Things ain't always easy ...

The easy decision mentioned yesterday did not turn out to be as easy as imagined.

A compendium in the apartment recommended a restaurant in a neighbouring part of the city so after checking on the internet that it would be open, a lot of shops and restaurants close at this time of the year for the summer holidays, and writing down detailed instructions of how to get there we set off on foot.

Numerous turns & around 35 minutes later we arrived at the restaurant only to find that it hadn't reopened as noted on the internet - not to matter we had passed many restaurants on the way so we will just find one on the reverse journey.

We checked them out as we walked back but most were full and those that weren't were bar type establishments serving whatever and fries so we kept walking until we arrived back at a restaurant no more than 50m from where we started out.

So around an hour and a quarter after we left for dinner we sat down which by this time was after 8pm!

Overnight the skies opened up with another thunder & lighting storm and for most of the day it has been showery but not enough to keep us inside.

After speaking to Jill in Australia on Skype this morning (sorry that the connection dropped during the important part Jill) we walked to the Marche des Enfants Rouges said to be the oldest market in Paris - well that was a disappointment as it was not even set up fully so we then took the Metro to Harve-Caumartin which appeared from our research to be a shopping area.

Part of shopping area at Harve-Caumartin

After some time there we set off on foot to Champs Elysees - it was around a 45 min walk through a typical area of Paris with lovely old multi storeyed buildings lining both sides of the street some of which were still in cobbles.

The Champs Elysees despite the inclement & cool weather was crowded and was very much as we remembered from our previous visit.

Numerous stores were looked through and in particular I took more interest in the Mercedes-Benz & Peugeot stores where some of their new/futuristic models were on display.

In one store we saw a gift that we thought would be nice for someone back home but when we saw the price realised that at our age a mortgage would be out of the question! Coincidentally as we walked out of the shop a song was playing with the chorus line being "out of your reach".

Late afternoon we took the Metro back to Oberkampf - the Metro system is easy to use, cheap & efficient.

Need to make one more easy decision to finish off the day but after last night we accept that anything is possible.

Au revoir