Paris Day 2
18 November 2007
We departed San Francisco at about 3:30pm on Friday and arrived in Paris, Charles de Gaulle ten and one half hours later on Saturday at about 11am. Basically, an entire night has been missed. The secret, we’ve found, is to sleep at last 5 hours on the airplane enroute, which captures part of the lost night and makes it easy to stay awake until a normal bed time, say about 11pm. We have a little pharmaceutical friend (that starts with an ‘A’) to help us with the sleeping part on the airplane, along with some Bose noise-canceling headphones. Both, strongly recommended!
Now that we are well rested, time to head out and explore the city!
Holy cow – It’s cold! Temps around freezing and BOTH the taxis AND metro are on strike! Gotta keep moving, or will freeze. Gotta keep moving, or will freeze. We chant this under our breath as we march from one side of the city to the other, punctuated only by “Hey! There’s a wine bar! Time for a break, baby!” At least its not raining … uh oh, looks like that just changed too …
Regardless of the cold (and wet), we toured the Marais district, full of couples of the opposite persuasion, and then to Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter (Sorbonne), and over to Musee d’Orsay, Place de la Concorde and the Louvre. Didn’t actually go in to any of the museums … that’s tomorrow’s adventure.
We had dinner at a cool little Bistro in the Marais called Chez Janou … about 70% locals/30% tourists … Our dinner reservations have been for 8pm, which is still early for Paris. When us silly Americans show up for our “early” dinner at 8pm, the dining room is virtually empty. By 9pm, its absolutely packed, and animated with conversation and laughter. “Personal space” during dinner is not something associated with French bistro dining. The vanishingly small gap between tables means that each time a new party is seated, the waiter literally must pull a table out into the aisle to provide access to the inside chair!
It’s now after 10pm. Forget finding a bar. Time to crawl back to the hotel, and fire up the Mac with a DVD from home. What a great day, and it’s so nice to be curled up in bed, warm and not too late. Is this what it’s like to get old…?
– Chris
