France, Paris.

Our last day. Damn. We've had a fantastic trip. Not ready to go home, and yet we are. Continuing the theme of finding little known places Roge found a museum a mere 5 k walk from us, near the Champs Élysées. The finest Parisian private art collection, so the brochure says. Husband and wife, Edouard Andre and Nelie Jacquemart travelled Europe in the late 1800's ( particularly Italy) collecting art and displaying it in their magnificent mansion. This mansion is now open to the public in its original state with all of the art work. They had the ceilings raised in some rooms to accomodate whole painted ceilings that they collected from Venice. The mansion has a fabulous staircase and winter garden (created with a glass roof) designed by the architect that was the
second choice for the design of the Grand Palais. It is said he got his revenge by designing a magnificent staircase in this mansion, and it is. This is one of the better museums we have been to, and, again hardly anyone there. An extraordinary thing happened while we were there. I was standing in front of a Rembrandt, fanning myself with the brochure as it was pretty stuffy, when the security guard walked behind me to fully open two huge windows to let in the breeze. No alarms, no barriers, just two walk through windows open into a room full of Rembrandt's, Van Dyk's and the like. Amazing. We finished off the visit with a coffee and cake in the restaurant. We had planned on visiting the Jewish part of Les Marais district which is where we re staying just so that we could have some fine middle eastern food. We had done this last time we were in Paris and were keen to do it again. Decided to walk off the cake, so another 5k's. We have bought so many umbrellas this trip. It seems every time we decide it's not going to rain and leave the umbrellas behind, it does. Today was no exception, despite the weather forecast saying no rain. We resisted and didn't buy another one. We got a little lost but found where we needed to be and had a great lunch. Wandered back to our place doing a little shopping long the way. I really could stay in Paris another week or so. There is so much more that we could do. This is the last blog entry. We catch our plan home tomorrow to endure another 27 hour flight. Until next time....Read more