Fully Awake and On The Go 8/31/14

It's just amazing what a little sleep can do for a person. Or a lot of sleep.

We didn't set an alarm because the segway tour wasn't till 2:00 and we didn't need to be there till 1:45 . So we slept till 10:00. Can't remember the last time that happened.

By the time we were ready to go, it was late enough to not bother with breakfast and forge straight into lunch. But I did confirm the milk I bought last night was indeed (whole) cow's milk when I had a glass before we left.

Today's first adventure was the Metro. Actually, finding the Metro station. Which turned out to be across the street from the restuarant where we had dinner last night, and yet we didn't see it - the big lamp post-like thing with the big red sign saying "Metro". Cleverly hidden in plain site.

The next adventure was buying fare tickets. For both NY and DC subway systems I have a farecard that I randomly put money one and never pay attention to it much after that. Seems that to get the equivalent for the Paris metro requires a photo to put on a week-pass, which costs 5 euro just for the card. Not including the fare. Sounds like too much work. The ticket agent was very patient with us and sold us two tickets each - one for each way. Then she had to "walk" us through the ticket process, shouting through the glass enclosure of her booth. Put the ticket in, wait for it to pop up, then PUSH. Mind you, it's not just a turnstile, or we might have figured it out on our own. No, no, in addition to the turnstile, there's a door/gate to push. Too much coordination involved.

But we got on the correct train, got off at the correct station, and made our way up to the street via the stairs - and noticed the escalator as we came up to the street. Of course. AFTER I climb up the stairs I find the escalator.

We decided to find the segway place first, then go to lunch. Google maps still kinda worked on my iPad via GPS, but the directions were odd. We walked in the general correct direction along a very large street (Mott-Piquet Grenelle) lined with open air markets for everything - fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, clothes, purses. Very interesting, but no time to look. iPad in hand, we finally found the place at 1:00. Good thing we didn't bother with breakfast!

So we had 45 minutes for lunch. We walked back to Mott-Piquet Grenelle and stopped at the first cafe we saw. The waiter was a smidge grumpy (a la "the French don't like Americans" line of thought) - he didn't particularly like the way Andy pronounced the word for "lunch" (dejunear? am I spelling that right? probably not). Nor did he like my choice of sparkling water - I asked for Pelligrino, since it's the only brand I know besides Perrier, and I don't like Perrier. No, he said, he would bring Badoit. Ok, fine.

Andy ordered and (excellent) omelette and I had what was labeled "chicken salad". Only it was turkey not chicken (do they think we don't know the difference?). In any case the omelette was great, and so was the turkey - fresh roasted turkey breast, not deli meat. Delicious.

Back at the tour office, we met our tour guid, Louis, late of New Zealand. Four other people joined us. This tour was for 3 hours, which sounded like a long time to be on a segway - the 2 hour DC segway tour was very taxing on the legs after a relatively short time. However, this tour was organized very differently - there were several stops along the way, and we really stopped. As in, got off the segways for a bit. Most of the time there was either a place to sit, and eventually I figured out how to sit on the stationary segway.

Here we are in front of Ecole Militaire.

We noticed very quickly that (1) Paris is very beautiful, just in general and (2) Paris is huge. Several times we'd be zipping along at top speed (10 mph) for extended periods, zooming down tree-lined streets, trying not to run over pedestrians.

At Place de Concord we took a longer break, which included a chocolate crepe. Oh my goodness, a new Favorite Thing.

And we stopped at one of the three "love lock" bridges:

We also stopped at the Louvre, and of course, the very last stop was the Eiffel Tower:

The three hours had zipped by. 

So it's 5:30, what do we do next? Well, unfortunately for some reason I had a blister growing on my ankle - normally I have bandaids with me, but of course I'm using a different bag, so of course I don't have any. Besides the fact I've been wearing these walking shoes for a year and never had a blister. So our first thought was to find a pharmacy, but the two we can find are closed (it is after 6:00 on Sunday, so not a great surprise). We had hoped to maybe walking to the Bateaux- Mouche dock to take a Seine cruise, but the blister nixed that idea.

Instead, we went to dinner at the nearest cafe.

One thing that absolutely has not changed is the fact that the French smoke like chimneys. Good thing I have a fresh inhaler with me, but the bigger problem is smoke burning my eyes. 

Our waiter had a good time messing with the Americans - he said instead of Pelligrino, he'd bring me "Badoit - it's FRENCH". So now I know.

AND I got my bowl of onion soup. Only a day late.

But the best was the dessert - chocolate "volcano" cake, with molten chocolate on the inside, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. Oh My Goodness. My new Favorite Thing.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped to get Andy a new hoodie. And I got a pashmina. Why not.

Tomorrow: Normandy! A Very Long Day.

Bonjour! 8/30/2014

It's been a very, very long day. By all accounts Friday never really ended, because neither of us got any sleep at all on the flight. Which is annoying because everthing else has gone so well: NO traffic to Dulles on Friday afternnon (a veritable Twilight Zone concept), remote parking at a hotel in Sterling was super easy and it only took 1 hour and 15 minutes from the time we parked the car to the time we were at the gate. This included trying to get better seats than we were stuck with when I originally booked the flight months ago, and shuffling through umpteen security checks.

Yada, yada, yada, it's now 11:00 a.m. in Paris and we're doing the zombie shuffle off the plane. Even THAT went easily - a brief stop at passport control and onward to baggage retrieval. While Andy was corralling suitcases, I actually found a public phone and called the toll-free number to call up our pre-arranged shuttle. AND we found the correct waiting spot. No hitches at all. Barely noticed customs (there was no customs form to fill out?)

Which is fantastic, because between the two of us there wasn't enough wakeful brain cells to handle anything at all beyond what we were doing. 

I'm not really sure why I couldn't fall into a deep sleep on the plane - the seat was more comfortable than last year's flight on El Al - it just never happened. Ended up watching "Frozen" and "Divergent". While watching "Divergent", I'd pause the movie every 15 minutes and try to sleep. Which never worked and dragged out that movie way longer than it needed to be.

Both of us kinda drifted in and out on the drive into the city - I was actually awake to catch the first glimpse of Le Arc D'Triomphe and L'Tour Eiffel. After that it was hit and miss.

We arrived at the hotel at about 1:15 p.m. - the airplane breakfast long since forgotten and the bio-rhythm synchronization had already begun: time for lunch! Which we did while waiting for our room to be ready.

We went to a cafe a couple of blocks over per the recommendation by the front desk guy. Originally had hoped for onion soup today, but there we were at a cafe that didn't seem to have it on the menu. Nevermind, plenty of time for onion soup. 

I did have a "farmer's salad" which included "smoked duck with hot potatoes". Unbelievably good. Ah, it's good to be in Paris.

And we could see the Seine from the cafe, with the bookstalls lining the street. I saw a building that looked an awful lot like Notre Dame! and by golly, it was!

And the reality that we really were in Paris hit when I needed to find the bathroom. Ah yes, when in Eurpose, always check out the flushing-mechanism BEFORE doing ANYTHING, to make sure you can reach the mechanism, um, when the time comes.

We passed out for a couple of hours once in our room. Figured out the hotel wifi and located a "super market" - this room includes a mini-kitchen, including a dishwasher! So we were off to stock up on breakfast stuff. 

The store turned out to be quite a hike from the hotel - but was huge. And not like any other super market I've ever been in. Trying to get some milk - I think (I hope) I ended up with cow's milk (though I think it's whole milk instead of skim). I can only guess based on the animal on the milk container. It's a cow. As opposed to a goat. Or a horse.

But I have my six pack of diet coke, some kind of bread (don't know what it is, but it has raisins in it), and boursin cheese. I'm good for a while.

We obviously didn't think this all the way through, because now we had to haul all this stuff all the way back to the hotel. We decided to stop and have dinner and landed at some randome cafe. That turned out to be an Italian restuarant, of all things. I for one was too pooped to go someplace else.

The food was just ok (at least mine was), but we had some phenomenal dark chocolate thing with a citrus-y white sauce for dessert. Oh. My. Goodness.

And of course the bathroom was down a flight of spiral stairs (three strikes: (1) down stairs (2) requiring coming upstairs (3) and spiral stairs).

Fortunately, we only had another 10 minutes back to the hotel. We're down and out for the night. No alarm set for the morning.

TOMORROW: Hanging out, figuring out Metro, and our Segway tour of the city at 2:00. Bon Soir!

Testing, Testing, Un, Deux, Trois...

The title of this post should give you a hint as to the answer to the question that everybody is dying to know:

Where In The World is Andy and Amy's next Excellent Adventure?

Ok - Spoiler Alert!

We are going to France. Specifically Paris - our hotel will be in Paris for our entire 2-week stay and take day trips from Paris. It's been a long time since I've planned a trip like this - the last few years we did 4 cruises and a bus trip, so the itinerary was set for us.

Our day trips include:

• Normandy
• Versailles
• Giverny/Rouen
• Loire valley (castles!!)

The idea: we will alternate day-trip-days with city-days to allow us to have days that don't require getting up at o-dark-thirty.

Of course we booked the hotel and airfare months and months ago - long before the latest round of scary anti-Semitic activities, including an actual pogrom in the Jewish neighborhood of Sarcelles, which is a suburb north of Paris. However, our itinerary takes us only to the usual touristy stuff and nowhere near any of the locations experiencing unrest.

Anyway, this post is a proof-of-concept test of using my iPad to post the blog to Facebook. I intended to try this out last year with our trip to Israel, but the iPad Air wasn't released until shortly AFTER we came back from Israel (of course).

One thing I need to try is to include a photo in this post. Not having synched my iPad to my computer for a while, I don't have many photos to pick from. So here's a photo of Lucy, my grand-cat:

Ok, that didn't work. I don't seem to be able to upload photos from iPhoto from blogger.com.

Wait, let me try this:

AH HAH. Success! Well sort of. Hmmmm....

The next part of this test is to see how it works to post this to FB.

If that part works, stay tuned for the next installment of Andy and Amy's Excellent Adventure 2014.

Au Revoir!