We woke up in Paris ! 

Our hotel has the most comfy beds. .. like sleeping on a cloud. Breakfast downstairs is a beautiful buffet of all sorts of delicious food including yougurts, fruits, eggs, meats, cheeses, fresh-squeezed orange juice, coffees, teas, etc. Since we only have this morning and early afternoon to play in Paris, we splurge on the hotel breakfast for ease and time-saving convenience, not to mention the sustenance we will need as we venture out for our Parisian day. 

Today we have tickets for both St Chapelle and the Musee de l’Orangerie. From our hotel, we walk towards the Isle de la Cite where we will find the St Chapelle. It opens at 9:00 am but before we join the queue we stop by to circle Notre Dame. Obviously we are only able to visit from walking around the outside - the front and back areas are blocked off and the entire plot is a big construction site now. It feels like visiting the wounded. Just thankful the whole structure was not lost in the fire. The damage can be repaired and rebuilt. Of course, it will be interesting to follow the progress and return to celebrate the end result. 

When we arrive to St Chapelle which is just around the corner from Notre Dame, we find no queue and basically just wander in after having our tickets scanned. This small chapel was built shortly after Notre Dame for the King and his close family & friends (upstairs) and palace staff (downstairs). It is adjacent to the palace which is now government buildings. Stepping in to the lower chapel, we admire the vaulted ceilings and beautiful decorations. Up a narrow stone spiral staircase, we emerge into the most splendid example of medieval stained glass .... it is truly breath-taking!

Walking from St Chapelle to the Musee de L’Orangerie, we walk down along the Seine to reach the Louvre and gardens where at the other end lies the museum. Down by the river it is peaceful at this time of the morning. We have to go back up to the street level at Pont Neuf but then go back down for a bit more walking until we reach the side entrance to the grounds of the Louvre. We see lots of people visiting the Louvre and walk in the opposite direction to reach the museum. The Musee de L’Orangerie is a small museum built by Monet’s design to house a series of wall-sized panels of water lily paintings. Money gifted these paintings the day after the armistice of WWI. Inside the museum, we spend some time with Monet’s beautiful paintings.  

Now it’s time to high-tail it back to the hotel to check out by Noon. We look around the Place de Concorde for a taxi but when we don’t see any Cindy suggests we try for an Uber. Our ride arrives in short order and we are off to our hotel. Brilliant! After gathering our bags and checking out of the hotel, we make our way towards lunch. I found a 100% gluten-free restaurant called NoGlu about 20 minutes walking from the hotel. Having left our bags at the hotel, we are off .... 

Once we locate the street, we are looking for number 69 which is no where to be found on either side of the road where we find both 70 and 68 . .. hmmm. What did google do to us? A little bit more of a look on the google map - Holly spots that the location looks to be down the street a little bit further. Sure enough, once we walk down just a little bit we find the place, sitting within the 80s on the street. Weird. The lady at the counter agrees with Holly that the numbers make no sense. No matter. We are seated and are looking forward to a nice lunch. I ordered the plat du jour with vegetable soup, avocado toast and a nice salad. Holly & Cindy both opt for the quiche Lorraine with soup and salad. Cindy also buys up a small stash of gluten-free goodies for take away.  

For the rest of the afternoon we have three more goals before heading back to pick up our bags: 

1. Visit the Laudree macaron store - yum, yum, yum

2. Visit the St Sulpice church - beautiful & peaceful 

3. Visit Starbucks

We manage to accomplish all of our goals while squeezing in a good sit in a small park by a church to drink a delicious bottle of rose wine. We bought the bottle at a small wine shop where the guy gave us small plastic glasses & opened our bottle for us. It was a fun treat!

Back at the hotel to retrieve our bags before heading to the train station, Gare de Lyon, to catch our train to Mulhouse, France. Cindy (our resident Uber queen) calls for a car. It arrives shortly but the driver is unwilling to manage our bags so he leaves us in the dust.... nice. Cindy runs into the hotel to ask them to call for a taxi. Soon another car pulls up and he manages (with a similar size car, mind you) to fit our bags and drives us to the train station. This ends up being a replacement Uber driver. He drives well but the traffic is crazy and the ride is exciting to say the least. There are no delays and we are at the train station.

Our train is leaving at about 5:20 pm. It’s a 3-hour journey to reach Mulhouse on the eastern border near Switzerland and Germany. We have brought some food and drink for dinner on the train. Napping also happens a little bit as we travel across the French countryside. 

Once we arrive at the Mulhouse train station, we are greeted by our host, Beatrice. She is a lovely lady who takes us in her little minivan the short distance to the apartment we have rented for the next four nights. Our apartment is wonderful.... it’s a 2 bedroom unit with a beautiful, giant living room and all the amenities we would ever need for our visit. It’s a little late, but we try to get some basic groceries. Google tells us the COOP city store is open until 10:00 pm. Well, that’s not correct. They are already closed at 9 PM. We try 2 locations but no luck. We do see a bit of the town where we are at on our walk but on this Monday night the town is pretty much done for the night it seems.... very quiet. Cute place though. We are looking forward to exploring a little bit more this week ... for now, we are hitting the pillows pretty quick!