Quist World Tour

Love this city. Natalie started our day by scrambling eggs for all of us. We didn’t rush it, knowing this was our last full day of sightseeing. Brian packed a lunch for us, and off we went. First we went to the Louvre, the enormous museum that we considered skipping altogether. But it’s not terribly expensive, and Rita suggested that we just pick a few things to see. That’s what we did. Of course we went to see the Mona Lisa. We had heard it was small and much more modest than its fame suggests, and that was true. However, many would-be pop stars dream of paparazzi like this. A huge crowd of people maneuvering to the front of the line to get a photo of a painting they don’t really seem to look at with their actual eyes. Her colors are rich and deep, and the painting is subtle, and it’s completely at odds with the mob scene played out before it! We examined the Wedding Feast at Cana , found the Venus de Milo, and then made our way to the Napoleon III apartments. The canopy bed is ve...

This morning we packed up from our splendid stay at the Splendid Hotel, after a better night’s sleep since the party across the hall had moved out. The shower plan is this: everyone stays in their bed either sleeping or reading while someone else takes a shower, trying to ensure a bit of privacy in spite of all the glass doors. It seems to work. We made a quick stop at the bakery for some chocolate pastries to go. As sad as it is to leave the Alps behind, our real apprehension was another long driving trip. We knew we would have a couple of nights free yet on this trip, and one option was to go see a couple of places in Switzerland . We immediately nixed that plan when we started looking at hotel prices in Switzerland . Un. Be. Lieve. Able. So we picked the second most expensive place we could find, Paris . Really, Paris only came up because it was a place that our children wanted to see. It seems a good 5 hour drive from Grenoble , and the drive from Paris to the town in Germany ...