Still Paris, after all this time

Actually, it felt as if we'd only just begun...time is passing so quickly...

It was time to take off for our not-so-sunset cruise. It was raining just a little bit, and we had to find the cruise somewhere near the Eiffel Tower.

Our first real view of the Tower

We left ourselves seemingly lots of time to find the right cruise ship out of all the possibilities in that area--but first we had to get to the river from the wall above. That meant finding stairs or a ramp--surprisingly not easy in that specific vicinity. But after fighting our way through a small carnival setup, stairs emerged and we were down by the water. And after being redirected three times, we finally found the correct boat for our cruise. Should've been easy enough; it was the only place with a huge line...

We managed to find a seat on the outside, but not upper, deck. Good enough. I lined up for our free drinks while Cindy fiercely fought off anyone trying to put their bottom on my seat. By the time I returned, we had shoved off and were cruising down (up?--not sure) the

Seine. And despite the slight rain it was a perfectly fine evening for this.

So many bridges, so many interesting designs and decorative elements!

Checl put the different fascinating faces on this one (above).

Oops...not a bridge element...

By far the most beautiful bridge--in Paris or anywhere I've been:

But then, of course, there arethese two impressive guardians of the Seine:

The views were wonderful and we really didn't miss the sunset. In fact, we did get a bit of some magic evening light:

We met a trio of women, a mother from Longmont traveling with her daughter and daughter-in-law. This was the second time we had run into this kind of admirable family grouping.

And finally, of course, there was the Eiffel Tower in all its glory:

Or many of them flickering in the dusk:

Too many architectural pictures for this chapter, honestly. I've gone kind of crazy with my camera.

We left the cruise and made our way back through the carnival rides and glittery Eiffel Towers to the metro station, where we discovered that the train we needed to take was stopping far from where we needed to be. As we had already walked close to six miles that day, we figured we should catch a bus. After waiting a long time for the bus that would go our way, we realized we might be waiting all night--and it was drizzling--so we did what we've only done one other time on this trip: hailed a taxi. When our driver dropped us by Notre Dame (close to our place), we did the next sensible thing for that evening and went to the brasserie at the tip of Ile Saint-Louis for a very late dinner (so European!!) and some serious people watching.

And finally, to bed, because the next day would be just as action packed.

A side note here: we've been averaging about six miles a day--even when we are spending much of the day on trains, we still manage to put on this kind of mileage daily. We're glad we've been walking every day since early 2017, because we might not otherwise be doing quite so well. And we have continued to do this kind of mileage even while we were each sick. Tough old broads, that's us.

Tune in for the next episode on this exciting adventure, for more thrills, chills, and serendipitous happenings. It keeps getting better!