nous sommes arrivés!

Bonjour de Paris! As we still have not slept since we left yesterday...or was it...ugh...It was actually a day and a half ago, we will keep this brief! The pivotal question of today was: 'Can a cup of hot chocolate be life changing?' We will get back to that question in a moment. The whirlwind resume of the day is as follows: Having gotten off the flight at Charles de Gaulle around 8:30 Paris time this morning with only about an hour nap during the night (let's just say that an odd combination occurred of a very upset baby directly behind us, an exceedingly hot cabin temp, etc), we learned that our plan to take the shuttle would have necessitated our booking in advance, unlike the more practical, make-things-accessible American mentality. Since the taxi would have been well over 100 dollars, we took the advice of the nice young man at the info booth, who said the RER/metro combo would do just fine, and we set off. We did not remember that this would entail super human strength due to the massive number of stairs in several of the metro stations. Ahem......next time...

So, by about 11 a.m., we dragged ourselves to the Aida, our oasis of sanity after the unnerving entry through the part of town that looks more like something out of a Terminator movie than Paris. But, Grace a Dieu, there was this patisserie next door. As the French never get pastry wrong, after consuming several purchases composed of chocolate, buttery crispness to perfection, and fruit filled wonderment in our hotel's astonishing atrium under gorgeous skylights that revealed the old stone facode of the original building, we settled in for a short nap.

Our evening was composed of figuring out once again, that familiar rythym of the Metro, and balancing our desires to see everything in Paris the first night, with our time and energy and geographic limitations.

Highlights were the street musician who was playing an actual grand piano (not electronic) in front of the Eglise St. Germain as we bought and ate our first crepe au fromage of the trip. Delicieux!

We managed to spend a bit of time (its never enough or trackable) in the gallery of the impressionists, where Elyssa, seeing Monet's water lilies for the first time, stood speechless for ten minutes staring into its colors. A very moving experience.

Finally, the cafe des Deux Magots. We shared the angler fish over puree de pommes, et des pommes de terre from Heaven with wine reduction sauce. Flawless. Being divided on which of the gourmet chocolate directions to go, we ordered both the chocolat chaud a la facon ancienne, and the mousse au chocolat for dessert. There are no words to describe either of them.

 

And so we return to the first question of today's entry...to which the answer is yes, definitely, yes.

Such blessing in one day...bonne nuit....zzzzzzzzz

p.s. for my students: Please research one of the things mentioned in today's entry (don't forget to consider the history of Deux Magots as a possibility, as well as St. Germain church, les impressionists, Monet, etc, the lilies, the history of the Paris metro, Charles de Gaulle (namesake of airport), Musee D’Orsay (where the impressionists are located.....quite a history of its own).....history of the RER, etc.

Please do a short paper (your own words, svp, of one or two pages) for extra credit. Bon courage!