Bonjour!

We landed in Paris this morning. I was expecting a bit more from Charles de Gaulle airport, but it rather smacked of a 3rd world airport. Even the dingy old Esenboga airport in Ankara (before its redesign) inspired more zen than CDG.

Anyway, the Air France shuttle bus dropped us off right across the street from our hotel (Hotel Splendid Etoile-- highly recommended), which was literally a stone's throw (ok, admittedly you'd have to have a good arm) from the Arc de Triomphe (the previous blog post photo was taken from our room).

After freshening up and dropping off our bags, we embarked on our day in Paris.

Our first stop was the Arc, which you get access to through an underground tunnel. Our next stop was the Trocadero and my intention was to get on the metro to get there, but the star-layout of Paris streets (this, and several other times) did a good job of thwarting my navigational skills (when you're not on a square grid, taking two rights after one block after taking a left doesn't put you back on the same heading you were on!) so we did a lot more walking than we expected.

This lead to the the first serendipitous structured activity of our vacation. Walking through Paris we noticed the most remarkable door knockers, and I decided to make a photo collection of them for the remainder of our trip.


Anyway, we finally made our way to the Eiffel Tower (fortunately, it's visible from nearly everywhere when you're in the neighborhood), and after getting disoriented, we stumbled upon a beautiful building, and then ultimately made it to Rue Cler, a scenic Paris side-street for lunch.

After decoding the menu with the (not so effective) help of my high school French classes and (the somewhat more effective) English menu version, we took the Metro to the Concorde, which is on the far side of the Jardins de Tuilieres from the Louvre. Having "walked" the route using Google Maps, I knew basically exactly where to go, and before you know it Christine and I were reliving scenes from the Da Vinci Code.

Lacking the time to enter any museums (by this time it was mid-afternoon), we proceeded to the Notre Dame de Paris on Ile St. Louis (one of the larger islands in the middle of the Seine between the Left and Right Banks). Here I took dozens of photos of the beautifully illuminated stained glass windows and couldn't help but wonder if some of the pictures I'd taken would end up in some future representation of PhotoSynth.


Our next stop was a quick metro ride away. Getting off at the Renfert-Rochereau metro stop, and asking a nice Bistro owner "ou est des catacombs?", we were pointed at a nondescript green entry way half way down the block. Alas, they are closed on Mondays, so lacking the picture we took in front of the door, we were left hanging.

A metro ride back to the St. Michel metro stop put us in a trendy area of town where we enjoyed some crepes and "du glacier" (or ice cream) from the (also closed on Monday) Berthillion Glacier at a cafe that happened to carry their wares. Mmmm. Hazelnut!

We then attempted to find "La Duree" for their world reknowned macaroons, but alas, the complex street layout made it difficult to navigate from my google-maps-inspired mental map of the city. 21 Rue Napoleon, where art thou?! (Inside Joke: Turns out it's just a block away from Rue Jacob and Rue Benoit, believe it or not ;-)

Anyhow, after walking all the way back to the metro station near the Louvre (unable to find a cab along the way!) we took the metro back to Charles de Gaulle Etoile (Etoile means "star", the layout of many significant intersections in the city) and a bed for the night.

Tomorrow? "Nous allons a Disneyland!"

See the full set on Flickr