Paris—Nous sommes arrivés!

We made it! The day was extra long, with a leisurely afternoon at the Montreal airport, but if I’m going to be stuck in an International terminal, that’s a pretty good one to choose. The flight was full, uneventful, and we arrived in Paris around 8:30 in the morning. By the time we got our luggage and found our way into the city, it was coming on 11, so we dropped our luggage at the hotel, then set out so as not to miss a thing on our first day in Paris.

Our first purchase in Paris was our train tickets, of course, but our second was les macarons, a little meringue sandwich cookie that’s all the rage here and, well, everywhere else too. We both tried chocolate, and I ventured bravely with a rose flavoured one. Initial reaction? It tastes like perfume, but I think I could get used to it. They were like nothing I’ve ever had before, both taste and texture, and were an excellent introduction to culinary France. Liz tried to capture my “this is so good I could die” face, but every shot ended up looking like “this tastes like a toddler’s diaper,” so I’m not including them here. Apparently I need to work on my expressive faces.

Because we couldn’t check into our hotel until after 1, we wandered down Rue de Rivoli, and watched thousands of people running the Paris half-marathon. This is the third time I’ve been on vacation and run into a marathon: Rome, Madison, and now Paris. Perhaps I should stop watching and starting running the first mile and collapsing on the ladies serving water and bananas. We’ll see.

We hopped on the metro and headed for the Louvre, because we thought it would be a great way to spend a Sunday that wouldn’t require too much mental exertion on our part. Unfortunately, the first Sunday of the month is Free Admission to the Louvre day, and the half-kilometer line was not moving at an inviting pace. So, we took some photos, then headed to the Eiffel Tower.

By this time we were exhausted and realized that we didn’t really want to do anything but take a nap, so we opted not to go up the tower today, but we’ll definitely do it another day this week, perhaps even at night so we can see the City of Lights in all its splendor. I don’t think we’ll be taking the stairs, but you never know what might happen when you combine my thirst for adventure with Liz’s ever-present thrift.

Because we were on that side of town, we popped over to the Arc de Triomphe, then got on the train back to the hotel. We split a baguette sandwich with chicken, then settled in for a one hour power nap that turned into a glorious three hour (or more!) siesta and awoke refreshed and ready for evening adventure.

Of course, evening adventure consisted mostly of a leisurely dinner of les sandwichs at the same café where we bought our lunch, and a stroll down to Le Bastille, where there is no prison, because it was torn down in the revolution, but there is shiny new opera house and a monument to the citizens who died in the later revolts of 1830. Many of them are buried in a crypt below the monument, which now sits center in one of Paris’s massive traffic roundabouts.

So, there's day one. More tomorrow!