Thursday.  Oh my!  Reality sank in today.  We actually have to leave "our French home" tomorrow!!!  We are NOT happy about that at all.  So today had to be a work day.  We went through the house and gathered up all of our belongings (we think).  We purchased a few things while we were here -- for me, of course -- so we packed a small box and walked up to the Post Office to mail it home.  Sure hope my boots will be safe!  We did a few other chores just to be absolutely ready to leave early tomorrow morning.

Christina and Claude stopped by to say goodbye and give us bisous and that was very hard on all of us.  I am admittedly a mush ball so I cried and I noticed the others had tears in their eyes too!  We asked Christina if she would mind taking home the food we had left.  She said "no problem" in English!  It was pretty funny!  We have their email address and we promised to email them and send them copies of the pictures we took together.  That was a difficult goodbye!

Claire asked if we would join she and Douglas at Aux Cepages around 7:00 for a last glass of wine so we did that.  It was as much fun as usual and we will definitely miss them.  Claire explained to the owner, Michelle, that we were leaving the next day and she came around the bar and kissed us.  Claire said that when we return to Saint Aignan Michelle will speak some English because Claire is going to teach her!  Michelle looked skeptical.

When we left Aux Cepages we told Claire and Douglas that we were going to stop at Fun Doner for dinner.  They decided to join us which was very nice.  They did not believe me that Fun Doner had cheeseburgers and were amazed when I got one.  Claire said she will order one next time.  It was a very good dinner.

Just when I finished eating Thessa called to say she was coming over (in Nathalie's absence) to "check us out" of La Boulangerie.  I left the others at the restaurant while they paid, etc., and walked home to meet Thessa who, by the way, had her very cute boyfriend with her!!!  We walked all over the house to make sure we didn't break anything and she gave me instructions for what to do with the key in the morning and we said goodbye to them.

Claire told us at dinner that she would give us subway tickets for the Paris Metro and bring her Metro map over and show us how to get to our hotel in Paris without paying for an expensive taxi.  She went home and returned with the tickets, her map AND a pitcher of wine.  We had to have one final drink!

All too soon they left with a touching goodbye with promises to stay in touch by email.  We think they will visit us in North Carolina before too long!  David and I quickly went to bed because we had to get up early to get to the train station in the morning to go to Paris.