Blue Ridge Parkway Quilt

I'm just back from my final visit to the Asheville Quilt Show. From my point of view, it seems like it has been a great success, as usual.

A highlight for me was the showing of the now completed Blue Ridge Parkway 75th Anniversary Quilt. You might remember an earlier blog where I showed you the lady slipper block that I made for the quilt, using some silk fabrics that I hand-dyed when I went to John C. Campbell Folk School this spring. Well, it was an honor for me to be part of this Asheville Quilt Guild project. The quilt will be donated to the BRP Folk Art Center this September and, though I may be just a tad prejudiced, I think that the completed quilt turned out really, really well. I hope you enjoy this sneak preview!

Our Final Day in Paris

I have been away from my blog for quite a while. As usual, I have lots of excuses. I ran into some frustrating sessions trying to move my photos onto disks, I had to make an unscheduled trip to Buffalo, then I came home to all the activities of summer, including a big construction project at our house... well, more about that later. The calendar page has now turned to August, so I had better finish up our May trip so I can move on to other things!!!

For the final day, we were docked in Paris. The evening before we had stayed on the sun deck until after dark so that we could see the Eiffel Tower illuminated in the distance as we returned to the city. During our approach, we went under some bridges that were so close to us that we could reach up and touch them!

Our morning excursion was an excellent city tour that was mostly by bus, but allowed a photo stop with a nice view of the tower and a wonderful, relaxing stroll through Luxembourg Gardens. We had gotten our bearings last week with our sight-seeing along the Seine, but it was great to revisit those areas once more and also get to some iconic areas a bit away from the river. As usual, our guide was excellent and the bus driver was skillful in negotiating the crazy weekend city traffic.

The afternoon was ours to explore where we liked. We set out by train to go just three stops to get us to the area where we could easily walk to Les Invalides (Napoleon's Tomb) and the Rodin Museum. As luck would have it, the train made an unscheduled stop about halfway there and then wouldn't start up again! After about 15 minutes of waiting, listening to garbled messages in French and discussing the meaning of them with equally bewildered fellow passengers from Australia, we decided to just head out on foot. So we got to see more of the Paris neighborhoods around the Eiffel Tower, but we had less time to sight-see at our destinations. We decided that we could forgo seeing Napoleon's actual tomb, because the grounds of Les Invalides were spectacle enough and we opted to spend our time at the Rodin Museum. Many of the large sculptures are outside on the grounds, arranged among nicely sculpted gardens, but there is also an extensive indoor museum housed in an elegant old chateau.

Our return trip to the cruise ship was equally adventurous. Apparently the train still wasn't running and so we were directed to a Metro line that would supposedly get us to the same station, however when we emerged on the street we were totally disoriented... nothing looked familiar. We finally got pointed in the right direction, but had a very long walk back to the ship. (I think in retrospect, we could have more easily just walked back from the museum!) Oh, well, we appreciated the extra exercise, because we had a long flight the next day... and most importantly we made it back in time for an excellent final dinner on board!

River cruising is definitely an great way to travel and I would highly recommend Uniworld, http://www.uniworld.com/. Everything was excellent!