Our flight to Paris would leave at 8:40 PM (Toronto time) on Friday and arrive at 10:10 AM (Paris time) on Saturday, due to the 6-hour time difference. With the Air Canada strike just over and the airline trying to book customers who had their flights cancelled, we thought it would be wise to get to the airport early. Uncle Pepe drove us and the check-in process went quite smoothly. We had over 2 hours to spare so we went to get a bite to eat.
There was a Vietnamese restaurant and M3 wanted Banh Mi. There was also Pad Thai and Fried Rice on the menu which suited M2 and me. When it was our turn to order, we found out they were sold out of Bahn Mi, Pad Thai, and Fried Rice! So we just got steamed rice with chicken. M1 got a salad and I got a sandwich from another place and we all just shared.
It was a 7+ hour flight so there was dinner and breakfast on the flight. The food was not great, as usual for airplane food. We tried to sleep to get accustomed to the time change but we just dozed on and off. I watched two movies - Enter the Dragon and Rumble in the Bronx. I chose movies I had seen before so I could fall asleep.
After landing, we took an Uber to the hotel and at the front desk there were mini-croissants and mini-crepes. The girls took some and they were delicious! M1 chose this hotel because it was centrally located relative to the places we wanted to visit. My first impression of the streets and buildings in Paris was that everything was quite narrow. Our hotel was no exception. From the outside, you could barely tell it was a hotel. The staircase was spiral to save space and the elevator could only fit two people with luggage.
For lunch we wanted to check out the marketplace at the Printemps shopping centre. There were several restaurants - kind of like an upscale food court. The first restaurant we passed by, the owner stopped us and agressively showed us the food choices at his restaurant. Before we knew what hit us, we had ordered pastas and sandwiches already. This guy was good!
After lunch we went to the Metro station to try to and buy a transit pass for the week. But we couldn't get them loaded on our phones without a phone number. We thought maybe we needed a Paris number so we used the hotel phone number but that didn't work either. So we just left and decided we would buy the tickets as needed.
We passed by a bakery (called Paul's Bakery) and bought breakfast for tomorrow - croissants and a baguette. Then we went back to the hotel to rest because we were tired from not being able to sleep on the plane.
For dinner, we went to a Japanese restaurant near the hotel. The waiter/owner could only speak French and Mandarin but we somehow managed to order. I got meat skewers with rice, M1 got a shrimp tempura roll, M2 got udon, and M3 got a breaded cutlet. The taste is not much different than Markham/Toronto.
After dinner, we went back to the hotel and decided to sleep early to get accustomed to the time difference. I would say our first day was very pleasant and relaxing - no rush to do anything really, just unwind and look forward to the week of touring ahead.
Big Oh
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