L’Impressioniste: Final impressions

I am back at home in South Florida, three tubs of laundry done and still enjoying memories of France.

We were brought back to Paris on Saturday.

Sunday morning in Paris we trekked from our hotel room near the Opera to Musee D’Orsay on the other side of the river. The museum was formerly a train station and housed the largest number of people rescued from concentration camps after World War II.

Each of the six cabins on the barge was named for an Impressionist painter. I was in Pisarro.

Among the amazing Impressionist paintings we saw at the museum:

Morisot’s charming Chasing Butterflies, Cezanne’s mouth-watering Apples and Oranges and his portrait of Mme. Cezanne, Renoir’s delightful Gabrielle and the Rose, and Degas’ marvelous Blue Dancers. All the work features vivid interpretations, all quite lovely and what could have been a better way to wind up a six- day barge trip on L’Impressioniste?

I arrived home last night. The trip wasn’t easy.

After two wonderful days in Paris, I went to Gard du Nord to catch Euro Rail back to London.  The mobs of people signaled something was out of the ordinary and it was! A car had broken down in the tunnel and because of defective overhead lines, hundreds of passengers had to walk out of the tunnel.

I did not know this initially, we were told several varying stories, but since I had an airline flight the next day and a prepaid hotel room,  I ultimately was put on the first train that went out after the power was restored. When we approached Calais, before the entrance to the tunnel and approximately 30 minutes from London, we stopped – and stayed shopped for 2-1/2 hours. I got to London  just in time to get to my hotel at Heathrow in the rush hour.

I also was on the one of the first flights leaving Heathrow requiring passengers to make certain all electronic devices were fully charged.

Other than that, the experience was positive, the barge most enjoyable, and travel, as you travel junkies know, a great experience if you are prepared for a couple of  “bumps in the road.”

July 8, 2014