to come back to when I have a day to spend instead of a few minutes!

Some of the photos weren't great, since the bus was moving, but I got a few that I thought were memorable:

And here's where I ended up, when I descended, cold and slightly damp, two and a half hours later--my destination all along! I had a bracing café au lait, then acquired a sandwich to go (for my dinner), and started the search for the proper bus to take me back to my hotel (no more Metro for me this trip!). I could most definitely have spent a more scintillating evening, my last night in Paris, but I was overwhelmed by everything with which I had stuffed my senses all day, so I spent a quiet night reorganizing my suitcase, and went to bed early, since Parishuttle was picking me up at 6:30 a.m. for my flight home.

And that was my trip to France! Eleven hours back the other way, with my kind friend Carey waiting at the end of it to pick me up and take me home, where I got reacquainted with my cats, watered my garden, did my laundry, and blogged, and the day after that I returned to work. It's almost as if I never left! Except now I have new painting techniques to try, new reference photos from which to paint, and a plan to make for WHERE TO GO ON HOLIDAY NEXT YEAR!

The End (of the beginning)