Paris: Day One, Sunday

My hope this week is to be able to share my Parisian excursion with you on the corresponding day of the week that I was there, so I'm starting with Sunday. We departed Dulles airport in Washington D.C. at 4:45 on Saturday afternoon (May 5) and arrived in Paris at the Charles de Gaulle airport at 6:00 Sunday morning. Admittedly, I am not crazy about flying, so I was nervous about the 7.5 hour-long flight; however, I can happily report that it was the best flight I've ever been on! J. and I rode Air France's Airbus (the double-decker plane), and it rocked. We also befriended a wonderful flight attendant, who I affectionately named Jean-Pierre, and he was a very pleasant fellow who treated us very well throughout the duration of our flight. 

After a nap and a shower at our hotel, I felt like a new woman and was ready to set out exploring Paris. We stayed on Rue du Penthievre the entire trip, and it was a lovely little street. Our first day schlepping around Paris was my most memorable day there. I kept walking around mesmerized by everything, the smells, the sounds, the sheer beauty of it all.

Anyway, we walked along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, which was absolutely gorgeous, and we had the first of what would become part of our daily regimen, a cafe au lait that changed my life. The Croque-monsieur, while delicious, wasn't a life-changer, but one of my favorite things about the salads I ate was the spicy mustard vinaigrette (it was on every salad I ate in France).  

Afterward, we headed straight for the Eiffel Tower with many stops along the way to take pictures of everything in between. I kept touching buildings to make sure I was really there.

After having a photo shoot at the Eiffel Tower, we had some French onion soup and a glass of Bordeaux and decided to head on back to the hotel. While walking back, we ran into some post-election celebrating on a bridge going across the Seine along with a slew of police cars. At the time, we didn't know that the results from the presidential election had just come out, so it was a little alarming to see riot-esque groups of people as well as passengers hanging out of moving cars shouting and waving along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees. As soon as we realized how jovial everyone was, it was very fun. Those were pretty much the highlights from the first day, and I was exhausted because of the 6 hour time difference. More tomorrow!