Monday, October 31, on an Easyjet flight from Paris to Pisa

Well, we're on our way back to Italy. Paris was cool, but as with most of our trips, this one was pretty short. Just a taste of the city, but it's better to do that than to potentially miss out on seeing it until who-knows-when.

Today we really only had until early afternoon, but that gave us time enough to see a couple of things we hadn't gotten to yet. First on the agenda was Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart), a beautiful cathedral in Montemartre. To get there you take the metro to Pigalle, which puts you smack dab in the red-light district - kind of an odd place to keep a famous cathedral when you think about it. From there, we walked up, up, up (more than twice the length of our staircase in Florence - I counted 'em), until you get to the summit of the hill near the church and THEN, when you're bent over and panting, you see the funicular that you could have used to make the ascent. Grr.

Anyhow... we walked through the church sanctuary with the million or so other tourists, and tried not to disturb the faithful as they meditated. It made me feel a little voyeuristic, actually... there were SOOO many of us that it must have been a challenge to focus on what they had come here to do. Although the place was beautiful and I would have liked to linger a little longer, I felt uncomfortable enough that I was glad when we headed out the door.

This landed us back at the funicular station, where we listened to a harpist for a few moments before taking the stairs down. Back to the red light district again, to the Metro station, with our next stop being the Pompideou center. This complex houses both an art museum and a bunch of shops. We didn't have time to explore the center itself, but we stopped for lunch across the way - I had a steak with a red wine and onion sauce, which was pretty good. We've been eating so much pasta in Italy that I've felt a bit on carbohydrate overload, but this trip seems to have satisfied my protein cravings for a while, I think.

Now, as I mentioned, we're on the plane back to Italy. This time around, we were actually able to *board* a flight the first try, and the only hassle seems to be some turbulence. No big deal there; when it gets really bumpy, I just put the laptop on standby until things smooth out.

Next stop... Florence, perhaps.

Ciao,
Leanne