Vacation in Europe: Paris, France

days 1 - 3

After a long flight (3 hours from San Francisco to St. Louis, 8 hours from St. Louis to Paris), we got into Paris at noon and went right to the car rental counter. Even though I had made a reservation several weeks earlier, they had no cars available, so we had to wait an hour before we could leave the airport. When we finally got the car, we discovered the "joys" of driving in Paris: scads of traffic, many one-way streets, and very sharp blind turns. I was secretly glad that I don't know how to drive a stick-shift and therefore couldn't be asked to drive, especially after the exhausting flight.

We made it to Hôtel Sthrau in the 13è arrondissement after 2pm and immediately took a nap. Then we went off in search of food. At the Bibliothèque François Mitterand métro station, we discovered that most of the French money we had, a 100 franc note I'd been saving from my last trip to Paris, was no longer valid currency. Apparently this particular bill was withdrawn from circulation a few years ago. We only had 10 or so francs, so a very kind French man at the métro ticket counter generously offered us a few francs so that we could buy our tickets.

After changing some money (nearly 7 francs to the dollar!), we had dinner at a cute little Italian restaurant near the St. Michel métro station: Osteria del Passe-Partout. We were still so tired that on the way home, we got turned around and ended up walking many blocks out of our way. When we finally made it back to the hotel, we had to drag ourselves up the stairs.

Thanks to jet lag I woke up at 3am and couldn't get back to sleep. Since I'm a certified internet junkie, I figured I could do some surfing. I learned, unfortunately, that picking up the phone in my room rang the front desk, and of course woke up the poor propriétaire. He told me, somewhat impatiently and with a hint of underlying (and justified) anger, that calls had to be dialed by the front desk and that this could only happen during the day. Had I known this, of course I would not have tried to call at 3am, but this was my first experience with such a system.

I finally fell back asleep and we got up at 9:30. It was a beautiful warm day. After a pain au chocolat and coffee breakfast, we bought some cheese and bread and avocado and wine. We took the métro out to Bois de Boulogne for our picnic. Just as we arrived back at our hotel, it started to rain. After a short nap and a bit of reading, we had dinner at Le Café latin in the Latin Quarter, then went to Eglise Ste.-Chapelle for a concert. The thunder made an interesting accompaniment to the music.

The next day Christian, one of the forum regulars, picked us up at our hotel for lunch. He had thoughtfully already searched around Paris for vegetarian restaurants on my behalf. The winning restaurant was Piccolo Teatro - a cozy little place in the 4è arrondissement. It was terrific to meet Christian after knowing him virtually for so many months. After that we drove around a bit while he did some tour guide stuff, but unfortunately we had to leave at 3pm to continue on our journey.
 

Observations about Paris:

My husband and I both speak French (I'm fluent and he is intermediate/advanced), so we both spoke only French virtually the entire time. Only 2 or 3 people used any English with us. The woman at the rental counter kept switching back and forth - I guess she is not used to being able to speak French with her customers. On another occasion, we asked some gendarmes for directions and one gave them to us in French and the other repeated them in English. Once, a group of French teenagers actually stopped us to ask us for directions! I guess I've mastered the French "look."  :-)

The new métro line, Line 14 from Bibliothèque François Mitterand to Madeleine, is amazing. The escalators in the Bibliothèque station speed up automatically when you get on them, the tracks are glassed in, and there is no conductor! You can see from one end of the métro car to the other - there are no separate cars linked together like on the older lines. Also, there don't seem to be any "entertainers" in the métro cars anymore - no singers, musicians, etc., and we only saw one beggar during our three days in Paris.

It's a lot harder to find a good pain au chocolat than I remember, but I guess that's because it was so late in the summer. More than half of the shops were closed for vacation.

Next stop: Rouen        Vacation Index

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