Wrinkly Bits
A Blog by Gail Cushman and Cowboy Bob
Originally posted 9/1/25
We arrived in Paris late when our plane was delayed by a couple hours. It didn’t make much of a difference to us, as we have been through about a dozen time zones, sometimes back and forth. Between the time zone changes, my inability to tell north from south, and late airplanes, I was screwed.
Our travel agent placed us in a lovely hotel, the Hotel Fougere. (As an aside to this blog, if you travel and don’t use a travel agent, find one, but you can’t have ours because I keep her busy these days and she won’t have time for you. Sorry) It sits about a mile from everything French and the best adjective I can think of is “quaint.” It has an elevator for two, not two plus luggage. Just two. Real keys for the doors. Wine available on the “honor system.” European electricity which could scare you when it fries your curling iron. While I talk about quaint, Cowboy talks about design and colors and texture and layout. It has everything you need and nothing you don’t. It was built a long time ago, probably before French sent Lady Liberty to sit in the New York Harbor.
Quaint. Delightful. Just right.
I forgot that we had a 9:00 date to go to the Louvre, and slept until 8:30, meaning we had to hustle to get there late. It’s about a mile, so took a taxi, and found our assigned guide. He had an amazing recall of all, and that’s a big word for the Louvre to paintings, sculptures, and history of the art and artifacts in the museum. After a couple of hours, we arrived at the Queen of Art, the Mona Lisa…the original, not a knock-off and our guide got me a front row stand to stare at this wonderful Leonardo. It was like “cutting in line” which was About 500 people stood behind me, but the guide insisted that I needed to do it. The painting is everything you might think. We also saw the painting that inspired the Lady Liberty statue that I mentioned earlier. We saw a painting by David named the Crowning of the Emperor Napoleon, which was something like 40’ x 20’, filled with the glory for which Napolean was known. We saw a statue of Cupid kissing Psyche, saving her from death, what a beautiful piece of art. I could go on, but I encourage you to visit it yourself. I’m sure it is online, if you don’t have our travel bug. It is worth the time!
It was Sunday eve, bells rang from across the street for a call to mass and we thought, why not, and found ourselves in Abbey St. Germain among other worshippers. What a peaceful way to end our first day in Paris. We joined about 350—450 others, mostly young people, from their teens to maybe 30. Such a surprise. The Catholic service was in French, of course, but we could mostly follow what the priests and congregation said.
Cowboy has been on the hunt for electrical converters, all the outlets are 220V and a whole different style of plug, so need adapters, the hotel has several dozen and even he was amazed at how many plugs for people from all over the world are needed.
This morning we are on a trek for a LOWES or similar and let me tell you this is not an easy quest, I really need to work on my French! Try pantomiming electric sockets and plugs and you get my drift.
Signing off for now…
