the journey over to Paris, and day 1.

i am going to try to give everyone a play by play of the trip... mainly because i think breaking it up into days won't overwhelm me as i try to blog about the trip. so here we go...

We boarded Air France at 4:50pm EST on Thursday evening with the expectation of arriving around 6am Paris time. so we really needed to sleep on the plane to be somewhat coherent the next day. after watching "Up in the Air" (w. George Clooney) - i thought that was appropriate to watch, but if you haven't seen it... maybe worth a $1 red box rental...maybe...  After the movie and dinner served on the plane (which i thought was great) i took a dramamine and slept for about 3ish hours and then was just kind of out of it until we landed... ew. i have a picture from the airport in Paris. i will not be sharing that b/c i look busted.

i told you this was going to be a play by play... so anyway- we went through immigration and i got my Paris stamp!! but we didn't have to go through customs... then we stood in the taxi line... at 7am... on 3 hours of sleep... in 30 degree weather. but whatever i was pummmmped to be in europe! all the taxis were nicer cars like BMWs, mercedes, and Saabs... so we hopped in the cab and sat in rush hour traffic into the city of Paris to our hotel.

on our way he seemed to curse out some drivers in French, that was amusing...the driving reminded me of Mexico. crazy and unregulated.  he honked at people to go the moment the light turned green. the moment, as if the drivers should predict when the light was to change and start moving... and he also called Katie and I "typical Americans" when we talked about our love for coke. particularly cold, carbonated coke with lots of ice. he laughed at us. but i thought it was funny.

we got to our hotel around 9am and "checked in", meaning our rooms weren't ready but we could leave our bags. so we wandered off to find some coffee and pastries and stopped at the first one we saw. the guy working there spoke almost no english but i managed to get my hot chocolate. however joey's coffee was espresso.

then we hit the town. we walked along the Seine river to the Musee d'Orsay. That was one thing i really wanted to see b/c it had the Van Gogh and Monet and Degas paintings. It was really cool to see the original paintings. loved it.

after the Musee d'Orsay we went to look for a place to eat lunch. (now i tried to journal everything we did every day so i wouldn't forget in order to blog...) apparently we had a poor map, and no one wanted to let on that they spoke english... or it really is just less prevalent there than i thought it would be, but we ended up at a pizza place. this. i do not remember. its coming back to me as i search my brain, but i think it was because i was SO SO tired at that point. anyway- according to me Joey and I split a pizza (okay now i remember it) and it was really good. European pizza in general is aaaaaaamazing- but my favorite was on Prague the first day.

after lunch we went back to the hotel and were allowed in our rooms. thank goodness. we passed out for about 2 hours but had to make ourselves get back up to get adjusted to the time change and take a shower for dinner.  at that point i was still ridiculously tired and just feeling gross, and needed to shower and got so annoyed at Europe b/c my "shower head" wasn't mounted any higher than my shin.  i literally thought "i can't do this. i am way too tired to hold a shower head and shower. i can't even move much less hold the shower head, stay warm, and wash my hair..." anyway, i know spoiled american. but at that point i literally wanted to cry... and kissed the ground when i (checked and) saw our prague hotel had a normally mounted shower head.

whew. this is long. im sorry. thanks for keeping up. we walked toward the eiffel tower and had dinner at a cute little restaurant right near the tower. We all ordered the "cheeseburger" probably b/c the entire restaurant smelled like french fries. the cheeseburger arrived without a bun. still good, but funny. so we ate the slab of meat with cheese -who needs the extra carbs anyway? apparently not the french. i drank water b/c the coke was expensive (like $6 a glass) and "european" coke is basically luke warm, flat, no ice soda. gross.

after dinner we wandered around intending to look at the shops, but apparently everything closes early in paris on a friday night. i did end up getting a nail polish named "Paris" as my one souvenir from the city. after dinner we went back to the room to pass out. and pass out we did.. after of course joey and i realized that our walls were paper thin and listed to the person next to us have "bathroom issues". it reminded me of the movie "Just Married" b/c they honeymooned in europe and had a hotel in paris that had paper thin walls... so anyway after laughing at that for awhile, i finished my journaling with, and i quote "Our room was a sauna when we first came in. The hotel keys are huge".  apparently i was so tired and not coherent writing rambling things... and passed out.

day 1. done. wow.