Paris - Sunday, April 27, 2008

the Great Magnetic Wife and I arrived in Paris quite tired, having not slept much on the plane. This was part of the plan to beat jet-lag: exhaust ourselves and if we go to bed at a normal Paris-time, we will get up completely acclimated to the new time zone. It worked last year in Italy.

We waited at the airport for a couple of hours for ours hosts, Lori and Bruce, to arrive. We wouldn’t be able to check into the hotel without them and didn’t want to be burdened with our luggage in the mean time. We met Lori and Bruce at the arrival gate and we all took a cab into Paris and settled into the truly fabulous Hotel Raphael.

After a shower and a change of clothes, we went out for a little exploration/walking tour. We headed down Avenue Kleber towards the Eiffel Tower. Lori, in particular, was getting quite hungry and needed some sustenance before going much further. So we stopped at the Café Kleber, a very Parisian sidewalk café. I had French fries. Hey, when in Rome…or Paris…well, you know. They were good, but there was no ketchup. Boy those French have a lot to learn about their fries.

We then made our way to the Eiffel Tower. It is quite spectacular and actually much larger than I had imagined. The wait to go to the top was about an hour and Lori and Bruce didn’t want to do so anyway, so The Great Magnetic Wife and I figured we would come back early on a weekday. Unfortunately we never did.

We all headed past the Eiffel Tower towards the Ecole Militaire and planned on a loop that would take us past the Grand Palais, down the Champs Elysees, to the Arc de Triomphe and back to the hotel, in total, about a three and a half mile loop.

We saw a group of guys playing American (flag) football and I couldn’t resist getting a picture of them during a play with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

Having not slept much, we were starting to get pretty tired on this walk. It was nice to finally get to the Arc de Triomphe and then our hotel.

There was Champaign waiting for us in the room, so we had a little before a quick nap and then off to dinner at Le Butte Chappelle.

By the time we got back to the hotel we were exhausted. The Great Magnetic Wife, of course, went down to the hotel’s business center to check her auctions on Ebay, but I laid down and dozed off.

John Thum