Day 1, ParisDay 2, ParisDay 3, Paris – LyonDay 4, LyonDay 5, LyonDay 6, Montreux day trippinDay 7, Beaujolais, Oingt, and PerougesNaples, ItalyRome, ItalyRome-mania (=Romania?)Vesuvius, ItalyPositano, ItalyNaples, ItalyParis, FranceEuro Disney
 | Eseerydoc |  | Franco-Italia 2011 |  | Day 1, Paris |
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May 10 2011, 06:52 PM
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Panthéon, France
We arrived at CDG in the late morning after a direct Air France flight from LAX. The flight was nice with decent movie selections (Gnomeo and Juliette), good food (salmon shepherd’s pie…weird but good), and Asian soft drinks. Our baggage came right out and we were able to validate our rail passes easily on the way to the train into Paris. Ever wonder why you hear about “backpacking through Europe” and not “wheelie luggage-ing through Europe?” It is because wheelie luggage is a PAIN IN THE ASS. Dragging even a small bag through crowded trains and metro turnstiles, up and down stairs, over people’s feet, and across cobblestone streets makes P90X seem like a day at le’Spa.
On the outskirts of Paris, we had to maneuver a bit to switch to a metro line. We jumped an exit turnstile to get outside the station just so that we could buy a metro ticket that would let us back into the station and onto the metro that we needed to ride. The metro was crowded and stinky, but we made it the rest of the way to our hotel stop just across the river from Notre Dame.
We dragged our asses (and our baggage) up some more stairs and located our hotel without trouble (Best Western at Jardin de’Cluny). The hostess was friendly and spoke very good English, which was refreshing after figuring out the train routes in French. In the hotel, we discovered the smallest elevator known to man. The two of us barely fit and I had to hold my bag over our heads. Out room was small but very nice (better be for 160€/night). We showered off the travel stink and headed out across the river to see Notre Dame.
In the courtyard in front of the cathedral, a group was standing around a guy with a 4 foot inflatable dick trying to get people to sign it with a sharpie. Weird. I am not sure the carved saints watching over the square appreciated this maneuver. The inside of the cathedral was amazing, if not standard for a cathedral (ornately carved gothic style stone, high ceilings, stained glass, etc). While we were inside, a priest gave a sermon while a choir sang. The hard, cavernous interior made for some very cool acoustics with a lot of haunting reverb…perfect to strike fear into the hearts of peasants of the middle ages (or to rock out to Def Leppard). We exited and walked around the outside to find the entrance for the tower tour, but found instead that it had already closed for the evening.
We walked down the street to find St Chapel and discovered that we had to enter through the hall of justice. The St Chapel was very different than Notre Dame. Though the exterior was stone, the interior looked to be made of brightly painted wood and the first floor was a single short level. The second floor was a huge room with floor to ceiling stained glass windows all around.
We left St Chapel and took the metro to the Eiffel tower. The line to go up was very long, so we walked to a recommended restaurant. We had a fantastic dinner consisting of onion soup with cheese (French onion soup…but they don’t call it that here), legumes, fillet mignon w/ béarnaise (for Nic), a croque monsour (grilled cheese…which had cheese on both the inside and outside of the bread…for me) with salad and fries, followed by a crazy pastry blump filled with hot liquid chocolate and a side of vanilla ice cream. We were pretty much zombies at this point, so we caught the metro home and crashed out hard.
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