Paris 2: Our first taste of Paris

ALL PARIS PICS CAN BE FOUND HERE
and picture album that contains pics of paris not included above is found here

Day 1: airport, arrival, hotel, Arc du Triomph, Champs Elysees, Place de la Concorde, Jardin des Tullieries, Palais Royal, Musee du Louvre

Getting to Paris was easy. We traveled by plane and it took us longer to get to the airport and wait for boarding than it took to actually get there (1.5 hr). We arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport about 1 hour later than expected (it was quite foggy in Zürich, so there were delays). Thanks to my handy dandy research, we knew we could buy the metro pass and the museum pass at the airport, so we headed towards the tourist info office. They had network problems so we could not buy the museum pass, and the metro pass had to be purchased at the metro ticket counter. There we waited for about 20 minutes, requested the metro pass (for 4 days) and getting ready to pay, we each got money our of our wallets, and the guy at the counter said to Gera (in a thick French accent) “Here men pay for everything, don’t let her pay again!”, half kidding, half serious. Our first impression of Paris. (fnny). We hopped on the RER and had to transfer at a station so we could get to the hotel. Of course, at the transfer we got on the metro going the opposite way we wanted to go, and then had to transfer again, and the second time we got it right. As we exited the metro station, our first sight of Paris was waiting: the Arc du Triomph stood there, triumphant and colossal, it was amazing!

We started walking in the direction of the hotel (located not on Champs Elysees, but on the opposite avenue). We walked for a few minutes when all of a sudden Gera and I stopped and simultaneously smelled the air: fresh baked bread! We both turned and the bakery was just behind us, on the corner. We got a couple of croissants and a couple of pieces of some sweet-flaky-chocolaty pastry (what would become our usual Paris breakfast). We continued walking for a few more minutes until we started to realize that we must had passed the hotel already, so we turned and headed back. Turns out we were supposed to turn on the same corner where the bakery was. It was fate saying “Look here!” with the sweet smell of carbs, but we did not listen.

The hotel was small with paper-thin walls, but very nice and clean (I will be writing a review for it later at tripadvisor.com). They gave us a room (strangely, there was no sign-in protocol) and a few minutes later called us to very politely ask us to go back downstairs with our luggage. They had given us the wrong room!. The 1st room was tiny, and we were sure they would not give us a bigger room, so we were scared to see what our actual room looked like. It WAS actually bigger than the first! The downside: it was on the 4th floor, and on the 5th floor they were renovating or something, so the construction noise woke us up early in the mornings. That and our VERY noisy next-door neighbors.

Once we were settled, it was already past 4pm, so we headed out towards the nearest attraction, ready to start crossing things off our list. We walked towards the Arc de Triomph, crossed the roundabout (through an underground tunnel) where 12 major avenues meet, and waited in line to buy the museum pass. There is no elevator to go up to the observation deck, only 280+ steps. We started climbing and I “almost” made it to the top without stopping, but when we had to stop, we HAD to stop. My heart was racing and I couldn’t breathe. Gera kept saying “we’re almost there”, but my boots felt heavy and he quickly quieted down once I told him “the batteries on the camera are dead!”. (haha) There were not exactly dead, but very very low, so we only got a few shots from the observation. We bought expensive batteries at a little store on Champs Elysees, and I never forgot to pack fresh batteries for the rest of the trip.

We kept walking on Champs Elysees, and walked, and walked. It was long, specially because we were so tired from climb up the arc. We eventually (finally!) reached the end of the avenue, at Place de la Concorde, where the big Egyptian obelisk is. We stopped, enjoyed the view and continued walking. We still had to cross a big garden (Jardin des Tuileries) to get to our next destination: Musee du Louvre. Across from Place de la Concorde there’s a huge ferris wheel and some food stands. We went on the ferris wheel and bought some crepes and some churros at the food stands. We continued walking and finally got to the Louvre, which is open late on Fridays.

We figured we should get the Monalisa out of the now, because it wouldn’t be so crowded so late at night (we were right). We went in through the glass pyramid (no line) and headed straight for La Giaconda. Walked across grand halls full of spectacular statues; magnificent stairs, and painted ceilings, the building is an artwork by itself. We finally found her, swimming in a sea of tourists. There were guards surrounding her and they seemed to be very angry at everybody. They kept shouting “NO PHOTOS! NO PHOTOS! MONSIEUR, NO PHOTOS!” and people kept ignoring them and snapping shots here and there, which explains their temper. I was good and did not snap a single shot, but there were some very bad people who even committed the museum capital sin: flash photography!

We tried to follow Rick Steves’ Louvre tour on the MP3 player, but it was a bit frustrating because we kept getting lost, so we gave up on that (note to self: next time print the maps that go with the guided tour). We saw some more art, like the Venus de Milo and old roman statues and we were ready to call it a day. And what a day it was, our first day in Paris.