Day 10 - Driving from Sarlat to Paris, stopping at Vaux le Comte, Seine Cruise

Driving into Paris.  Gave us problems 8 years ago.  Gave us problems today.

Let me back up.  We left the Sarlat area around 10:00 am after stopping at a little boulangerie (mmm chocolate éclair, baguettes, pan a chocolat, croissant.)  The three of us munched happily, looking forward to completing the 5+ hour drive to a place outside of Paris called Vaux le Comte.

Vaux le Comte is a huge palace? estate? built by an up and coming finance minister to King Louis XIV by the name of Foquet.  He had this great idea to raze a village and put 8,000 peasants to work on building a fabulous house complete with moat, grand canal, and gardens.  He hired a master architect and garden planner and really did it up fabulous.  He wanted to honor King Louis and had a party in his honor while also unveiling his grand achievement.  Louis was a bit jealous of Foquet’s house, took some notes on how to make Versailles like it only better, and had Foquet arrested.  There was some French intrigue amongst some competing politicos and some question about where the finance minister got so much money.  Foquet ended up in prison for 19 years, where he died.

Or something like that.  Anyway, he had pretty impressive digs:

We felt pretty good that we finished looking around by 5:00 pm and our GPS lady said we’d be at our hotel in 40 minutes.  That was before we got stuck in traffic (I don’t know, Friday night+rush hour+Paris, what does that equal?) and she said “recalculating” about a billion times.  We finally made it to the hotel by about 6:45 pm where Mark dumped David and I with all of our stuff (and his) at the curb while he went in search of a gas station (in the middle of Paris, you ask?  What folly) and then to the rental car return place which was supposed to be within walking distance of the hotel.  The GPS lady led him to one supposed gas station, but there was nothing there except construction.  With only fumes to go one he finally made it to a gas pump at the curb and then on to the rental place.  He managed to get to the hotel around 8:30.

Things got better, however, as we walked quickly from the hotel for a couple of miles (it seemed) past Notre Dame

to the Pont Neuf where we grabbed some sandwiches and waited for the 10 pm Seine cruise.  There were a bunch (thousands?) of 20-something people lining the river enjoying the weather and a Friday night.  It got up into the 80’s today, so the evening was absolutely lovely.  We saw some beautiful sights (and a not so beautiful rear end as a guy mooned us from the shore).

If you’ve seen the Jason Bourne movies you will recognize the Samaritane:

 And the Pont Neuf:

 The Eiffel Tower, of course:

 Tomorrow is our last day in France and we will drag David around to as many sites in Paris as possible!