Canal St.-Martin and Home

 On Tuesday, September 27th, we had breakfast at our hotel, then went out and walked down the Canal St.-Martin, as far as the market.  

On the way back, we got some sandwiches at Ten Belles, to carry on the plane.  The original idea had been to catch the train back to CDG from the Gare du Nord, but the forecast was for rain, and we didn't look forward to the miserable sort of walk we had on arrival, so we chickened out and had the hotel call a taxi--simple, straightforward, sixty euros.

So far, we had been lucky during the two-and-a-half years of pandemic.  Our luck ran out on the flight from Keflavik to MSP.  We both wore 3M N95 masks, but hardly anyone else on the plane was masked.  Certainly not the young woman in front of Mary Joy, who was coughing throughout the six-hour flight.  Certainly not the older woman seated next to me, also coughing throughout the flight.

Two days later I had the same cough she did.  A cold?  I tested positive for COVID-19.  At first, Mary Joy tested negative, but then she started testing positive, too.  We have both survived, but it is not fun, and it put a bad end on a good trip.  Other people we know have caught COVID-19 while on vacation.  Did we start traveling again too soon?  Does it make sense to start planning trips again yet?  We were hoping to get away for a few weeks this winter.

Petite France, the Sainte-Chapelle and Notre-Dame

 On Monday, September 26th, we went for breakfast to a place I had picked out near Petite France, Strasbourg's canal area.  But the restaurant no longer existed--a Thai restaurant was there instead, not open for breakfast.  So, instead, we wandered around Petite France, then ate at a bakery we happened to pass--not great.

Since our train wasn't until 12:19, we wandered around, looking into the church of St.-Pierre-le-Vieux and going by Place Kléber and the Cathedral again.

The high-speed train ride to Gare de l'Est was uneventful, except that the weather got rainier the closer we got to Paris, and in spite of our umbrellas, we got wet on the way to our hotel, Le Citizen, which overlooks the Canal-St.-Martin.  I think our room may have been upgraded, because it was wonderful--long and narrow, on the top floor.

We got online tickets (4:30 p.m.) to the Sainte-Chapelle and took the Metro down to the Cité stop.  Of course, we'd seen the Sainte-Chapelle before, the palace chapel built by St. Louis IX in the thirteenth century (over an unusually short period of time for a gothic church) to house the Crown of Thorns, which he had obtained as an indirect result of the Fourth Crusade's sack of Constantinople in 1204.

We had not been to see Notre-Dame since the fire on April 15, 2019 that almost destroyed it.

We returned to our hotel, then had a very nice dinner at the nearby Les Enfants Perdus.  It was just coincidence that our first dinner on this trip was with Naughty Children, while our last was with Lost Children, both in Paris, two very different restaurants in two very different neighborhoods at different ends of the city.