Arriving in Paris

Our flight into Paris was long and smooth. I'm usually terrified by turbulance, but this flight was perfect and they fed us WAY too much. Dinner started with champagne and went on to include fish atop rice with a bit of baby bok choy, yogurt, fresh pineapple, bread, a gargantual portion of smoked salmon and a chunk of camembert, wine, snacks, and coffee. Breakfast was prawns and some odd sort of shredded vegetable salad, canned fruit salad (ick!), cold croissants and bread rolls, more yogurt (with granola), coffee, juice. We didn't even have to break into our snacks. Well, except for the chocolate Ritter Bar that John brough.

We arrove in Paris right on time, and I think that we didn't even "go through customs". There were no declarations, no searching of bags, none of the stuff we're accustomed to after our trip to "Friendly Calgary". We caught the RER to the Gare du Nord and then got off the train in search of our metro connection. A very helpful French man assisted us in getting back on the RER so that we could get the connecting metro train (3) to Rue St. Maur....our final destination.

Upon arriving at our studio on Rue de Bluets, our landlord Bill met us at the front door. Amazingly he had actually gone to the airport to retrieve us, but we didn't get an email from him in time to know that he'd be there. Also, he was waiting near the baggage pickup, holding a sign with our names, but we only had carryon luggage and didn't even pass his way.

Bill took John and I to a little coffee bar on Boulivard de Menilmontant and we each had a "petite noir" (ie, espresso) with a micro-mini bar of dark chocolate on the side. I had my first real experience trying out my meager French on the owner as I inquired if she had soy milk and explained that I was allergic to milk. She actually understood me and I was rather excited that I was able to communicate, even if on the level of a 4 year old. :-)

So afterwards we marched down Oberkampf to Rue Temple to the Seine as I had to see it to really feel like we were in Paris. And there it was, bigger than I had expected it. We passed through Ile St. Louis and to Ile la Cite and did an impromptu tour of Notre Dame at dusk. It was jammed with people. We took a lot of pictures, but until we acquire a PCMCIA flash reader we won't be able to post any pictures. Maybe tomorrow.

On the way back north towards our studio, we stopped at the most amazing pastry shop. John had a tarte aux poire et almonds and I had Pain Au Chocolate Banane....all I can say is, "Joy...I don't know how on earth you had bad pastry here....I keep tripping over the most amazing pastry shops!!!!"

So here we sit in a little bar in the Marias drinking our respective drinks....I think John is fading fast and it's only 6:30PM. We need to stay up until 10PM to avoid jet lag...so this is going to be difficult!

More soon....