Adele and I got to Sea-Tac airport in plenty of time to get on our flight to Paris (through Newark). I'm not sure if I slept last night, because I had to work - but I did get packed...and don't think I forgot anything!
We made it to Newark and have about a 2 hour layover before we catch a "red-eye" to Paris...boring!
Day 2 (9/8/08) --
So it's Monday morning in Paris and Adele and I just got off the 16 hour flight (or whatever!) from Seattle-Newark-Paris. And here we are on the RER from Charles de Gaulle Airport to downtown Paris!
I decided we should get out at the Metro stop called "Chatelet" because I knew it would allow us to walk by the Notre Dame cathedral on our way to our hotel. I had prepared some decent notes on how to get to our hotel and I knew it was close to the Notre Dame.
Chatelet metro stop
Crossing the river Seine
Some shots of Notre Dame as we're walking...
...unfortunately we take a weird route just next to Notre Dame instead of crossing the river, so I get us kinda lost. Adele is a trooper and follows me (as I know we're close and don't want to ask anyone) and we walk around with our packs on for about 10 minutes longer than we should have.
Then at last we find our hotel....Les Degrees de Notre Dame!
Honestly, it's amazing how close we are to Notre Dame. I had looked on Google Maps when choosing the hotel, but I didn't realize it would be this close. It kind of sucked that I got us lost looking for it, cuz due to our 10 extra minutes of walking, it felt as though we were much farther from the cathedral than we really were.
We met our hotel owner/receptionist, Nicole, and she invited us right in! She was very nice and gave us some brief instructions about our room...then up 5 flights of stairs to our 5th floor room (remember, in Europe the 1st floor is called the "ground" floor - then up to the 1st floor and so on...).
Here's our quaint little Parisian room - it was hard to take pictures of the room, but what a view!
It was still in the early part of the afternoon - and we'd just arrived in Paris - Adele and I decided we'd better go grab some food and walk the streets of Paris a bit! So we headed out to the less touristy area and found a cafe about 3 blocks from our hotel. Very little English was spoken and we ordered a salad and a sandwich - a beer and a glass of wine. It was quite nice, but difficult to order - a lot of pointing and then hoping, and we immediately noticed how expensive Paris was! Our lunch (at this more remote cafe) was about $45 - yikes!
After the food, we continued on our walk and came across a few great finds.
First, we walked up to the Saint-Étienne-du-Mont - a church in the Vth arrondissment. This was a beautiful church tucked narrow street corner.
I was so happy to find this place, and I was even happier to be with Adele. She was really into the biblical artwork (paintings, fresco's, and stained glass) and she was really happy to share with me what she knew!
We left the church and were immediately by the Parisian Pantheon. We didn't go in - maybe next time!
Next we came across the Luxembourg Gardens - and it was full of tourists and Parisians since the weather we were enjoying was brilliant! One local named Andrew (an older English gentleman - who we saw every morning at breakfast at our hotel) said the weather until the day we arrived had been rainy/overcast for the past couple of weeks, but the weather we enjoyed in Paris was wonderful. It was sunny and warm most days - and we only got rained on twice.
Delly in the Gardens
Jason by "Le Prophete"
(who am I pointing at?)
(who am I pointing at?)
No one to take our picture - no problem!
This weather feels great! How did we get so lucky!!! I'm definitely getting burned while Adele continues to transform into her Latina ~ she blends right in...a Spanish tourist!
Continung our walk through this part of Paris (V & VI Arrondissements) - we were not far from our hotel at this point, even though we'd been out for a couple of hours! We found another great church called St. Germain des Pres with some great local wildlife...
...Ewww don't touch me, rats with wings!!!
Crossing back over the Seine we enjoyed some great views of the river and the Ile de la Cite and the Pont Neuf.
On the other side of the river, I knew we were close to the Louvre, so I dragged Adele a bit further. It was such a nice day - warm and sunny...but we had only just arrived and we were both getting quite tired. But since it was very close, I knew we could make it!
We were rewarded with some more great sights. Here are some shots we took outside the Louvre:
Here's a cool one from outside, above looking down into the museum through the famous (or infamous) glass pyramid.
1 comment:
Sweet write up on your trip to Paris! Feels like I was there just yesterday...
Matt
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