Paris Day 1: The arrival

After much anticipation, and a very long flight we finally arrive in Paris. Actually the flight wasn't too bad, but I didn't get much sleep on the plane so by the time we landed I had been awake for about 20 hours. Now if you know me at all, you know I'm a girl who needs her sleep. I can be pretty crabby if I don't get enough. However, we were just so excited to finally be there the tiredness didn't seem to affect me (you can ask Jeff later what he thought!).

We waited in a short line to go through immigration, where they looked at our passports and waived us on. But wait...no stamp? I was expecting to start filling up my brand new passport with stamps. Alas no, apparently they don't do that anymore. Well, they did when we returned - woo-hoo, a stamp from Cleveland.

So now we need to get from the airport to the city. I did some research beforehand and it seemed like the best way to go was to take a train to the city and then switch to the metro and get off at the stop nearest to our rental apartment. Jeff prefers cabs, but looking at paying 50 euro for a cab versus 16 euro for a train ride, I opted for the less expensive option.

We begin to head through the terminal to the train station, and soon discovered our gate was at the farthest point you could get from the trains. It felt like we were swimming upstream through a sea of luggage. After fighting our way through a particularly crowded section it appeared we were coming to an open section. As we broke through the last throng of people we came out and were face to face with a row of armed guards. Not armed in the sense of "I've got a pistol in my holster", armed in the "I'm carrying a sub-machine gun" kind of way. Apparently there was some type of threat or incident in this section of the terminal and they weren't letting anyone through. There were airport represenatives talking to the crowd, but my French is pretty poor and I couldn't understand what they were saying. While Jeff and I were talking about trying to find an alternate way to the trains and a kind person in the crowd overheard us and spoke English, so she gave us some directions.

Now, I should have taken this as a sign and just grabbed a taxi at this point. But determined to save a few euros (have you seen the exchange rate???) we press on. We had to backtrack, cross underground to go to the other side of the terminal and finally - the train station. But everyone is taking a train of some sort, so lines were incredibly long. The ticket machines only take euro coins, and while I had brought some euros with us, alas, no coins. So we wait and buy a ticket into the city and a carnet of metro tickets so we can get around during the week. We get down to the train platform and there are two trains there. The sign says both trains go to Paris so we get on one of them. Not until after departure did I realize the other train was the "express" and we were on the regular train which added about 10 extra stops to our ride. At this point, Jeff deserves an award for most patient husband because he HATES public transportation. No, I don't understand why. You'll have to ask him.

But once on the train, we relax and I think we are finally starting our Paris adventure. Well, we are, but not in a good way (yet). I had mapped our route on the ratp.fr website and the directions seemed simple. Take the RER B from the airport, switch to RER C at the St. Michel station, get off at our stop near the Invalides. What I didn't realize until we got off at the St. Michel station is that there is construction going on and we could not switch trains. They had information people to help, and they directed us to go outside and find the bus running on the interim. So we exit to find no bus and to be pretty lost at this point.

Jeff (still being very patient, I must say) says we are done and must find a taxi. I'm all for that with the tiredness starting to set in. But guess what, we can't seem to hail a taxi. We try and flag them down. Nope. We go to the taxi stand where we see 3 taxis lined up. Nope, all empty. Frustrated, I get the map out and we get our bearings and decide to walk. Fortunately after a couple of blocks we see a taxi waiting, and we finally have transport to our apartment.

Up next....the apartment and the rest of day 1...