26, December 2012

We awoke early to pack and store our luggage in the hotel lobby.  Front desk clerk told us to not worry about our bags so we were off to breakfast and the Louvre before 7:30AM. Our hotel was on the #4 line of the Metro which intersects with Les Halles which is the largest train station in the world.  We tried to get on the yellow line to Da Ravioli street but found a sortie with the same name only to realize once on the street we were about a mile from the Louvre entrance we wanted. The only place we found open for breakfast was a McCafe which really was nice because the front of the store had authentic Parisian pastries and coffees.  A couple of biscuits were ordered as well.  We started to walk to the Louvre and jumped in a cab when we realized how far away we were.

Stephanie led the tour and we spent about three hours walking around.  We saw everything we wanted except the Medieval footings and the Venus De Milo.  By starting at opening we were sometimes the only ones in a room looking at paintings.  The room with the Mona Lisa had maybe 50 people.  By the time we left the entrance had a substantial queue.  

Once we exited the Louvre we stopped at a real cafe to get lunch before our exit from Paris.  We chose another street cafe and ordered their Ravioli which was baked perfectly.   We took the Metro to the hotel to find three bags missing after some charades with the front desk she showed us the missing bags put away in a closet.  We loaded up and took the 45 minute ride to Disneyland where the KIDS talked us into a couple more hours inside the park before we repacked the car and headed to Belgium.  We found there is a dragon under this castle. Amazingly despite the weather forecasts we did not have any rain to contend with during our Paris visit.

The Circus hotel by Disney only sold Wifi by the day so we plotted a McDonalds in Metz France where we found out that rooms that sleep 4 are rare.  I spotted a cheap special on hotel.com (Did I mention all my bookings through booking.com were wrong) that indicated a chalet that slept four and was in Assesse Belgium.  This was far from the route I wanted to take but Google maps plotted a route within 15 minutes of my original plan.  Everyone agreed a night in Assesse would be a night to remember.  We drove into France in the rain and we drove out in it as well. We drove three hours in another rain storm with high winds.   As I exited off the Highway there was no road sign for Assesse.  I started to get worried as we drove through single lanes through small farm villages then onto long winding roads through farm country.  The Chalet ended up being a .......