FRANCE part 1

France, August 2019


With busy work schedules, including our daughters internship up north, the planning of this summer vacation was challenging. Late spring we were focused on Scotland in July, but after fine tuning of schedules we adjusted our plans and France it is!


Our daughter flew from New York to London a few days before us to meet her grad school roommate who was interning in Paris. The plan was for all of us to meet in Paris the afternoon of our arrival.


Our red eye Dulles to Paris was uneventful, but sure had a lot of infants and children around us...thank god for ear plugs aye! I watched Midnight In Paris during the flight, fun movie to set the mood. C&I was relatively fast, 540 people on our flight and many beat us to the C&I line! Took a 40 minute cab to our hotel in the 4th arrondissement. It was 9am and our room wouldn't be ready until closer to 2pm, they did offer us a tiny temporary room with a bed if we needed to crash, very nice gesture! Since we've never been to Paris we just stored our bags and began to wander!














After watching the heart breaking fire live on TV our legs moved us towards the Notre Dame Cathedral. 2 blocks from the hotel we crossed the Pont Saint-Louis bridge, crossing the River Seine and getting our first glimpse of the Cathedral and the Eifel Tower in the distance, cool. Of course we couldn't enter Notre Dame, but there are so many beautiful churches to visit in this part of the world!




















After a couple hours of walking we found a nice colorful cafe to eat a "light" lunch. It was interesting to discover the sandwich boards at each of the restaurants usually offering 3 course menu options at very reasonable prices between 10-20 euros. Owner/manager always ready to describe what they have to offer. At this first cafe we opted for the French Onion soup and "steak fries" for 10 euro (included small salad and dessert). As we enjoyed our soup we kept wondering why our fries hadn't appeared? When I finished my soup the waiter quickly removed my bowl and placed a plate of fries and a large portion of the most tender steak with wine sauce..."steak fries" hahaha!! What a great "inexpensive" lunch!!













At 2pm we checked into our comfortable room and took a much needed 2 hour nap! Later our daughter contacted us and said they would be at a river barge cafe a few blocks away at 5pm, so off we went! When visiting a new place it's nice to see familiar people smiling and waving at you in the distance! The floating Mr. Pelican cafe was the perfect place to catch up with the ladies. Our daughters roommate had been in Paris for 2 months so we followed her lead the rest of the evening.











After a couple hours of complete relaxation on the barge we wandered along the River Seine and enjoyed the beautiful late sunset. Paris and most of Europe just experienced crazy record high temperatures, but we were fortunate with daytime highs in low 80's and cool evenings, thankful. We found our way back up to Rue de Rivoli and entered the 1er arrondissement, home of the Louvre! It was so nice walking at this time of night, crowds were light and the colors amazing.

















Late in the evening we meandered our way back towards our apartments, stopping often to admire the cities architecture including the amazing Hotel de Ville.











It was after 11pm and we were hungry!! Stopped in a pizzeria and unfortunately they were only serving drinks, BEER ME!! The ladies suggested heading into the Old Jewish Quarter for apparently world famous Fallafel at the L'as du Fallafel. Fortunately at midnight they were still serving and the street atmosphere made for the perfect end to a perfect day!







To be continued..........

Wow, some 'light lunch' for a great price!!! Looking forward to more!!

Yippee - let the pictures and stories begin!
Counting down the days to Nice