PARIS

Well, i hope i can do this any amount of justice. I might have to get my travel journal.

Monday, we left, and were in the air for a long time. Getting to the right terminal was a pain because it was booked through Travelocity, owned by US Air, but flown by United. *This will be important later.*

Tuesday morning, we landed. We got in much too early to check in, but the extremely nice lady at the desk (who was part of an extremely nice hotel crew) found us a room that was empty so we could get in. Yay! We napped, awoke, and spent the rest of the day with the Bogs' dear friend Niki, whom they met when they were in Grenada. We had a GREAT time. She is sincerely wonderful and intelligent. She showed us to a cool restaurant of one of her friends, showed us where she does some work, and showed us in general around Montmatre. It's too bad we didn't get to spend more time with her later, but we had so much to do!

Eventually, we parted after having had coffee and chocolate together at the place of Amelie's working, and daN and i found food and tried to go to sleep. Slept TERRIBLY. Jet lag is a bitch, and still plagues me. We dragged ourselves out of bed in time to eat breakfast, which was simple but lovely. Very different than in the states -- they actually have a breakfast room, and they ask your room number and seat you, then they bring you each a mini baguette and a croissant and ask whether you want coffee, tea, or cocoa. There are plenty of jellies to choose from, as well as butter and honey for the croissants. We always had tea, and i put honey on my croissant and in my tea. This idea of complimentary breakfast is a complete (and welcome) 180 from the typical continental breakfast of donuts and bagels of most inexpensive hotels (and our hotel was inexpensive).

That particular morning, daN and i went back to sleep. We eventually rose again around noon, and managed to go do some sightseeing. That's pretty much how most days went, only we got up earlier and earlier (by increments of 10 minutes, to be fair), and didn't go back to bed after the first day. We would get ready after breakfast, go out into our little neighborhood and get fixings for picnic lunch (usually consisting of some kind of bread, cheese or yogurt -- SO good in France, and fruit), and then venture into the center of Paris for sight-seeing.

The only down-side to all the sight-seeing is that it was unusually cold in Europe last week, and all the Parisians were complaining about it. DaN was fine with it, and i would have been too, if it had not been for the fact that we walked at least 6 or 7 miles everyday, and that much walking outside gets Lindsays cold really fast. Fortunately, daN was always up for stopping at a cafe in the afternoon to warm ourselves with some chocolat chaud, and we would usually sit and write or chat or chill for a bit. Our favorite spot, which was also my favorite on my last trip, was the cafe near the Musee de Picasso -- so much so that we didn't make it to the museum before it closed. Ah well. We saw a lot of good Picasso at the Pompidou Center for Modern Art.

Things we saw and/or stumbled across unintentionally as we walked: Le Louvre (of course), La Musee D'Orsay, Le Tour Eiffel, les Champs Elysees and l'Arc de Triomphe, Place de la Concorde (with the big old gold-tipped Egyptian obelisk that Napoleon took), les Jardins Tuilleries, Place de la Bastille, place des Vosges (where King Henry V and his cronies liked to hang out back in the day with its big arches and formal gardens), le Pantheon, Notre Dame, the cathedrale at St. Germain de Prez, and LOTs of other stuff. It usually went like this, "Hey, that looks like a monument! Let's go see what it is." And it worked quite well.

We ate picnic lunches, so we had dinners out, and our favorite place as i already mentioned was a proper Breton creperie. It was the highlight of our dining experiences. Our last dinner was unfortunately not so great -- it harkened of the family-style dining of Denny's. It was... pretty bad. The fixed price menu looked great! But now we know to warn people -- you get what you pay for sometimes. For 5 extra euros, we could have had another incredible meal at the creperie. Ah well. We enjoyed making fun of it together.

We had a wonderful time, and we were tired and ready to go home. The plane ride there was uneventful, which is good, considering it was 7 or so hours. I got to watch "Vanity Fair" though, which i have been wanting to see. I liked it. I'd like to read the book now :)

It was the transfer in between that proved to be interesting. See, the legal minimal layover for international connecting flights into the USA is an hour and fifteen minutes due to the fact the the first point of entry is where customs happens. Due to the number of hands in our reservations, the mininum layover was overlooked, to say the least. *This is the spot where the info above is important.* Our layover, in DC, was 58 minutes if we were lucky, which counted the amount of time we spend taxi-ing on the plane before it actually lets you out. The nice lady in Paris booked us on the next available flight in case we missed it, which was 6 hours and 15 minutes after we landed. So we really hoped we made it. So the plane lands. We shove our way out! We run down stairs instead of taking escalators to beat MORE of the crowd. We get through passport control. We run to the baggage claim!... and wait... for a long time... the clock is still ticking, and we have about 35 minutes before out plane to Boston leaves. It starts boarding in 5 minutes. Our baggage finally arrives! We run to customs! The line is moving quickly, because we were the first of 8, count-em, 8 international flights all to land at the same time, and they're not in the mood to piss passengers off just for the sake of it. They asked me, "what food to you have?" "Chocolate." "Go." They ask daN, "What food do you have?" "A piece of break i meant to throw out." "You can keep it. Go." We re-check our baggage (MUCH easier this time), and we RUN. We elbow old ladies! We stampeed over handicapped people (not really, but it was extremely crowded, and we were a lot ruder than usual). We MADE it. The plane boarded 3 minutes after we got there.

It's a good thing we made it, too, because that was the last flight to Boston out of DC for the day. Yes, we flew back in a Nor'easter. Phew. So otherwise, we wouldn't have been back home till yesterday.

Like i said, daN and i had a wonderful vacation, being tourists together and travel companions. I spoke French very well, and like last time, the people who didn't think i was French thought i was Italian because of my accent. :) Hee.

But MAN was it good to sleep in our bed.