It’s been too long since having written last. So I’ll start from the beginning and catch you up with more proper and detailed posts.
Almost the entire first week of our stay in Paris was to perfection. The day we arrived we took the RER from Charles de Gaulle to le Metro’s Les Halles station, where we transferred to a number 9 train where we exited at the Tuileries Metro station. When we transferred trains, I nearly caused a debacle for Kevin, whose baggage was just a tad too wide for it to fit through the auto exit door from the station. I tried to push it through to help him, but I inadvertently bent the handle while it was extended. Fortunately when we got unpacked later, he was able to manipulate the handle and all was not lost on his newest piece of luggage.
When we arrived at the hotel it was just a tad early and our room was not yet ready. We were welcome to avail ourselves to the Club Lounge at the Westin Paris and bide our time. We were then shown our to our room and found our expected, but complimentary, upgrade to not be what we had in mind. We learned a big lesson: a suite in France is a larger room, not a sleeping and a sitting room as it is in the United States. In any event, with the hotel undergoing renovation and being fairly well booked for the holidays, we managed to secure a room more to our liking on the top floor — with two rooms! It would prove to be crucial to have these two rooms. But more on that later. The other amazing thing about the room is that it has a spacious walk in closet, and I do mean spacious. The closet can easily accommodate enough clothing for a fashionisto like me and still spare ample room for Kevin, who is decidedly less of a clotheshorse, but still came prepared to look good and to brave the elements.
Okay, so enough about the room… Let’s go out and play!
We headed out for a walk, determined not to let jet lag get the best of us. We walked around the area known as la Madeleine, a square centered with the eglise Madeleine. All around the square are gourmet food shops such as temples of taste Hediard and Fauchon, as well as smaller shops that sell caviar and salmon. To the west are the highly regarded, high-heeled and high priced boutiques of rue du Faubourg-St Honore. To the east is the area known in guide books as les Grandes Boulevardes. There we find a brasserie and sit down for our first Paris meal. Afterward, we kept on our walk, heading up to see more temples. Only this time the temples were of les Grandes Magasins of Galeries Lafayette and le Printemps.
Boulevard Haussman was crazy busy with people like you’d expect to see in San Francisco’s Union Square or on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, or on 5th Avenue in New York just before Christmas. Parisian shoppers are serious about celebrating the holiday. It’s just a myth that the holiday is no big thing. By this time, we were starting to feel the effects of traveling, so we climbed the escalators in Printemps’ home store that houses cosmetics on the main floor (they have three buildings, as does Galeries Lafayette) so that we could take in the city from the glass enclosed cafe on the roof. It’s a marvelous way to take in Paris: to get a sense of place, to get a sense of scale, and to get a sense of the splendor that can only be found in Paris.
Friday we did something quite touristy: we took a double-decker bus ride. The good thing about this notion is that you can get on and off all day long, as you like. The bad things about this concept are that the buses run infrequently, and they don’t operate in the evening. We did get around a bit until we decided to exit at the Arc de Triomphe. We bought our billets and climed to the top to see truly triumphant views of the City of Lights. Not only was it a magical experience, but it’s one that makes you marvel at the ability people had to create such architecture when it was created. Climbing is not for the faint of heart, but if you can handle all of the steps, it’s well worth the trip — up and down.
We had a nice lunch in a cafe in the 16th Arr, near the Arc and then walked down to the Trocadero area for renowned views of the Eiffel Tower. We walked because there was no bus! Of course, just was we arrived at Trocadero, there came — and went– the bus! So we ‘killed’ time at a beautiful cemetery perched atop a sloped hill and saw how a few fortunate Parisians get to spend eternity. We managed to pick up the next bus and tooled around to the Eiffel Tower and then on to Les Invalides. We wanted to see Napolean’s tomb, but because we arrived a bit late, the idea was a bust. Of course, we had to wait for the bus, so we hung out at the museum cafe to kill some more time. We do not recommend this bus idea! Nonetheless, we took the bus to Place de la Concorde and exited at Rue Royale, where we walked past gorgeous shops, including an over-the-top florist, and down St Honore to Rue de Castiglione and back to our home sweet hotel.
Friday night we took ourselves on one of our many unguided walks, found dinner, and back to look at all of the Christmas windows on Boulevard Haussman. Parisians call the act of checking out all of the windows as ‘window-licking’ and if you can see our tongues through our photographs, then you can tell that they were wagging!
Our first two days were off to a great start with gorgeous sights, gorgeous people (of course that includes Kevin and me), and the promise of more great days to come…