Well, what a day! I have to say it has been more like a day and a half and it sure feels likes it.

This is a picture of our final decent into Charles De Gaulle

We took off from Boston without any problems. We ended up taking Air France which is a part of Delta, and it was my first time in a Boeing 747. We overheard another passenger saying she was on the second level, so we asked about if the plane has two levels and what level we were on. The very friendly French stewardess replied “most are on the bottom deck,” and we walked away, scared of saying anything else to her. Well isn’t that special?

This is just the beginning of our long walk to baggage

The flight was bump free and we landed around 6:20am or so. It was the longest walk to the luggage we have ever had, it probably took over 20 minutes just to walk to customs and then another 30 at customs.

When we finally made it through customs, then got our bags, which seemed a little bit backwards, but we weren’t complaining. To boot, the customs official didn’t say a word to us. We simply handed him our passports and he stamped them, gave them back and we were on our way – way to go homeland security. We were able to make it onto the RER. The RER is like a commuter rail, its a little different than the Metro, and takes you straight into Paris. We got off at the Notre Dame stop and what a beautiful introduction to Paris.

This was our first site at Paris and was spectacular (and no, we don’t know that woman)!

It was just so thrilling to finally be there and I have to say it was better than I expected. The city was just waking up and you could feel the life.

Getting from Notre Dame to our apartment wasn’t much fun at all. We couldn’t find the bus stop and when we did find the stop and when the bus arrived we couldn’t figure out how to pay with coins. The driver wasn’t much help at all, and I can’t blame him since it was rush hour. We hoofed it all the way to our apartment which was probably over a mile, which wasn’t so bad, but with Tsana and her short legs and multiple pieces of luggage, it took a lot longer. (PS, Tsana was really nice to carry everything for me)

We made it to our apartment and our landlord had been kindly waiting this whole time. We come through the door gasping, “Sorry we are so late, how much do we owe you?.” Like typical Americans, always worrying about money. He told us to “Calm down,” and poured us some orange juice and gave us a big bag of croissants! What a surprise, it was really great. He oriented us to the apartment and took a lot of money from us, and we were thankful he left about an hour after we got there as we were EXHAUSTED!

Once he left we got some rest. We woke around 3pm and decided to just walk through the city to get the lay of the land. We saw much of Paris, and have many great ideas for the rest of week. During our walking voyage, we ended up crossing the bridge from Notre Dame to the right bank and some young hoodlum (probably a girl in her 20s), turned around, I swear she growled – and pushed this middle-aged woman over – she then fled. It was just like home!!!

We walked along the Sienne, passed the Louvre, and saw the Eiffel Tower from afar. I think seeing the Eiffel tower was our main goal today. We wanted to walk to it but it was pretty far. We ended up at Luxembourg garden which was magnificent, and had some early dinner since we were starving. We were at the point where we were so hungry we couldn’t decide on a place. We eventually found this place that seemed good (it had salad for Tsana). I had roast chicken and Tsana had a goat cheese salad. The goat cheese was out of this world.

We headed back home at this point and had short nap. We woke up at 9pm and it was still sunny out, I’m not sure whats going on here but it has been screwing with our internal clocks. We then went out and found a creperie and had some late night dessert.

We are now back in our lovely apartment and will go to bed soon in preparation for our next great day in Paris.