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Paris, France: January 23, 2011
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We arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at around 6 p.m. with plans to meet up with our cousin Berni and her friend Cat at 8:00 p.m. for dinner. After waiting for our luggage we walked…and walked….and walked to the terminal with the train stations that would take us into the Paris city center. By this point in the trip I didn’t mind walking, however, when carting around 50 lbs of luggage each, this gets very tiresome. I made a note that next time, I would spend the the 55 euros to take a cab directly to our hotel. Luckily, we finally arrived at the ticket window for the trains, only to realize we were at the wrong ticket window. Oops! Once we were finally in the correct ticket line, we purchased our one-way train ticket to Paris (about a 45 minute train ride) and a carnet of tickets (10 metro tickets). We got on the train with hardly anybody on it and I sat down and rested my feet. One stop later, a mass amount of people poured onto the train, and I had to give up my seat in order to stand the rest of the way. I think maybe one man made a snide remark in French about my big suitcase. We finally reached our stop (St. Michel – Notre Dame), and proceeded to make our way through the underground terminals towards our exit. To go through the last exit, we had to go through a set of automatic doors, and I mistakenly did not read the sign that said to put the luggage through first, instead wheeling it behind me. It got stuck in the doors and would not budge. AD even tried, unsuccessfully, and at that point I started to panic slightly. A nice young French woman on her way in the metro with her friends stopped on the other side to push my luggage through. Who says French people aren’t nice?? I was so grateful! We hauled our luggage up the steps and onto the street, where I instantly pulled out my street map to find our hotel. It was only a few blocks away, and we found it easily.
Berni and Cat picked AD and me up at our hotel at about 8:30. Berni, being the most thoughtful cousin EVER, had bought macarons from Laduree for us.
We hopped on the metro (which was thankfully, just a block away from our hotel), and made our way to the Trocadero stop that shows a spectacular view of the Eiffel tower. Even though I had seen the Eiffel during a trip to Paris before, I still got chills when I saw ‘her’ all lit up.
We all took some pictures together, then proceeded to go across the street to Café Trocadero. We ate outdoors with a view of the sparkling Eiffel (she sparkles for 10 minutes at the top of every hour), and I got to enjoy a steak with fries and my first Kir vin blanc. It was so yummy!
After dinner, AD and I ate the macarons Berni bought us for dessert, and we headed towards the Eiffel to go up the tower. We decided to take the metro instead of walk across the bridge because it started to rain a bit, but we ended up getting lost. Getting lost in a foreign city at night is not something I particularly enjoy or feel comfortable with, however, I didn’t mind it so much in this case because #1) I got to walk off the big meal that I just ate, and #2) getting lost in Paris is fun! We finally made our way, walking across the Champs du Mars, and standing underneath. Unfortunately, the lifts to go up the Eiffel were closed, so going up the Eiffel would have to be postponed for another trip.
After taking more pictures of the Eiffel up close, we called it a night and made our way back to the metro. We said our goodbyes at the metro, and AD and I were so flustered on how to figure out the metro to go home that we forgot to say our final goodbye to Cat (this was her last night in Paris). After we made it on the metro back to our “home” stop, we exited onto the street, only to find out we had no idea what direction our hotel was in. After 20 frustrating minutes of walking in the wrong direction, we finally found our hotel. It was time to relax and get about 4 hours of sleep, since the next day would start VERY early in the morning.
