Hi all - this is the first of many I hope.  I am currently using the French keyboard so have to use care.

After 4 and a half days in Paris we are now in the Loire valley for a week in the historic town of Blois.

Our Paris stay was most enjoyable but too short.  We had an excellent (if expensive) hotel in the left bank, close to the river, Notre Dame, the Pantheon and hundreds of eating places.  Hordes of tourists took over the nearby streets of restaurants in the evenings. We went on a river hop- on hop-off cruise, stopped at the Jardin de Plantes, where we had an excellent and leisurely lunch in the restaurant.  This was initiated by a need for toilets, the only one we could find in the Jardin itself was out of order.  This reminded us from previous trips that we have 2 main probems in France - finding public toilets and the lack of disabled access - many places are only accessable by lots of stairs.
I had not been to the Pantheon before, so made sure that I did.  It was so impressive - the dome, the pendulum hanging from the top of the dome which apparently (not so apparent for me) shows the rotation of the earth. Then there is the crypt, where hundreds of eminent French persons, almost excusively men, have been interred and honored.
And no, we did not go to the Eiffel or Sacre Coeur this time but did see the Tower illuminated, albeit briefly.

On Wednesday morning we took a taxi to the TT depot at the Porte de St. Cloud (exit from the Peripherique ring road) to pick up our Renault Scenic automatique with GPS. We were soon on our way, with some trepidation. The young man at TT had set the GPS for our detination, Giverny, famous for Claude Monet's house and Garden.

Luckily Giverny was not too crowded and we loved the experience. After a quick snack nearby for lunch we set the GPS for Blois. this was tricky - it took about 4 goes to get it right. We opted to go via Autoroutes, longer and more expensive but an hour quicker.  We were surprised to find ourselves returning almost to Paris before joining another freeway which took us direct to Blois. Thankfully  the traffic was not too heavy as I got used to travelling at 130k/hr and up.

Our house for the stay is a bit ordinary on the outside but magnificent inside and centrally heated - mornings are quite cold.

that's it for now - to be continued! Don and Valerie