Our day started early, we had to be in the lobby, bags in hand, by 8:45am. We set our alarm for 7:30am, finally drug our tired bones out of bed at 8:05am and were downstairs in the lobby by 8:38am…plenty of time for breakfast! Kevin had the hotel pastries and I walked to the bakery down the street and bought 2 fresh pastries for the road. Mmm.

We (miraculously) all made it the two blocks to the bus with our luggage in tow and were on our way to meet Mona shortly after 9am. Getting on and off of the bus is quite a site. All 28 of us follow our momma duck Colleen down the street with our luggage in tow, wheels rumbling the entire time. We are a parade of tourists! See, the tour bus is so big that it can’t fit down many of the streets where we will be staying. So, instead, he parks nearby and waits for us to come to him. The walks today weren’t that bad, though I’ve heard that some can be upwards of 15 minutes! Oye vey!

The bus, oh the bus! This thing is NICE! It puts the airplanes we flew on to get here to shame! Spotless, roomy, 50 leather seats that recline, cup holders, fold down tray tables, and an awesome driver, Ben. It also has a great sound system so Colleen narrates along the way for us. Today we got a French lesson on geography, language and food. It was fabulous!

I’m so exhausted, I can hardly remember today, so if this is a bit choppy, I apologize in advance!

Okay, so first thing is first, the Louvre. The museum employees apparantly had a “meeting” this morning to determine whether or not they would go on strike today, which would close the museum, so when we arrived there was no guide there to greet us as the meeting was still in session. The clock was ticking, we HAD to be on the road by 12:30! Were we going to get in?? Were they going to go on strike? These Frenchies are famous for their revolutions, but on all days, must it be the day that we are to meet Mona? Could it be possible that we came all this way, spent 5 days in Paris waiting for this tour and now we werenn’t going to even make it through the doors?! Well, as luck would have it the Parisians decided that they would behave themselves on this particular Wednesday and so our access was granted! Look out Louvre, here we come.

You hear a lot about this museum, it is the largest in the world, it has many famous works, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Nothing we’ve heard really prepared us for what was in store. This place is MASSIVE. I mean MASSSSSSIVE. They have so many pieces on display (aprox. 32,000) that if you were to spend only 15 seconds looking at each piece it would take you 6 months to get through the museum! Think about that! Even more astonishing, there are 500,000 pieces that they have acquired!

We had a fabulous local guide, I didn’t catch her name, but she was a wonderfully cheerful little british lady. She was witty and informative and did her best to get us to the most famous works in the museum in the short amount of time that we had. We entered through the “moat” alongside an anchient wall which was discovered in the 1980s when they were diggin down to build the pyramid in the courtyard of the museum. I’m tired, so I’ll sum this up by saying the wall was really old and really cool.

I actually think I am going to leave all of this part of the blog up to Kevin. I love looking at the art, but the names escape me, so I won’t be much help here anyhow. In my words we saw: The Venus sculpture, The Nike sculpture, tons of amazing and huge paintings, some DaVinci sculptures, a 4000 year old Sphynx, and dear, dear Mona. It was truly an amazing museum and we could definitely go back again and again and not begin to make a dent in it!

After the tour we grabbed some quick food and met our group to board the bus.

We headed out of Paris towards the Burgundy region of France to a little town called Bueane. The ride was almost 4 hours long but flew by. The countryside is beautiful here and actually looks a lot like Sonoma County.

We arrived in Bueane around 5pm and were surprised to see that we had arrived in what could possibly be the cutest little town in the world! We made our way to our hotel (adorable!), checked in, and had 30 minutes to freshen up before we met to go wine tasting. We walked to a nearby winery which does their tasting in the wine cellar itself. But this isn’t any wine celler, it is from the 13th century! It was amazing. I took a lot of pictures, check them out. The wine was great and our wine guide was a sweet little lady, it was a pleasure to spend the evening with her. I picked up some mustard at the gift shoppe (they are known for their Dijon mustard in this region of France) and we were off to dinner. Colleen had offered to make reservations at restaurants for us if we so desired. A group of around 14 of us were interested in a “wine cellar” restaurant Colleen had told us about. She tried to make the reservation but they were booked, however, another restaurant that she had gone to years ago had reopened under new management and was able to take us instead.

We arrived at the restaurant not sure what to expect (dark, humid, cold cellars??). I was completely taken aback when we ducked through the door and down the stairs. This place was unreal. By far the most beautiful restaurant I have ever eaten in. The pictures do not do it justice, however you’ll get the idea of what it looked like. What an amazing evening. We sat in that restaurant for just over three hours, talking, eating, drinking, laughing, sharing stories…it was brilliant. And the food, simply magnificent! This region is known for their beef burgandy and so over half of the table ordered it. It came out in large iron pots and was served family style with fresh pasta. The owner was such a sweet man, he had the chef make me a wonderful vegetarian dinner of fresh pasta, green beans and potatos au’gratin. I also had a green salad with warm goat cheese, a cheese platter, and a chocolate dessert of some sort. All delicious! People in France sure know how to eat! We even shared a bottle of red wine with another couple at our table…I can’t say enough about what a wonderful time we had with everyone this evening! Oh, Colleen joined us for dinner, it was nice to see her get to relax and enjoy herself instead of having to take care of all of us! She is such a sweet gal, we’re so lucky to have her as our guide!

We strolled through the town back to our hotel and now it is time for bed. My brain feels like a badly scratched CD…I am trying to make it play, but it just keeps skipping and skipping. So, I hope this blog was somewhat enjoyable. My food coma is making it far too difficult to function.

Goodnight.

Flickr Pics (coming soon)

So anyway, we made it downstairs in time to wolf down a croissant with a little bit of cheese and some orange juice before we headed to the Metro. Now, let me tell you, getting 29 people onto 1 metro train, at 9:00 in the morning is not an easy task. We all come through one at a time then bunch up to chit chat. I mean really, we are here so Colleen can do the hard work, we just go where she points like well trained sheep. That being said, Colleen did a great job getting us all on one metro, telling us what stop to get off on and then making sure we all got off at the right time.

Last night we had to pick a “buddy” someone you don’t know who you can check on. This way if we all get off the metro, two strangers are looking for one another, not a husband and a wife (who could disappear together). My buddy is Jeannie, a sweet woman from Texas. She was an art teacher and communications major and her and her husband have 2 boys, both married. Nicole’s buddy is Rita, a very nice woman from Wisconsin whose son just happens to live and work in Windsor, small world. So, we hop off the metro and I stand on my tippie toes to see Jeannie off the metro, standing on the side. Rita is right there with her husband too. Our buddies are so well behaved. Getting off the metro Colleen starts to put on a headset and small speaker around her waist. What is this? It’s a portable loud speaker. How freakin cool. Our guide doesn’t have to yell, we don’t have to stand 6 inches from her. We can all have a little personal space, something I love, and she can talk to us about stuff; I am happy so all can continue.

What I didn’t expect, but what I loved, was the 15 minute history lesson before we went into Saint Chapelle (Who knows if that’s how you spell it. But it’s pronounced shuh-pel). I thought the tour guide was more of a go here, go there person. Not someone who know so much cool stuff. Colleen told us about Saint Chapelle so when we went into it we knew what we were looking at. This is helpful because 90% of the signs are only in French.

Saint Chapelle was amazing. The largest, most beautiful stained glass in Europe. King Louis the 9th had it built to house two relics he purchased; Jesus’ crown of thorns and a piece of the cross on which he was crucified. It is absolutely amazing, the church that is, we don’t get to see the crown or the cross. The two relics are reported to have cost 3x the amount for the entire chapel. The chapel was built in an astonishing 6 years, it’s neighbor, Notre Dame took 200. Large stained glass windows that seemed to glow in the sunlight. They were red, blue, green, yellow and purple but depicted everything from battles to the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus. We only had 30 minutes so Nicole scurried about taking a ton of pictures of this marvelous church.

Our next stop was Notre Dame (ND). This was also preceded by a very interesting 20 minute history lesson about the French Revolution. Now, I don’t know a lot about the FR but what I gather is that poor people were rightfully pissed off at the rich kings who built palaces instead of spending money on the city or the people. In return for their palaces, the French working class revolted and beheaded a lot of people. They paraded them around Paris, brought them to a square, stuck their head in a guillotine and WHAMO, off with your head. We have also learned that in the 15-1800s the preferred execution method, and by preferred I mean by those doing the executions, was beheading. Not always with a guillotine but it seemed to be fairly common. We even saw a painting of a person who had been beheaded. Kinda gross.

Back on track: The ND. Well, it was amazing. Darker than the St. Chapelle but larger. Huge stained glass, beautiful architecture, amazing alters and crypts. It took around 200 years to build and I think it was well worth it. Colleen pointed out interesting sculptures on the outside and again gave us a lot of information about how/why it was built. She is quite handy to have around.

After ND we tried to go into a Memorial for the Jews that were sent to concentration camps during WW2. It was closed and the group was about ready to have a revolt of our own so Colleen took us to the Latin Quarter to be fed and watered. On the way she pointed out the cool book sellers on the wall of the river, the statue of St. Michael slaying Satan and the bookstore where lots of famous writers have worked and written books. Shakespeare something or other Bookstore.

Lunch. Oh, let me tell you about lunch. No, not lunch. Let me tell you about my chocolate macaroon. First, let me apologize that each and every one of you is not enjoying one right now and I am sorry, but we cannot bring them home. We thought the eclair yesterday was good. Well this chocolate macaroon blew the doors off that eclair. It was sweet, rich, dark, soft, crispy, fudge like. It was amazing. We ate one; bought one to go. Seriously everyone this macaroon may have been the single greatest dessert I have ever enjoyed. Imagine rich fudge plus crispy cookies plus a squishy cookie plus a flaky coating of chocolate plus a beam of heaven shooting straight into it. If you can imagine all of that wrapped up into one hand held chocolate dessert then you can imagine The Chocolate Macaroon. Not just a chocolate macaroon but THE Chocolate Macaroon. The one to which all others shal be measured.

Oh yeah, for lunch we had pizza. It was very very good, but if you want to know more, reread the paragraph above about The Chocolate Macaroon because that is what is important.

After lunch Colleen managed to get the 20 of us that didn’t go off on our own to the Musee De Orsay (MDO). We filled a bus, rode it for 5 stops then emptied it. We literally take over public transportation. 20 people on a bus isn’t a big deal, but 20 people on at one stop is quite a site. Colleen is calm, cool and collected. We guessed that 20 years of the travel industry has equipped her to handle anything.  She got us in the right line, answered any final questions and sent us off on our own. With a cheery “I’ll see you in the morning” we were off into the MDO and Colleen was off for some much deserved r&r. (Though we think she’s doing laundry she mentioned it on Monday)

The MDO was everything I had hoped for. I don’t really know the best way to describe it. A lot of the paintings that you see in calendars are in the MDO. Amazing Monet’s, Manet’s, Van Gogh’s, Cezanne’s (my fav), Renoir, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec (it’s pronounced te-loo-seh-trek). These are paintings you only read about. Things you see in calendars and computer backgrounds. The brush strokes are amazing, the skill is unheard of. I like most kinds of art from DaVinci to Degas to Rothko but these Impressionist Masters had something figured out. The paintings dance and sing, the emit light and grab you from across the room. You see a painting of lilly pads or a mountain then you move in and see hundreds upon hundreds of brush strokes to make it happen. From 6 inches away they aren’t people or lilies, they are dashes of color on top of color. A person is a dot plus two strokes, a flag is 3 quick strokes, a mountain is a hundred carefully laid strokes. Seeing this art reminded me of why I fell in love with it so long ago.

The MDO itself is an old train stop. The architecture is fascinating. Large walls, a huge clock and huge, I mean HUGE, ceilings.  I drug Nic through it for about 2 hours before we were both completely exhausted. Our feet were killing us and we decided to call it a day, for now, and head back for a nap. I took 2 advil and decided to blog instead of nap (so I hope you’re all happy )

Weather: Beautiful around 65/70

Group: So far so good. Everyone is super friendly and excited to be here. We were told we were “smart” to go before we have kids. We know

Until tomorrow ou revoir

Flickr pics here. Look at the set, lot’s of cool stuff.

This tour was AWESOME! Bike About Paris is their name and they pride themselves on taking tourists to the places they wouldn’t normally see in Paris, the back-roads if you will. Our guide, Chris, was super informative,  our group was small, only 10 of us, and the weather was perfect again! We walked to their “office” which was in a parking garage about 10 minutes away from our meeting place and picked up these “city” bikes that are more compact than your average bike and away we went. There were no waivers to fill out, no sign up sheet, no rules and regulations, heck, we didn’t even pay up front! We just got on the bikes and rode!

We rode through Paris for four hours. We headed down streets and alleyways that we would have never seen on our own, or even with our big tour group. We stopped a ton along the way so Chris could point out the sights which included things such as the only remaining portion of the original wall that surrounded Paris, an old church where the nuns now make chocolate to generate income, the former nazi headquarters which is now the police station and is covered in bullet holes, so cool! We saw the place where Jim Morisson died, the home where the writer of Le Mis lived while he wrote it, the house of the former president which has guards at the front door all day every day. We rode through quaint neighborhoods, onto the only two islands in Paris, past the oldest house in Paris, alongside the river, past the canal where the houseboats are docked, through the Latin Quarte, past the Louvre, the Muse de Orsay and the Modern Art Museum which is built “inside-out”. Oh, and we rode down the road that is the last stage of the Tour de France! And we rode by the most expensive restaurant in Paris, around 900 Euros for dinner for 2 with NO alcohol! It also has the largest wine cellar in the world with over 600,000 bottles of wine in it, some valued at over 30,000 Euros! But even cooler than that? This is the restaurant that they basted the movie Ratatouille on!! We even got to see a stray canonball that is stuck in the front of a home from the revolution.

Throughout the tour Chris pointed out some “grafitti” on the walls that is done in a mosaic style. Even cooler than that, it is done by an anonymous artist called the “space invader” who models his graffiti after recognizable symbols, mostly video games, from the 1980′s! So, every so often, we’d see these little tile works of art on buildings and bridges…it was awesome! The artist has been doing it for 10 years and has over 3500 space invaders around Paris now! So so cool!

We stopped for lunch in the Latin Quarter and had superb panini sandwiches. We didn’t know that they would be grilled when we ordered them as they looked exactly the same as the few baguette sandwiches we’ve had already, but he had the in the press before we could blink and they were AMAZING. I am not a fan of paninis, but this thing was good! We strolled along the street while we ate, chatted with our guide, and decided that we needed to head into Paul, a world famous  bakery, to check out the pastery counter. Once I saw it I new I had to eat it! (That’s what she said!). It was just staring at me, begging me, and so I did it. I ate my very first eclair and it was totally and utterly amazing! I may have had some pastry imposters over the years, cream filled doughnuts and what not, but I had never had a true eclair and had never tasted a pastry as wonderful as this! Stephanie, I immediately thought of you! You would have died. It had this amazing chocolate cream filling, yum. It was so good that I ate the whole thing and then decided I had to run back in and buy two more for later! Thank goodness I did because as I walked in the second time they pulled a rack of fresh, hot croissants out of the oven! Was I stuffed? Yes! Did I want one? No! Did I eat one anyhow?! OF COURSE! It was the most flaky, delicious croissant ever. And it was warm! Gluttony has never tasted so good.

Not to worry, I’m sure I burned off the calories of my pastry binge on the second half of our bike ride (pffft, one can dream!).

I can’t say enough good things about this tour. Everyone that comes to Paris MUST do this. It was simply amazing!

On our bike tour Chris pointed out at one point that there was a giant underground mall beneath us, so after we were done we headed to the mall for some shopping. Unfortunately it took us a little while to navigate our way back there, so we didn’t have much time before we had to head back to our hotel. Why did we have to head back you ask? Dun, dun, dun…

AND THEN THERE WERE 29!!

Today at 4:45 we met our tour group for the first time! I had bet Kevin that we would be the youngest on the tour by at least 20 years, and, well, lets just say I wish I had bet something awesome! At first we were a bit apprehensive about the group. What had we signed up for? But then when Colleen, our guide, put out the wine and snacks and nearly everyone got up and poured themselves big glasses of wine, we had a feeling we’d be okay. We decided, fairly early on, that this was the group of people who had finally gotten the kids through college and were living their OWN lives now and, damn it, they were going to have a good time!

We introduced ourselves to a few couples and felt comfortable very early on. Colleen put it best when she said “I don’t think this group will have much trouble getting warmed up to each other!”. By dinner time we were passing escargo from table to table and eating off of each others plates! It was great to see everyone was ready to get this show on the road!

Colleen is great too. She just arrived from Greece yesterday where she just wrapped up a tour. She has been working for Rick Steves for 18 years now and has spent the last 8 years leading tours through Europe for 6 months out of the year, so she obviously loves what she does. She is very sweet, yet stern and handled our group well. She managed to get us all oriented, get on a bus, into a restaurant, to the river, on a boat, and then back on the metro within a matter of hours! Impressive!

After our dinner (Kevin had the duck and said it was amazing, I had a tiny bite and it tasted like salty pork, but I could appreciate it) we went down to the river for a night cruise to see the sights of Paris. It was beautiful! After the cruise we headed over towards the metro station but stopped on a bridge to watch the eiffel tower light up. On the hour, every hour, at night it sparkles like it is covered in glitter! It is so pretty. After a few minutes we headed to the metro. I was totally elated to be there until Colleen stopped us and I realized (there was a statue with a bunch of letters and flowers taped to it that she stopped the group at) that we were standing on the bridge that goes over the tunnel where Diana was killed. We were literally within feet of the site of the accident. It was so sad to be there and know than such an amazingly beautiful place is also such a somber one. Though I am beginning to see that this is most of what Europe is, a beautiful history of terrible times.

On a happier note, we all made it into the Metro station as a group, hallelujah! I heard Kevin say to Colleen as she guided us all in “I don’t know how you do it! It is like herding cattle!” HA! Did my husband just call me a cow!?

Aside from the couple that dropped their sunglasses down into the tracks and was contemplating how to get the back (scary!) we all made it back to the hotel (Colleen left them behind! Though she wasn’t happy about it, the tour must go on!) and were off to bed just before midnight.

What a fabulous day! It is now nearly 2 am and our alarm goes off in aprox. 5 hours! Yikes! These blogs take forever, but they’re so fun to write and I just know that I will love having the down the road, so I MUST keep them up!

Tomorrow we’re off to Notre Dame, St. Chappel and The Muse de Orsey. Until then, Bonjour! (This means good day, but I forget how to say goodnight right now, I’m sleepy!).

We had a great time exploring the palace, the gardens and the property which literally goes on for miles and miles. We arrived at PV around 10 am after a very easy train ride and left at nearly 5pm, aside from a 15 minute lunch and a 10 minute nap on the lawn near a pond we were on our feet, walking, that ENTIRE time, and we didn’t even cover half of the place! It was insane.

The pictures are the best way to see the palace and the things we saw, trying to describe it all here just wouldn’t make sense.

After we arrived back in Paris we headed to our hotel–oh, wait, side note! On the train back there was an Australian/British family with a young boy around 6 who had the gift of gab. He talked, and talked, and talked. Well, at one point the window reflection made a rainbow and he said to his mum and dad “look! a rainbow! where is it coming from?”. They answered him, explaining the refraction phenomenon. Then the next sentence out of his mouth was “is this the symbol that is causing all of the trouble?”. His dad quickly changed the subject without having to acknowledge his question. I was shocked. It was so sad to hear the little guy associate the rainbow with “all the trouble”. I forget so often that we’re from California, always ahead of the times. Come on people, open your minds!

Okay, back to our trip! We headed back to our hotel, I took a 15 minute nap while Kevin did some dinner research. We worked up the courage to try a new restaurant, and away we went!

We were extremely happy that we were greeted by a friendly, English speaking staff who handed us menus that had English translations below the menu items! Score! We ordered and quickly learned that their translations aren’t exactly right on. For instance Kevin’s green salad with “chicken” neglected to mention the part of the chicken that was served which was the liver and gizzards. PUKE. And my california salad with “citrus” fruit was covered in pineapple, apple, orange, grape and some sort of melon. Ick. The highlight of the meal…the crem brule. YUM! Dessert made up for the dinner, or lack there of as they had NO vegetarian menu items! Overall, the food sucked but the service was great, ya can’t win ‘em all!

We headed to the Eiffel for our daily viewing after dinner, Kevin braved the creepy crooked elevator up to the second story while I sat beneath it and enjoyed the crazies running around at night. Yes, I did want to go up, but once we got in line with 55 other people to ride the itty bitty elevator, I decided I’d much rather take the stairs! However, the stairs were closed. Boo. Maybe tomorrow we’ll find time to hike up it!

Kevin said the view was great, you can check out the pictures and see for yourself!

That is as much as a re-cap of yesterday that I can offer now…going to go type today’s blog!

There are lots of great pictures and a few more details, but we’re tired, we’re on vacation, so we’re going to bed!!!

Nite nite everyone!!!

First stop: an awesome street market right outside our hotel. We bought a baguette, grapes, tomatoes and apples before being yelled at by a cheese vendor. Nicole politely asked “par le’ vue engle” (or however you spell it) and was greeted with a harsh no, a shake of the head then 10 seconds of french that neither of us understood. Our guess is that it wasn’t nice. The positive, a women next to us offered to translate our needs. When we asked for a nice cheese with bread the women selling cheese rambled something else (which we assume was rude) then walked away. The translator just shook her head and asked another employee to help us. We walked away with a slice of brie, happy that a local was there to give us a hand.

We took the subway to where? The Eiffel Tower of course. Hey, if you’re gonna have a late lunch in Paris it might as well be near the Eiffel Tower. We ate our food, marveled at the tower and headed to Rue Cler, a small shopping street. Oh yeah, that brie we bought, it tasted terrible, we think it had gone bad and they sold it to us anyway. Damn cheese Nazi.

Rue Cler was pretty cool. A small, quaint street full of vendors of all sorts. Chocolate, flowers, cafe, bakeries, pastry shops and more. We wandered around for about 30 minutes before heading to the Champs Elysees.

The  Champs Elysees is chaos. That’s the best way to describe it, pure chaos. People, cars, stores and restaurants galore. We walked up the Champs Elysees for what I think was over a mile before coming to the Arc De Triumph. The ADT is amazing. It’s huge, gorgeous and crowded. We walked around the outside for about 30 minutes before I headed up to the top. The 300 stairs to the top weren’t too bad and culminated in some amazing scenery, you’ll see it if you go to flickr. The entire city is there, ready for your viewing pleasure all from atop something Napolean had built. Pretty amazing to say the least.

After the ADT we headed back down the Champ Elysees to try to make it to the Louvre to see the outside. It was another 2 mile walk to get there but hey, who’s counting? Well, actually, I am. I think we did about 6 miles today. I know because our feet our killing us. Anyway, we made it to the Louvre and it was more than I could have imagined. This place still doesn’t seem real, it’s like I am dreaming about these things, not seeing them. Anyway, it was night time so Nic  busted out the tri pod and we went to work. Pictures fo the Louvre, of the Champ, of The Eiffel Tower, of the ADT, anything and everything she could see in the dark, lit up, she caught on camera. Turned out to be some amazing pics. On a side note, we didn’t get to see Cleopatra’s needle in London; however, we did get to see the one in Paris today. The needle was brought over from Egypt and re-erected in Paris. Its pretty cool; covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics and gold.

Dinner….Well, dinner was a bit of a fiasco. We talked about going back to where we had dinner last night but I said no because we should be going to new places. So, we walked around looking at menus, unable to read a damn thing on them and finally sat down at a place that had an english and a french menu. We waited at a table for a waiter, who, before coming to our table was arguing with another person eating, and ended up coming to our table and yelling something in French. I couldn’t find the page I was looking for to order so after about 15 seconds he huffed, mumbled something and walked away. So, we left. Neither of us wanted to sit there after that. We made our way back to the spot we had dinner at last night and sat down.

Our dinner, because I know you’re wondering, was pretty good, though NOTHING like the night before. We said it was our punishment for not being brave. Tomorrow, we vowed,  we’ll try something new. For tonight, good night. Tomorrow is Versailles.

Don’t forget the pics are here.

We’re in Paris! We arrived this afternoon after only 2 hours and 15 minutes on the Eurostar train. That puppy moves! I never thought I’d say this, but I think I prefer airplanes to trains. I had never really ridden a train and I wasn’t fully prepared for what was to come. Our seats faced backwards which instantly made me sick. I’m not sure why, but my body just has issues with being in motion, and being in motion in the totally wrong direction, not good! I took some motion-sick pills before our journey, so this helped to keep it to a mild nausea instead of a full blown case of the sickies, so crisis averted there. The ride, which was smooth in comparison to what I think a normal train must be like, was rocky and I felt like I was constantly sloshing about. Ick. There was no food control of any sort so people were eating smelly sammiches all around us which only contributed to the vomit factor. That plus the screaming children 2 rows back had me wondering if I’d really be uttering the words “I wish we had just flown!”. But, I bit my tongue. I don’t think I’ll ever utter those words, however, the thought DID enter my mind.

Vomit train aside, the view was beautiful coming into Paris, well, more specifically, seeing where our train had just been since we were looking backwards. But you get the point. The departure was easy, the train pulled into the station and we were off of it with our bags in about 2 minutes. We knew which metro line we were looking for, a little bit of research goes a long way. We purchased our tickets, hopped on the metro and 14 exits later we were at our hotel.

Our hotel is quaint and adorable and is right in the middle of an authentic looking french neighborhood. There are restaurants, bars, a grocery store, shopping and a cinema all on our block! This is the hotel where our tour group will be staying beginning Monday so we figured we might as well make it home a few days sooner. Good choice Rick Steves! Though, I am thankful that we have been on a few cruises because by doing that I can appreciate that this room is NOT the smallest room in the world. Close, but not quite.

We unpacked our bags and decided to do what most people probably do when they arrive in Paris, go see Le Tour de Eiffel! We are a few kilometers from the tower, but we figured if we just started walking, we’d get there eventually. We figured right! We popped into a grocery store on the way (I could have spent hours there just browsing the products, everything looked delicious!) and bought a block of cheese, a baguette and  a tub of green grapes. Yum! We worked our way down to the lawn beneath the tower and ate our lunch. The cheese was creamy and flavorful, the bread was crispy and soft and the grapes were like no other we have ever had. They tasted like Riesling wine…amazing!

And what better a place to enjoy lunch than under the Eiffel Tower. It really is amazing. When we were walking towards it we both questioned if it was in fact taller than the London Eye or not. It just didn’t look that big, not from a distance at least. But as we kept walking, and walking, and walking, we realized that it was in fact HUGE. And just as breathtaking as I had hoped. As we sat there we just kept saying how unreal it was that we were finally there, looking at the tower. It hadn’t sunk in for either of us, not yet at least.

One thing I was surprised by was how many people are in this crazy town! The lawn was packed full of Parisians, tourists, and everything in between. Everybody was just sitting or standing around, talking, eating, drinking and just enjoying their time there. I loved it! Paris is definitely not the quaint town that I had pictured all this time. It is huge and seems to be filled with more people than San Francisco and London combined, there are tons of crazies, the metro is gratified everywhere, everyone smokes and you have to constantly watch out for pick-pockets and scam artists…but you know what…I LOVE IT! Sure, I’d like it if no one smoked, everyone spoke english, and everything was clean and calm and normal, but then it wouldn’t be Paris, would it?

We had a great afternoon under the tower, even bought a soft serve waffle cone that was scrumptious. Once the sun had almost set we deicded to head back to the room and devise a plan for dinner. We found the nearest metro, hopped on, and were completely entertained the entire way back to our hotel. The train was packed, wall to wall, standing room only, yet a guy still managed to squeeze his way on with his giant boom box blaring to put on a show for all of us. Apparently to him playing loud music and yelling at us is entertainment and deserving of a donation!

We were intimidated, to say the least, by the menus we had seen while walking back to our room. The cafes look friendly and inviting from a distance, but once you get close and realize that those menus aren’t in English and you haven’t got a clue what they say, not so friendly and inviting! We sat on our bed, read our translator book and our Rick Steve’s Best of Europe book, worked up the nerve, and headed to a cafe just around the corner. How did we pick it? It smelled amazing! We stood out front and the waiter asked us if we were “deux?”. We replied “wi” and there you go, we have a table! We asked if he spoke english, he said he did, a little, and away we went! We were able to order dinner and we were mighty proud of ourselves. I even ordered vegetarian entrees with the waiters help! We sat with great anticipation wondering what our food would be like? Big? Small? Tasty? Icky? The wrong order all together?

The moment I saw my “vegetable plate” and Kevin his “smoked salmon with toast” we knew we were in for a treat. The veggie plate was superb! Greens topped with par-boiled green beans and potatoes with fresh chives and an amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing dressing of some sort surrounded by tomatoes. Crap it was good! And Kevin’s salmon was a yellowish color, not like the orange stuff you get back home, and it melted in your mouth like butter! Then there were the main courses, pasta with mushrooms for me and beef burgundy for Kevin. They were simply amazing. The pasta was handmade and fresh, the mushrooms were cooked to perfection and Kevin’s beef, which I even sampled, was flavorful, tender and just perfect! He even ate some mushrooms that came with his beef! I have never in my life eaten pasta without Parmesan cheese on it, but tonight I didn’t even consider it! The food was so amazing the way it was I couldn’t risk changing it in any way. Mmmmmmmmmm.

We had a few beers with dinner, then topped the evening off with crem brule and two hot chocolates. These hot chocolates were the real thing. Real chocolate with real milk and sugar on the side if you want it sweeter. Yum! What a dinner, what a night! We were stuffed and exhausted and asked for the check. We were shocked when we saw that our beers were 10 euros each! Who knew that it would be so much!? Jeeze! Now we know why everyone had a bottle of wine on their table instead, and thinking back I recall Rick Steves saying that wine is like water here, cheap and plentiful. Looks like tomorrow nigth we will be drinking wine instead.

Our first day in Paris was great and we’re looking forward to 4 more! Goodnight for now.

To see a billion photos of the Eiffel Tower, and a few other things, click here!