Trips, Pics, and Tales

It's hard to believe we'd only just arrived in Paris the day before! We'd already been all over it felt like!  After our food tour in the morning, we went back to our hotel and found the Avalon Waterways reps and introduced ourselves. We still had quite some time before we had to be back to board the bus. As I mentioned earlier, the hotel we stayed at was the meeting point to take the bus to the ship. We didn't have to meet back there until sometime around 3:00 I think? Maybe even later. So, the rep gave us a map, some more sites within walking distance and a recommendation for a place to get crepes for lunch! Off we went! This was really our first time venturing out totally on our own with no where to actually have to be!  We really had no idea where we were going, but we did it!  We had some pretty amazing crepes for lunch - because of course the food tour snacks had worn off by now! And then found our way back to the hotel with plenty of time to spare. 

After our longest day ever, first day in Paris, you may think we would have slept in on our second day right?  No, we were up early and ready to see what the day had waiting for us! Today was a pretty exciting day! We would be embarking on our river cruise! Sailing on Avalon Waterways, Paris to Normandy, and then back to Paris. Neither Carol nor I had ever been on a river cruise, so this would be new territory for us. We were really looking forward to this new experience! But the cruise didn't depart until much later this afternoon, so we planned a walking food tour for the morning. What sounded like a better way to start the day than a tour called "From Baguettes to Bistros, Culinary Traditions of Paris"? We got up, checked out, left our luggage with the bellman and got directions to our meeting point off we went! We decided to take a taxi, and we were dropped off right in front of the cafe that was our designated starting spot, in the Saint Germain area...and this was t