Au Revoir Paris

It's almost 10 pm, the taxi comes at 7 am, I'm still not packed. But we had a nice last day, which in addition to hours of packing, included a last lunch at the little restaurant on the side street next to our apartment (Le Daudet), a wonderful visit at the apartment of one of our instructors from the Alliance (coffee, tea, chocolates, and conversation), topped off by a trip after dark (our last on the Metro for a while) to the Grand Palais to see an exhibit called "Dans la nuit, des images," which was put together to celebrate the end of the President Sarkozy's time as the President of the EU. I had always wanted to go inside the Grand Palais; basically, it is a big empty exhibition hall, with a very, very cool roof. The exhibition itself was great, if a little bizarre -- a huge number of exhibitions of moving pictures and other things on big, medium, and small screens. Some were pretty, some were incredibly stupid (sorry), some were remarkable (like the exhibit showing the movement of cell phones in Paris, which was like looking at a strange beautiful living thing). I took a number of cool pictures, but don't have time to upload them all ... did I mention I still have packing to do ... but this one gives a sense of the exhibition:



Afterwards, we walked to the Champs Elysees (right next to the Grand Palais) to see the Christmas lights, which were still up.



Then we took the Metro back home (one last long correspondence through Montparnasse, ending the evening with crepes at the crepe-and-churro stand up Avenue du General Leclerc (Nutella for Andrew, sugar and butter for me).

Going into the Metro, because our pass was expiring at the end of the month, the little window next to the place you put your pass gave us a message -- "Fin d'abonnement december 31." Which is exactly the case for us and Paris, at least for the time being.

Au revoir, Paris. A bientôt.