We finally made it to Paris today! =)

It truly doesn't escape me how.. comfortable things are in the US and how spoiled we are in a lot of ways. I'm going to save my transportation stories for later, but suffice it to say that convenience is a truly relative term. Yes, Paris is a fairly easy city to get around on by foot, but if you are on the outskirts of Paris - well good luck!

I got up at 6am as I'm not able to sleep more than a few hours on my first night in a new place. Started the morning with a luxuriously hot shower in my gorgeous bathroom. Puttered around for an hour or so waiting for Irene and Tracy to wake up. The sun didn't rise until just after 8am, so I snuck out at 7am to take a couple of pictures of the picturesque dawn in our village. We left just before 9am for breakfast and some grocery shopping, as we wanted to save a bit by having a meal or two at home and use our nicely equipped kitchen.

We came back, put things away and left again to catch the bus to the Chessy RER station. Today was our day to iron out the transportation kinks.. which also involved waiting for 30 minutes in the 35mph winds for the stupid pink bus. But yay - our Navigo passes worked on these suburban buses too! Whee! From here things got easier - we got Irene her Navigo card (these cards start on Monday so they were perfectly timed for our trip), we hopped on the A RER and took the 14 stops to Chatelet, where we were supposed to transfer to the B RER, but decided to walk down via Pont Neuf and take in the sights.

It didn't quite hit me that we were in Paris as we had just been at the airport, the suburbs in Disneyland Paris, and then in various modes of public transportation. Upon exiting the metro, I drew a quick breath, not really knowing what to anticipate as I hadn't been here in 15 years and sure as heck didn't take the metro when I was 14 by myself! At around 1pm, our heads popped out of the metro station like gophers, and the first sights we saw were old buildings and, the St. Eustache, and a Big Face! What a wonder... it was kind of like being in Rome where everywhere you look there is something beautiful. We squeezed in quite a few things before the rain started on us at 4:20pm.

It's really amazing to me how much Paris reminds me of New York. The only differences that I can point to are the frequency of French heard is just a little higher than in NY - where there's a strong Russian language presence as well. The smorgasboard of languages heard almost put me into a childhood slumber. And all the boutiques! They make shopping in the US seem like taking medicine. The unique clothes, lovely food, all that creativity and identity is well-preserved and available. While I care not a sou for shopping in the US, I would find it incredibly difficult to live here and not have the money to enjoy such intimate luxuries.

We walked down past the Samaritaine and I recognized Pont Neuf immediately from the movies. It's very pretty, with people just loitering about enjoying the intermittent sun peeking out. Just south of Pont Neuf we were accosted by some amazing aromas coming out of countless restaurants just before Jardin Luxembourg. The area down here must be their version of Little Tokyo as we saw Japanese restaurants every few feet, scattered among them were some Indian food places, Mediterannean, Indonesian and of course French cafes. What fun! We were brainwashed by all the pictures of sashimi and brochettes (for some reason a French version of Japanese yakitori took up half the menu in all these sushi places. We overate, I ended up communicating with the staff in Mandarin (have YET to really pick up French!), and we were on our way to Jardin de Luxembourg in the dying light. What a luxurious place to hang out - like Central Park, but much less dangerous, and a lot more open space - in NY there are a few woodsy areas and a lot of curving pathways where you may not be able to see around the bend, etc. And we saw another Big Face here in the Jardin de Luxembourg!

The rain started, and we headed home, but not before stopping by the Museum de la Moyen Age (Museum of the Middle Age) which looked really dark and ominous! We also passed by the Sorbonne which was really nice and had a courtyard behind its stone walls. We went home before the rain got too heavy, made a gorgeous dinner of fresh pasta in mushroom sauce, bread and cheeses, and desserts of chocolate cake and pistachio cream pots! Wow, we dined like royalty! ;)