In the morning, however, Julian still wasn't feeling well... He encouraged us to go ahead without him to Berlin. We could call him on his cell phone, and if he felt better he would join us. We were a bit distraught at the idea of not having our German tour guide... and in truth, there wasn't anything that was really drawing me to Berlin. It would have been fun, without a doubt, especially with someone who knew a bit about the town and could show us around a bit. But we weren't sure if he would feel better by the afternoon, and we were going to have to go back to Paris sometime, so we decided that we would just head back to Paris that morning. We still had time to make the train, so we got on the internet and made hotel reservations, took a quick picture to remember it all by, said goodbye, and took a cab to the train station.

We took the 9:00 train to Köln, and from there to Paris. On the second train we met a lady named Maija from Long Island, NY who was travelling alone to Paris. We started talking a bit to her, and she noticed Penny's sweatshirt with the Latvian national seal. It turned out that she was Latvian, so we said "Sveiks," told her about our Latvian connection, and talked with her quite a bit until we got to Paris. She knew where we were from, and had been to Garezers before. She had been visiting her aunt in Köln; her aunt was a famous Latvian opera singer in her day. When we got to Paris, we helped guide Maija through the train station, to the metro (after going in a few circles!) and to her stop... then we said "bon chance!" and headed on to our hotel.

Having arrived in Paris sometime after 4pm, and not having much time to visit museums or anything, we decided that we would go back to Sacre Coeur to get Penny that artwork that she had been looking for on day 4 of our trip. Making sure to bring money, since we knew there wasn't a bancomat up by Sacre Coeur, we hopped on the Metro and were off. As we were walking toward the area where all the artists were, I saw Sarsaparilla Pete walking towards us, so I dug into my pocket and pulled out several francs. Without saying a word, I just walked up to him and put the money in his hand.

He seemed puzzled for a split second, and then he just said "Hey..." I had walked right past him, but turned to wave and smile... So we walked around the artists for a while, and found a few things that we liked. Penny liked some of the things that were a bit bigger, and could have presented some problems trying to transport. I happened to like some smaller pastels... she liked them too, but couldn't decide on which one she liked best... but the price was right, so we bought a bunch of them. She could decide when we got home which one was the best.
With some art for Penny in hand, we made our way back toward the hotel, where we found a nearby restaurant and enjoyed another Parisian café. We had asked at the desk of the hotel if there was any way that we could get tickets to the French Open... but the tickets were entirely gone. That was choice number one for the next day... choice number two was to go to the Palace of Versailles... so we headed off to bed, with a plan for the following day.