Paris!

So, as part of the wife's work responsibilities, she took a trip to Paris for a week, and I made the cut as her "plus one." Ironically, the timing of this trip was such that our 24th anniversary fell during our trip - who woulda thunk it? Us spending our anniversary in Paris?!?

When she travels for work, she has to book her travel on her work card, while we booked my ticket on a personal card. Booking our tickets at different times introduces a complication, in that during the reservation process, you pick your seats... unless the system doesn't allow you to pick your seats, and just picks an available seat for you (which is what happened for both of our tickets). We checked with the train folks at the station before we left about sitting together, and they told us to talk to the people on the train. I asked one of the conductors on board about it, and he told me it wasn't a big deal, go ahead and sit with her. What he/we didn't take into account was that the seat I was occupying was probably reserved for someone else, and they wouldn't be happy to find me sitting in it. Cue us moving three times on the way there so that we could sit together, moving each time a new group boarded the train (at each of the three stops between Frankfurt & Paris).

Regardless, we got to Paris in the early afternoon hours on Sunday and checked into our hotel, resting and relaxing for a few minutes before finding our way around town.

Lets talk about the hotel for a moment (lots of "First World Problems" coming. Sorry!). Reading through this post, there are a few parts where I'm complaining a bit. I'm going to change the color of my whining, just move past the text that's colored red if you're not in the mood to listen to my bitching.

I know that Americans are a bit spoiled when it comes to some of the more modern amenities - we've been forced to get used to it while living in Europe, both in this tour and the last one. Most of y'all know (or can make an educated guess) how I feel about air conditioning. I've voluntarily placed myself firmly in the "pro" A/C camp for decades. Our hotel had A/C in our room, and the control allowed us to set the temp all the way down at 62 degrees, which, while a bit on the chilly side, would be quite refreshing after a long hot day touring in the sun. Well, it would have been refreshing if those numbers had anything to do with the actual temperature in the room. The only thing the thermostat seemed to actually do was show us the current temp in the room, at times climbing to a roasty-toasty 82 degrees, while completely ignoring any and all requests to turn our room into a refrigerator.

While I'm complaining about first world problems... we've stayed in 4 hotels while we've been in Europe, and I've noticed a trend: Europeans are convinced that shower curtains are unnecessary. In the post about our trip to The Hague, I wrote at length about the amazing shower there... in our hotels in Berlin, Stuttgart, and now Paris, there was no shower curtain. Berlin and Stuttgart both had stalls with half of the space enclosed, and the other half open. Our hotel in Paris had a nice deep soaker tub, with a two foot width of plexiglass attached at one end next to the handheld/rod mounted wand - nothing else. So, every night when I'd take a shower (in a vain attempt to rinse off the dried sweat from a day in 90+ degree heat), everything in the bathroom would end up wet, since there was nothing keeping the shower water in the "shower." As much as I loved the shower in The Hague, I hated this one just as much, if not more.

Evidently, water heaters work a little differently in Paris than they do in the states. In the states, a hotel has a water heater which heats up the water for the building. In Paris (or our hotel, at least), hot water is delivered by the imaginary hot water fairy, and (s)he was having a bad week while we were there. There was a sign on the bathroom counter telling us that there was a problem with the hot water, and the temperature would fluctuate between warm and hot, with no notice. Unfortunately, the temperature fluctuated like that even when I had the temp set quite cool (in a vain attempt to cool down and rinse off the dried sweat from a day in 90+ degree heat). Nice and cool, warmwarmhotHOTHOTHOT - ice cold!

I hated that shower.

Enough complaining about first world problems for now, but I reserve the right to circle back around whenever I feel like it.

So our hotel was right next to a mall - this seems to be an inadvertent theme with our travels.

The mall was weird. Rather than having individual stores, the vendors were basically open stalls. Clothing, jewelry, purses, perfume - most things that you'd find at a normal mall, just in stalls instead of individual stores. Only thing was, this was a high end mall. Think Rolex, Chanel, Prada, all those high end brands. Here's a pic to give y'all an idea:

We putzed around in there for a while, but shockingly enough weren't able to find anything we couldn't live without. We ventured up onto the roof and took what we believe to be our first selfie ever, with the Eiffel Tower off in the distance. (Spoiler alert - she made me take a bunch of selfies while we were there. If you want to see them, ask her really nicely, and maybe she'll post them on her Facebook account).

After we were done there, we took the metro over to the Eiffel Tower itself. We went through the security checkpoints at the bottom, then saw how long the lines were to buy tickets, and that we wouldn't even be able to go to the top, and just took a bunch of pics from the bottom. She made me take more selfies there too.

We really need to talk about their metro system at some point - warning, more "First World Problems" incoming. Remember the red text warning above?

The Paris Metro system is a thing of beauty... almost. They've got the whole metro thing figured out, from what I can tell. Subway stations on just about every corner, and you can get from one side of the city to another for less than two bucks. There were three main issues we encountered - I'll walk you through them.

1. The metro is quite popular. The weather outside was decidedly NOT delightful. I have smelled things now that I would really prefer not to smell again. That many people, jammed into that small a space, and since France evidently hasn't got the whole "Air Conditioning" thing figured out just yet... let's just say it was unpleasant at times. 
2. In other metro stations, there are only a couple of levels of tracks. In most metro systems (that I've ridden on), more than one subway line will service that track. For instance, if you're waiting for a "Blue" train, you might have to wait there while an "Orange" train stops first. Not in Paris. If there are 6 different lines that service a station, there are 6 individual platforms that you have to navigate to catch the right train. In some cases, the platforms seem to be stacked, and at times you'll have to walk through the platform area for one line to take 3 more sets of stairs to get to the line you're looking for.
3. Escalators. Most of the stations didn't have a lot of escalators. There might be one or two going into the top level, but by and large, you were hiking up and down endless sets of stairs to access the lower levels. We saw a couple of elevators, but they definitely weren't in every station, or even a good number of the stations we used. 

During the day, Rebecca went to work and I did random stuff around the room and neighborhood. Nothing noteworthy, so I'm not gonna bother sharing any of it. All the following stuff was in the afternoons and evenings, after Rebecca got back from work.

Tuesday evening we took the metro over and took pictures of Notre Dame from the outside. I'm not sure if the inside is open (or the progress on the restoration after the fire), the outside was mostly covered by scaffolding. I had a silly surprise for my wife... with us both being Texans (me by birth, and her as an honorary Texan - specifically because she did her part and added two more Texans to our family!), we're both barbecue junkies. I'd found a review of a barbecue place over here (that we haven't gone to yet), but I was poking around restaurants in Paris and found a place that had pretty good reviews. So, I picked that place - I told her before we went in that she could veto it if she wanted - and I've gotta tell ya, the barbecue was definitely edible. We both had the brisket, and while I'm not going to waste time comparing it to Texas 'cue, it was actually pretty good. Afterward, we metro'd back to the hotel.

Wednesday evening we went over to one of the boss's houses for dinner. This particular boss is one of the guys Rebecca worked with in Rome, we got to know him and his family pretty well, so we spent the evening catching up with him and his wife. The Paris office is over the Frankfurt office, so he's in her chain of command, but he and his wife are just cool people, and it was good to get to spend some time with them.

Thursday evening we got together with one of our friends from back in the day - he was actually my best man when we got married. We met up with them at a restaurant and had a great meal, then walked around for a couple of hours. He wanted to take us to see the original Moulin Rouge cabaret, so we walked from dinner down the hill in that direction. Evidently, the area the cabaret is in is the next block down from Paris' sex shop and strip club district, so that was entertaining. That night, we ended up taking a cab back to the hotel.

Friday I got tickets for the Louvre at 7:00 (it closes at 9:45 on Fridays). We metro'd down there and were able to enter the museum at 6:30. We got audio guides in English, but honestly... they were damn near worthless. It was difficult to figure out where we were, and almost impossible to figure out where we wanted to go, with no way to search and figure out where different types of art were. We ended up not being able to use them very well. We poked around a bit and found our way to the Mona Lisa; she's in a room with a huge line of tourists waiting for a chance to gawk at her. After struggling through the crowd to catch a glimpse of her, we decided to try and find another section of the museum that wasn't as crowded. The museum is massive, and spread across 3 buildings, five floors. We were looking for the section with Van Gogh and Picasso - you know, people we've heard of before... the fourth time we got lost and the third time we passed a specific exhibit, we threw in the towel. We kinda feel like we've checked the box; we got to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. Done. It just wasn't enjoyable after that.

Saturday the only thing on the list was the Arc de Triomphe. We took the metro there and walked around under it a bit. There was a line to go up, and I just wasn't feeling it, so we looked around for something else to do. We ended up taking the metro to the far side of town and walking around in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. We found a map and walked through to Jim Morrison's grave; there are lots of famous people buried there, but honestly, there were none that I absolutely had to see. We walked around for a while, admiring the grounds, then got lunch at a nearby restaurant. While we were eating, we were looking at other things to do, since our train didn't leave until 7ish. Becca found info about the Orsay museum online, so we metro'd over there. 

The Orsay deserves its own paragraph. What a wonderful experience! We got audio guides for this one too, and the difference between the guide at the Louvre and this one was like night and day. This one was so much more user friendly, and gave us the opportunity to get information that we wanted, rather than just randomly playing stuff when you were standing at a certain spot. The layout was very logical, and the locations of the art we wanted to see (Van Gogh, Picasso, etc.) were well identified and easy to find. I'd go to the Orsay again before I'd go back to the Louvre - it was just such a great experience!

We took a cab to our hotel to pick up our luggage, then rode the metro to the train station. This time on the train, we just sat in our assigned seats, even though we were in different cars - it just wasn't worth the hassle for me. We got home after midnight.

The past week has been... well, I can't say "uneventful," because there have been a couple of big developments, but honestly they're just big deals for us - I can't imagine that y'all care much, but I'll put them in here anyway. Our car is here. We'll be taking possession of it on Tuesday, and I think this will change our experience here quite a bit. I expect that we'll still take transit most of the time, since it's really convenient, but we'll have a lot more options.

Speaking of options, we hit a bit of a breaking point with my cell phone. My frustration bubbled over a few weeks back, and I just gave up. I haven't been able to get it working to call German numbers, and have been endlessly frustrated to be stuck without a reliable way to get in touch with Rebecca, and not being able to place local calls (to deal with getting insurance set up for the car, etc.). We finally broke down and just bought a phone locally for me to put my German SIM card in, and it's working! Now, the wife and I can call each other during the day, and I can actually use my phone while I'm out, which is a big change.

Anyway, that's all for now. Let one of us know if you've got any questions!