THE IMPRESSIONISTS MAKE AN IMPRESSION ON US!

That's breakfast...berries & yogurt!  (Gary ate a few before I took the picture - really, the box looked like art work, it was so neatly arranged).  And how cute is that little jar of yogurt (whole milk delivered straight from the farm the previous day!)  It was enough to get our motors going so we could head up the street to the closest cafe (our apartment does not have a coffee pot...which is ok because it is so much more fun to go out and order "deux cafe creme" and stand at the bar with the locals!).  Once fueled with caffeine we were ready to tackle our problems...our ATM card didn't seem to work, Gary's MasterCard was not working, and my phone was not able to make calls out...the kind of problems that could ruin a vacation!  We headed over to the Apple store to get the phone issue fixed first...it seemed like the easiest one to tackle first, as I was sure I had just messed up some setting.  I had heard the Apple store was located under the Louvre (about a 10 minute walk)  We got there before they opened up, so we found a cafe in this under-ground mall.  Gary tried the credit card one more time and voila...it worked fine.!  Then we decided to really push our luck and try the ATM card...miracle of  miracles, it also worked!  I guess the first 2 times we had tried to use those cards, we were just a persnickety machines!  Yeah...2 problems solved, one more to go.  Back to the Apple store (which was now open) and the adorable young man told me that Verizon is very spotty in France and a new sim card would solve my problem.  Sadly, they do not sell sim cards there so he directed us to the Orange store (no joke...Apple, Orange!?)  This involved a metro ride up to the Arc de Triomphe.  Upon emerging from the Metro, we realized we were right in front of a poor imitation of a McDonalds that we had eaten at in 2000 when our boys were dying for some "American" food on our family trip.  The place is called BurgerQuick!  And if you ever had a drink at our house in the past 13 years and drank out a South Park drinking glass, it was a freebie they were giving away at BurgerQuick in 2000 - those glasses are family heirlooms!

This is the infamous BurgerQuick...and this picture is for Bryan, Jayson & Matthew who will be glad to know that BurgerQuick is still in business!  (We did not stop into see if they are still giving away
 South Park glassware...sorry boys!)

Directly across the street was the Orange store, which, as it turned out, was all out of sim cards for iPhone5s..."a strike" we were told.  We left, not sure WHO was on strike: the manufacaturer, the drivers, the sales associates...bottom line was no sim card.  I was still receiving text messages, and by this point Russ and Adrienne said they were ready to met up with us.  We had decided to hit the Musee d'Orsay, which houses some fantastic Impresssionist artwork.  Gary and I really enjoyed this museum last time we were here, so we certainly wanted to make a point to visit it again.  We met  Russ and Adrienne just as the weather got super hot and muggy...perhaps we should have lunch and some iced tea before tackling the Impressionists!  We had actually read good reviews of the museum restaurant so we decided to take a chance.  Boy were we glad we did!  The restaurant was spectacular...we felt asthough we were dining at Versailles,and could hardly take our eyes off the ceiling:

I have to make a disclaimer here...I'm having a hard time typing this on my ipad and typos are hard to go back and correct...once I get back to make a correction, I have a hard time getting back to where I want to continue!  Not sure if it is the iPad, the Blogger/Gmail format, or operator error...Sorry!

Anyway, lunch was great.  We are finding it very convenient to use the laminated celiac cards we brought from home.  We had read that France is not particularly accomodating to gluten issues (do you blame them...all that awesome bread...of course they don't want to admit that it could make some people very ill!  But these cards are awesome...they explain, in French of course, that Gary has Celiacs Disease and lists what he can NOT eat (wheat,barley, rye or anything that has been cooked in the oil  that has cooked  anything prepared with wheat, barley or rye.)   It is SO handy to hand he waiter the little card and he can just take it to the chef to see if food is SAFE for Gary.  Fingers 

crossed,but so far...so good! 

Ooops,another glitch with the iPad/blogger format...it wants to finish this posting...but I'M NOT READY!  oh well,more to come later!