Luxembourg and Pantheon Sept 09 2009

Claude and I are starting to feel tired from all of our explorations.
The streets are teaming with business people, young families going to school, teenagers hanging out, and cyclists eagerly going somewhere. In every direction, people are determined to get to their destination, including the two of us. We must be especially alert when crossing the streets because motorcyclists appear to go faster than anybody else on the road with their crafty around stopped or slowed vehicle manouevers.
We slept in this morning and Claude made us a tasty breakfast.
Armed once again with our map, water, and walking legs, we were off to see the gardens at the Luxembourg.
We entered the park and found photographers enthousiastically working away at capturing a moment in the life of a beautiful young East Indian couple dressed in turquoise and gold.
We continued our walk and noticed a ceremony taking place in one of the far gardens. Hundreds of blue uniformed men wearing silver helmets (or chrome domes as Claude would put it) lined up in perfect position while awaiting the command to move. We heard the marching band and later, saw the entire procession march past us, guns and all. It was an impressive start to our day. Coffee was in order after this affair and soon we were resting our legs and replenishing our brain cells with a zesty punch from our espressos.
As I've said before, we have both been feeling tired and as much as we wanted to visit the Louvre, and we just couldn't stand the thought of being cooped up for hours dodging hundreds of tourists. So what do we do? We go and get locked up in the Pantheon for a few hours bedazzled by Foucault's pendulum (ok it's a replica of the original AND it also means thousands of others like us have been looking at displays since 1851). Included in this visit was a trip downstairs to see the crypt (such a gloomy words I say) where we were able to see the tombs of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, and others. During our looking around down here, I thought of something and I excaimed, 'oh!' to catch Claude's attention, and instead I received a shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh by the Valet of tombs (like I was going to wake the dead!). We soon made our exit to get some fresh air.
Across the street there happens to be the church of St-Etienne-du-Mont where St-Genevieve, the patron saint of France is laid to rest. This time, it was Claude and a few other photographers chance to get into trouble for using their flash. With a smirk and a look of resignation Claude put away his camera and enjoyed the rest of this little BIG church's sights.
It's funny, sometimes you think you're going to go and see this, do that, and continue on some more...and then reality jumps in and says 'NOPE'.
Paris has been wonderful and I speak for the both of us when I say, we saw more than we ever could believe by being on foot, taking the metro, and visiting various areas by chance.
Five days in Paris is a short time but a good time.

This is our last night here. Tomorrow morning we pack up and head off to rent a car (a ferrari---ha ha ha---wouldn't that be nice). We are heading West of Paris for a road trip.
And to say goodbye to Paris, our landlords have invited us over for breakfast tomorrow morning, we are both very pleased with this, as Lilian and Gerard are pleasant and funny and we always end up laughing a lot with them.

Here are the pictures of the day---Dd