Monday morning we took off for Beauvais, a charming old city about an hour north of Paris. It was a good 8 hour drive from Fulda on the autobahn, and was dark by the time we got there so we stayed close to our hotel for a bite to eat and retired early to be well rested for a full day in Paris the next day.
We made the mistake of driving into the suburb of St. Denis to park and take the Metro (light rail) in, and spent an hour feeling like locals stuck in rush hour traffic. We found our train with some help from St. Denis locals who didn’t speak English but understood enough to send us in the right direction. It seems you can bridge any language barrier with enough hand signals, place naming, and smiles.
Paris is an amazing conglomeration of palaces, rivers, cathedrals, museums, cafes, and metro stations. On day one we took in Notre Dame, Saint Chappel, and a riverboat tour; then a stroll through the Latin Quarter with coffee at a sidewalk cafe, an early evening ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and dinner and drinks at another sidewalk café before taking the train back to St. Denis. We were exhausted but happy. It rained on and off all day, but not hard enough to buy umbrellas.
Wednesday we spent the day in Beauvais. In the morning, Rosi and Terry explored the old town while Ray enjoyed some down time at the hotel. The local farmers market gave us lunch of yummy rotisserie chicken and potatoes and grapes, which we took back to the hotel and shared with Ray. Then we all went back out to see the cathedral, castle, and well-tended old homes on narrow, curving streets. Towns and cities here are laid out not in the grid pattern we are used to, but in radial patterns circling the town center. Dinner was leftover chicken, cheese, bread, fruit, and wine at the hotel lobby area. 
Thursday we took the train from Beauvais into Paris – even with the additional 20euro per person round trip, it was a much better choice than driving part way. We bought 3-day Metro passes (OK, language barriers are not always inexpensive …3 people became 3 days in translation) and started the day at the Peirre-Lachaise graveyard, a huge place with tombs of many famous people including Jim Morrison, Chopin, and Oscar Wilde.
From there we went to Montmartre, where we found the Sacre Cur and Moulin Rouge, and happened upon a nondescript café where we had a wonderful prepared-fresh-from-scratch-gourmet experience. Small plates were all we needed to keep us going, so Calamari salad, Langoustine ravioli, and Angus burger with Camembert sauce were shared all around – and the price was very reasonable. Then we were off to the Arch de Triumph and a stroll down the Champs Ellyse before catching the metro back to the Left Bank to shop the artist's stalls along the river.
We had decided the day before to leave the city early to have a nice dinner at a small bistro in Beauvais, which ended up to be our second gourmet meal in a day and such a nice finish to our visit to France. The next morning we stopped in a small wine shop to buy a few special bottles before heading back to Fulda. We had just a day to rest there before leaving on our next adventure!
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