Le Triosième Jour

Well, it’s the end of our third day here in Paris. “What happened to the first two?” I hear you ask. Well I’ll tell you. The first day, I was tired. Dead tired. After what was an 8 or 8.5 hour flight we arrived in Paris at approximately 6:45 AM local time; which was about 10:45 PM Mountain time. Dad left his hat on the plane by accident so we had to wait around for them to bring it up—fortunately it wasn’t lost.

We then hopped a bus over to the terminal where we could catch the TGV out Chessy Gare near where we were staying. After trekking across all of terminal 2 we arrived at the train station where we proceeded to wait for an hour or more for our train. We rode the TGV for all of 10 minutes before we arrived at Chessy Gare—this thing is amazingly fast and smooth, it normally takes us 30 minutes to get from downtown to the Marriott out here by Euro Disney. Once we arrived we got to wait for another hour and a half before the next shuttle came to pick us up and take us to the Mariott.

That’s pretty much it for day one. Dad and I walked into town to grab some groceries, we ate dinner, then we all fell asleep. I slept for something like 17 hours, I think.

Yesterday, day 2, we went into Paris over to l’île de la Cité to visit Notre Dame; which is easily in my top 5 favorite places in Paris. Dad and I climbed to the top and caught a couple of good pictures. It’s so peaceful up there. There is something about those gargoyles that I find incredibly soothing and comforting. After the treacherous descent from the towers we walked through the cathedral proper. At times like that I completely understand the comfort that so many found in religion—even a hethen such as myself is touched by a place like that.

Meanwhile, Mom had wandered over to Shakespeare & Co., having been to Notre Damn numerous times as a girl. After we snapped a few more pictures we went over and joined her. We spent a fair amount of time there; I wandered up to the second level—which I hadn’t discovered last time—managed to find a good Christmas present for Waqphael, then we left. That is such an interesting bookstore. We took the Metro back to l’Opera where we wandered down to Galleries Lafayette to look at their christmas lights and animated window displays. They had a number of really cool ones that—miraculously—none of us took a picture of. Then we grabbed some dinner, came home, and crashed.

On the way home last night, Mom had the great misfortune of tripping fairly hard and hurting her ankle; so she was laid up all day today. Dad and I went into the city to l’Arc de Triomphe. We climbed to the top, looked around some, took more pictures, and went down. We’d have probably spent more time there, except that the museum in l’Arc de Triomphe is under renovation; so there wasn’t much too look at. We then wandered down the Champs Elysée and found the restaurant we ate at last time: Vesuvio. After a late lunch we wandered over to la Tour Eiffel.

Since it was just the two of us, we opted to walk up the stairs as far as we could. They only let you climb to the 2nd floor before they force you to take an elevator (and make you pay for a second ticket). So we putzed around at the top of the tower for a while. Even though this is my second time in Paris, that was the first time I’d ever actually been to la Tour Eiffel.

And that pretty much brings us to now. I’ll refrain from adding more details at this point, since this post is running longer than most people probably care to read in a blog they barely care about. 😉