Nous arrivons en France

Allo!

Ted and I have arrived successfully in Paris. Our flight to Chicago was without incident, although some guy sitting in front of us was teacher-bashing and Ted was trying to keep me from crawling over the seat or otherwise throw something in his general direction. :) We had a 6 hour layover in the Chicago airport, the highlight of which was seeing Juliana Marguiles. We ate lunch, tried to sleep and then tried to come to terms with the fact that our next flight would be filled with a bunch of American teenagers on a school trip. :P


Mon Mar 12th

Once we de-planed, we headed to the baggage carousel where Ted tried to steal a sitar-player's luggage. We swore that it looked just like ours, but not sure he believed us. Taxi to the hotel, wherein Ted insisted he only knew "un peu" French, but I was only able to catch a word here and there. The driver, on the other hand, spoke way too fast for me. He laughed when I asked Ted how to say "Wow" in French. Apparently, it's "Wow."

Our hotel is small and old but cheap for Paris. I'll have to take a photo of the in-room hair-dryer for you. It's quite hysterical. We napped for 4 hours (we only meant 1.5) and then went for drinks at Les Cocottes de Constant, a bar recommended in my Top 10 Paris book. Then we walked to the Eiffel Tower (wow!) and surrounding area. Love it. The streets are old and everything so ornate. History is everywhere.


Unfortunately, so are cigarettes. I thought maybe the Parisians had smartened up since I last visited in 2001, but alas. Stinky smoke everywhere. Butts all over the ground. Blech. Ted says it's actually better than he expected, so it must have been REALLY bad back in 91 or whenever it was that he was last here. Come ON people!

We ate dinner at La Tourville, which was good and not so good. Good because no smoking is allowed inside (although everyone outside was lighting up), good because the food was good, rich, and simple. Good because of the people-watching and great company. Bad because my water glass was not clean on the inside. Bad because a mouse ran around under our table. Bad because our server kinda disappeared after a while. Overall, it was... ok.

We've noticed that people immediately start speaking English to us. Especially me, but even Ted says that when they notice his accent, they switch to English right away. Either they don't want to hear us (me) butcher their language, they want to put us (me) out of our misery, or they want to practice their English.

We are so tired now because over the last few days we've had almost no sleep. So tonight, early to bed, and getting ready for new adventures tomorrow!

Cheers,
E!

ps - stupid French keyboards, arghhhh! I cqnt type qnything properly qnd >I hqve to fix ,y mistqkes over qnd over: Sorry qbout the spelling qnd grq,,er;