"People are generally happy here because they are very satisfied with very little," he told The Guardian.
"This is not a consumer-driven society. Life here is about community and family and goodwill to other people. It's a place where you don't worry too much."
Sounds good to me. See the full article here.
No, that's not the picture of the hotelroom we stayed at in Paris. Hopefully you recognized this painting. It's Van Gogh's bedroom in Arles. This was at the Orsay museum along with many other fine art paintings. My favorites were the works of Van Gogh, Monet and Pisarro. This museum is filled with their work. It was so much fun to see so many of their work in one place. Surprisingly, they don't mind the visitors taking pictures, as long as flash is not used. I ended up taking enough pictures to make my own screensaver. I actually enjoyed my visit to Musee d'Orsay more than my visit to Louvre.
I had to have my picture taken in front of Monet's "Les dindons". I had never seen this one before.
This "Baby John the Baptist" sculpture was also calling for a picture. 
place every morning to get our Cafe Au Lait, Cafe Mocha, bread, croissont, etc. The bakery items are great, the coffee is great, the atmosphere is great. I am sure there are many bakeries/cafes like this in Paris, but this one happened to be on our way whenever we left our hotel for the day and it was a perfect stop to start our daily adventures. Later we noticed several other Paul's scattered around the city. In case you are wondering, this one is on Rue De Seine (and Rue De Buci) about 10 minutes from Luxembourg gardens. Their hot chocolate wasn't like a milk and melted chocolate mixture, it was like melted chocolate mixed with heavy cream. They don't skimp on fat here. Low-fat probably won't translate into French.
On Wednesday, we tried our chance again at the Versailles. The RER was about 15-20 minutes delayed but we still got there at a reasonable time. We purchased the guided tour, which was great. The group was small and our guide was very informative.
Who can match that ? It takes into account the leap years too. It has a special vibration dampening base to prevent the floor vibrations from reaching its mechanisms. It only needs winding once a month. Appearently there is full-time staff at Versailles whose job is to maintain and wind these clocks, there are quite a few of them, but this one was unique. This clock also was the reference clock for the entire France, kinda like the atomic clock of that age.
This last picture shows me taking a picture of this gorgeous malachite basin.
On Tuesday we headed over to Versailles. It's about 40 minute ride from the city on the RER train and a 10 minute walk from the train station. When we got there we looked for the cashier to purchase our entry tickets but all were closed. We started asking around to figure out what's happening. People kept saying "la greve". We finally figured out that the museum workers were on strike. Lucky for us, the gardens were open, so we were able to stroll around and spend a good part of the day in its gardens. We made a full circle tracing the perimeter of the pool/canals which took over two hours. Later we found out that the property's perimeter is 42 kilometers. Even though the museum was closed we had a great time just visiting the gardens.
Champs Elysees. The first picture you see us on top of the Arc.
