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!
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