 Arrival in Paris |
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7:15 pm Central Standard Time / 2:15 am Paris Time I'm glad I stayed in my seat or my yummy vegetarian meal might not have found me. I'm telling you, that is the way to go on planes. Instead of spongy chicken or scary beef tips, I got cous cous and wild rice and some kind of black bean, carrots, and corn mixture and a piece of cheddar cheese and some honey dew which I eschewed because I don't dig on melon. I just took my Xanax and am relaxing with my mp3 player. "Forget about the Boy" is playing. I'll find myself another bloke who I know is no rover. 8:45 am Paris Time / 1:45 am Central Standard Time Well, we're landing in about forty-five minutes. I can't believe I just had breakfast and my body thinks it's not even yet two in the morning. This is going to be very weird. I can't say I got much sleep as trying to curl up in the space of two empty seats is kind of like trying to crawl back into my mother's womb while being shoved in the back by seat belt buckles and having my head bounce around on the arm rest during hours on end of turbulence and strangely cold air conditioner blasts that shook me like an ice cube in a martini glass from HELL. I think I might have whiplash, but I'm going to soldier on. My midnight snack/breakfast was a yummy toasted bagel and cream cheese and jelly and orange juice, and I'm saving the banana and Nutrigrain bar for later. Others got slimy croissants with slimy ham and cheese and raisins. I wish I had studied the best way to cope with jet lag as I'm not sure how I'm going to scamper around Paris in the middle of my night. Ah, well. 'Tis the price I pay for being a jetsetter. And may I say that a plane full of people who tried but failed to sleep in every possible position on a very bumpy 9.5-hour flight topped off with very vocal toddlers are some funny people. I can't decide what's funnier -- their expressions or their hair. 2:45 pm And I made it! My keen and perceptive Dr. Allan Pearlian eyes told me how to read the maps and journey yet again through a vast airport until I found the RER train. I'm prouder than I probably should be that I completed my first French transaction to buy my ticket and that I chose the train that left ten minutes later but had about three dozen fewer stops. I feel so Amazing Racerish all of a sudden! It's too bad Phil was not at my hotel pit stop to greet me. Thank goodness for Listerine breath strips or I would have been rocking some pretty foul breath when disembarking the plane. It's in the 60s in Paris! I am so sure. I'll have you know that my hotel is adorable. It's the Hotel de la Sorbonne, and I took the RER directly to the Luxembourg station from the airport and walked just a few blocks and there it was! 
I've already walked along the Seine and been to Notre Dame. 
My germophobic ass is sitting on a bird crap-covered sidewalk, and I'm listening in Place de la Sorbonne to a string quartet of foxy young students while eating a 12-inch sandwich with ham, cheese, what I presume is mayonnaise, and what I mistook for slices of mozzarella but are in fact hard boiled eggs.   3:15 pm I am now enjoying a citron frisson glace at the Luxembourg Gardens, which I LOVE like I knew I would! The flowers are amazing, and little kids are racing their sailboats in the pond. There are so many people here just chilling. 
 6:30 pm What a day! After I left Luxembourg Gardens, I just started walking. I decided to go to Pont Neuf and take some pictures of my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. I stopped at one of the street vendors to buy some postcards and I THINK I MUSH AVE PUT DOWN MY AWESOME MAP, my lifeline! I felt like Vern: "I lost the comb." I thought I could make it back to my hotel on my own because I found Place St. Michel which has kind of been a reference point so far but alas. No. 
So I walked down Dauphine and really enjoyed the window shopping in every kind of little store imaginable. I then bought some gelato because I was on the verge of developing heat exhaustion (it got really hot today after all), and I guess I took a wrong turn because I was trapped suddenly in these small serpentine albeit adorable side streets and woefully tired was I. Finally I landed at good old Place de la Sorbonne and now here I am back in the hotel.  There was a message from my parents when I got back saying "Welcome to Paris." Every bone in my body aches right now from a combination of the paralysis-inducing discomfort level of the plane ride and the I swear to God ten miles I must have walked today. I didn't come anywhere close to the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe or Sacre Coeur, but hopefully my sister and I can hit all those. I realize it is lame to be crashing so early, but I hope if I sleep long and hard tonight, I will be refreshed in the morning. All in all, it was a great first day eating my way through the streets of Paris. My first truly triumphant moment was buying my first of several treats, my first ever pain au chocolat in honor of Chiara. I ate it out of the wax paper bag and walked down the Seine toward Notre Dame. I practically started skipping in the sunshine. Hopefully tonight I will dream of the music of that lovely lunchtime string quartet.
 About this time in ...
© Copyright 2004 elb |
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