Chateau d'Oigny: Day 6

Today's itinerary started us off at the Place de la Madeleine, La Madeleine being a church designed to look like a greek temple. Beautiful on the outside, but pretty dark and creepy on the inside, with austere stone statues lurking in every corner.

The plaza surrounding La Madeleine brimmed over with specialty food shops, flower stands, and farmer's markets. Here were some of the lovely sights:

Vibrant roses stacked horizantally at a flower stand.

Check out the delicate zebra patterns on these rainbow trout! The fishmonger tried to charge me 1 euro for taking a picture, but I just flashed a cute smile and walked away.

Yup, it's what you think it is... a basket of large black truffles at the Maison du Truffe. Each one of these guys is worth it's weight in gold. It smelled so heavenly in this store.

A fancy grocer sold all sorts of tropical and exotic foods, like these mangosteens from Thailand, which made Connie and I start salivating almost instantaneously.

For lunch, we headed to the Rue Montorgueil, and ended up a cool bistro. We knew we had picked a good place when we walked in and saw this great painting on the wall...

My order of steak frites, in honor of Jack.

We stumbled upon a bakery that boasted that it's eclairs are the third best in all of Paris! Well, third best! I had to try one. Awfully skinny, but crisp, pillowy and decadent.

We strolled through the Jardin des Tuilleries on our way to the Museum de l'Orangerie

Monet's "Waterlilies" hang from the curved walls of L'Orangerie, the museum to which he donated the paintings to in the 1920's.

We also came across this Renoir. A copy of this painting hangs in my parents' house in San Jose.

Rodin's "Kiss" graces the terrace outside of the l'Orangerie.

Following the Rose Line (of The Da Vinci Code fame) at the L'Eglise de St. Sulpice.

Connie and I picked up this cake for the gang from the Grand Epicerie de Paris. Apricot custard with almond and pistachio filling and crust. Delicious!
It was our farewell ode to a fabulous week in France.