And the day begins with good news and bad news!  The good news is that we slept through the night, waking up around 7 AM refreshed and ready to tackle the day. The bad news is that it is cloudy, cool and raining this morning…. and we are scheduled for a food walking tour in the Montmartre area of Paris this morning at 11 AM! No problem for as seasoned travelers we brought along sweaters, rain gear and umbrellas. We shall prevail! We purposely ate a light breakfast as we have done food tours before and know there is usually a lot of food samples during the tour.

Because it was raining we decided that a cab was a better way of getting to our meeting point rather than trying to take the local metro subway. As it turned out it was just as cheap because there were four of us sharing a cab. I had arranged for a private tour with a young lady named “Nella” who is part of group of tour guides associated with www.localguides.com, an agency we have used before in other cities. Meeting Nella outside a metro station in Montmartre we learned she was originally from Prague, studied art in college, and has lived in Paris for 5 years. She is attempting to make a living as an artist, supplementing her income by offering to act as a tour guide with a focus on the art history of the Montmartre area, the original home of the bohemian artists who lived here in the early 1900s, like Lautrec, Picasso, Van Gogh, Pisarro, and Renoir. As we walked the back streets of Montmartre learning about the history of the area and some of the people who lived here, we made stops along the way to taste quiche, baguettes, macarons, meat stuffed pasties, madeleines, cheeses, wine, French coffee and a classic crepe, before finishing outside the Sacre Ceour church atop Montmartre three hours later. Needless to say we had plenty to eat! Oh, and the rain became intermittent so we only had to resort to the use of umbrellas on a few occasions.

By the time our tour ended the sun was out and we opted to take a “hop on-hop off” bus tour of the city before we had to be back for our tour group dinner at 5:30 PM. We ran out of time before seeing all of the major Paris sites, returning to the hotel right before 5:30.

We met our tour director, a French lady named Chantal and some of the other people who are making up our group of 34. Dinner was at a nearby restaurant. Ten people opted to take an optional bus tour of the city after dinner; the rest of us have been here for a few days and chose not to go.

Tomorrow morning we head north to our first destination of Deauville, with a stop and tour in Rouen on the way.