Day 30 - Friday 21st May - Notre Dame, the Orangerie, Galleries La Fayette, dinner with Deanne and Shannon

Our next day last day in Paris was first spent reorganising our overflowing suitcases, posting a box home and organising our new overnight luggage to take on board the plane to use in Milan/Lake Como. Then off to meet Cathy & Lynne to see Notre Dame & then to the L'Orangerie where they house the large paintings of Monet's waterlily paintings plus more impressionism paintings. Never have we been to an art gallery where they "shushed" you as you had to be completely quiet whilst you viewed the enormous watelily paintings in the 2 rooms especially made for these magnificent paintings. So surreal. Other paintings there were really amazing too. After leaving we had a lovely coffee plus mini souffles with ice-cream (really yummy) with Cathy & Lynne at a really quaint French cafe just near the Concorde before saying our 'au revoirs' to them. We then went off to find the Colette store that Brenton wanted us to buy something from. We finally found it & did buy some things from this very interesting store that if you decided to buy something they would put it behind the counter for you straight away rather than you holding on to it-strange! Then we hit Galleries Lafayette - wow what a store. We bought a few nice things and even had to announce our own names over the microphone to the whole store - they liked our accents!!!

We then went to meet another friend, Deanne & her friend Shannon who were staying near the Galleries Lafayette (getting a little lost along the way). Whilst looking for a place to have dinner we stumbled across the same quaint french cafe where we went in and had a lovely french meal and talked of all of our many adventures we have had during our time away in Europe. Another lovely meal and fun night.

Going back home we had a final look at the Eiffel Tower with & without the light show (btw we found out that Deanne & Shannon were up the Tower the previous night at the time we were taking our photos!) We finished our packing all ready to leave early the next morning to catch our plane to Milan.

Tonia