Up at seven-thirty, and I started to clean out the apartment, dump all the garbage, vacuum the floors. N got the carry-ons together while I took the kids down to the bakery they had visited the very first day to get their morning viennoiserie, and to take a few last pictures with their cameras. We ate the pastries, the last of the juices, the strawberries, and the raspberries, and I did the dishes. One final check, and we were out. The pack was heavy but not intolerable; N had the grey carryon, now a piece to be checked, on her back, and the black daypack strapped to her front. A carried a 1.5 litre bottle of water, and Z a Musee d'Orsay bag with some cookies and snacks in it.
I checked out while N took the kids to the Paul outlet to get some fougasse for our lunch, which was to be eaten outside the T9 terminal of Charles de Gaulle airport, crouching under a thin concrete shade away from the hot sun. Then into the subway at about quarter to eleven; it was, fortunately, not crowded. Line 6 to Denfert-Rochereau, to the RER gates where I bought our tickets to the airport, onto the platform.
The crowd vanished with the first train, bound for Mitry, and we were left virtually alone on the platform. I thought about all the places we had been previously but didn't visit again -- Pere-Lachaise cemetary, Jacques Melac's wine bar, the Art Deco buildings in Passy and Auteuil, the Vermeers and the kylixes in the Louvre, Saint-Denis and its cathedral -- and about the places we didn't get to -- the mysterious T2 tramway from La Defense around an outer loop of the Seine to Issy-les-Moulineaux, Vaux-le-Vicomte, the Cluny museum, all the untried restaurants entered into the Newton. There was no doubt but that we'd be back, as soon as we could. The train arrived, the kids clambered aboard and made a beeline for four seats at one end of the car with space for all the luggage, and we were off.