Paris

We stayed at the Hotel Langlois in the 9th arrondissement so that we could experience the area described so well by Elaine Sciolino in a lecture we attended and in her book, The Only Street in Paris: Rue des Martyrs. We can still taste the amazing Sunday morning large brioche! That was just the starting point for each day, however, and we walked many miles around the city each of the three days we were there. Thanks to Caroline and Claude, we attended a dramatic performance of Les Misérables (the play, only 1 hour 20 minutes, all in French) and ate dinner in an Italian restaurant on the Left Bank. Farther afield, we took a train to Rueil-Malmaison to visit the château of Napoleon's Josephine and walked along the Promenade Plantée, for higher-level views east of the Bastille. And we returned to some of our favorite places: the Luxembourg Gardens, the Tuileries, and the Palais Royal.

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