We left our AirBnB this morning to go to the AmaLyra and drop off our luggage. It was far too early for cabins to be ready, so we had a choice: sit in the lounge for a few hours or go out and continue exploring. It wasn’t a difficult choice.
We still had one Rick Steves walk to do – Rue Cler, which is a short (two blocks) shopping street that he says is typical for an upscale Parisian neighborhood, with lots of fresh food and activity. We took the Metro and discovered that it was already Shen Yun season in Paris.
The two blocks that Rick Steves put on his tour have been pedestrianized (though we did have to dodge a few delivery vehicles and taxis), making for a pleasant walk. We stopped and enjoyed the sights, sounds, and smells at several stores, including a wonderful greengrocer (whose prices were noticeably higher than the greengrocer near our AirBnB on Rue Saint-Honore in the 1st), a great chocolate shop (they got some of our money!), and a branch of Mariage Freres tea shops (they got our money, too). We didn’t go into the seafood restaurant which used to be a horsemeat butcher, but we did have lunch at Café du Marché and quite enjoyed it.
We still had plenty of time to kill before the official embarkation time, so we decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower.
We still had plenty of time, so we walked the rest of the way back to the ship, passing by the Olympic Breaking venue and the Japanese Cultural Center on our way. Oh, and we got a view of the other side of the tower.
We got to the ship a few minutes after official embarkation started and were greeted warmly by the crew.
We unpacked, met new friends, listened to the briefings (and were grateful that we didn’t have to do a lifejacket drill), and finally were released to have dinner. We sailed upstream (east) for a short while, giving me one last chance for a picture of the tower and the Statue of Liberty, before turning downstream for our overnight sail to our first stop in Les Andelys for a tour of Château Galliard.
