Paris Trip Report

The flight to Paris was ok. I was able to sleep but Andrew stayed up the whole trip, mostly watching shows on my iPod. When we arrived in Paris the immigration and customs was super efficient- it might have been the fastest process either one of us has every been through. We took the train to the center of Pais and then connected to the subway. From there we easily navigated to my aunt and uncle's apartment. The apartment was great! It is a two story apartment on the top floor of a 7 story building. It used to be the maid's quarters for another apartment. My aunt is a great cook, so it has a fully decked out kitchen. We had a bedroom upstairs and there is a nice sitting area downstairs next to the kitchen.

Here's the view at night- not bad!

We got to the apartment about 9:30 am and our plan was to stay up the whole day so we could adjust to the time more easily. However, while I was showering Andrew fell asleep on the bed and then I did too. We woke up about 4! Ooops...

So we finally got up and headed out. The apartment is not very far from the Arc de Triomphe. We walked down there and along the Champs-Élysées, just getting used to the city. For dinner that night we went to this great little restaurant that only serves steak frites. All you have to do is tell the server how well you want your steak done. Easier for our limited French! The sauce they serve with the steak is a closely held secret and for good reason- it was amazing! Andrew wanted to lick it off the plate.

We had a nice walk home and then it was off to bed. The next morning was rough- the time change really got me and I had trouble getting up!

We headed to the Effiel Tower to meet a bike tour we wanted to take through FatTireBikeTours.com. The company is based in Austin and was started by an Aggie a few years older than I am. It could have been a really good tour, except they weren't fully staffed yet, so even though they split us into two groups, we were still too big to be biking around Paris (25 bikes). We were able to see a lot and started learning more about the history of Paris.


After the tour ended we were pretty pooped. We stopped by a grocery store and made dinner that night, planned the rest of the trip based on what we had seen and went to bed again.