POI:
So the day is finally here. After much waiting, preparing, and planning, we will finally go on our Paris trip. But luck was appearly on our side when the day before the UK foiled a terrorist plot of liquid bombs, and thus the whole world went on high alert again regarding air travel… Preparing for the worst, we woke up at 4:00am to get ready and drove to the airport for our 11:30am flight (thanks to Jeannie’s Dad, who took a day off just to drive us there).
Given the high security, the airport delay wasn’t really that bad comparing to regular delays (still took us about 2~3 hours to get to the gate). But since we got there so early, we got nothing to do but to wait for the flight.
The flight took about 11 hours and was rather uneventful. We were pretty excited once we finally landed. The custom took about 5 seconds to look at our passports and let us through, very much different from the US counterparts that usually ask a bunch of questions and take much longer. Our first impression of the airport was that it’s small and unimpressive for an international airport, but I guess we are just spoiled since we go to LAX all the time, of which I didn’t think was that great anyway.
We were pretty suprised that the shuttle that I arranged over the internet actually showed up to pick us up. The guy was pretty friendly and gave us a map that he drew a bunch of stuff on telling us where to go, which we later put to good use. We noticed that Paris is pretty empty in August.
Around 3pm we finally checked in the hotel and were dead tired. Fighting the urge to just go to sleep and mess up our whole body clocks, we forced ourselves to go out and look around.
First stop, Chateau de Vincennes, which is about 15 mins walk from our hotel, which is also the name of the Metro stop that we came to know so well, which also means that we have to walk 15 mins to take the Metro every morning and 15 mins back to the hotel every night, which became really painful later on since we basically are just walking all day everyday… The Chateau was alright. They didn’t really allow people to go inside the buildings, so we were just looking around being tourists and snapping pictures.
We continued to the Metro station, where I spoke my 1st French phrase to a French person: “Do you speak English?” This phrase proved to be useful throughout the trip and the French people are generally helpful if they see you trying. And yes, the lady at the Metro stop did speak some English, and we bought some tickets without too much trouble.
Getting more tired, we just want to walk around and not do too much sight-seeing, so we took the Metro to the Louvre (but didn’t go in) and just walked around the neighborhood. The feeling here is very much different than in the States. Everyone seems to be relaxing and drinking coffee (and not working)… I wondered many times how businesses stay in business like that throughout the trip…
We stopped by a coffee shop, where I had my first $2.50 esspresso in Paris (which we mainly ordered through sign language). My verdict, it’s the same as my $0.50 per shot Nespresso machine at home, but since it’s in Paris, it’s better. We walked around the shops around Louvre till it started to get dark and called it a day.
Paris | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7
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