Madrid, Spain to Paris, France
I woke up, did my last load of laundry for a while, packed my bags, and boarded the bus for the airport. At the airport, my bags were too heavy, so I had to pay a fee, but what do you do when you’ve got all your stuff with you and you’re on your way to Paris.
Our flight took off about 40 minutes late, so we arrived a good half hour after planned. We picked up our luggage and bussed to our hotel: Novotel in La Defense, the very last stop on metro line yellow one, and (we were to learn later) technically not within Paris proper.
The first adventure of the day was discovering that I had someone I didn’t know for a roomate, and that the hotel rooms had a single king size bed, so we would be sharing.
I found Alison, and we were starving since the airline didn’t serve vegetarian meals, so we headed out to find some grub.
We took the Metro, and ended up next to a mother and her daughter. The little girl asked us, “Are you Americans?” and before we could answer, the mother said, “Isn’t it obvious?” (!!!)
Ali and I got off the Metro at the CDG exit (not the airport, but the exit) and when we walked up the stairs to street level, we were instantly rewarded with a view of the Arc de Triomphe. We walked around looking for a cafe, and we ran into Bryan, Paula, and Lindsay. (Weird how I keep running into people I know in such large cities. I *never* randomly run into people I know back in Tampa!)
We found a cafe and ordered some food and some water. We downed the first carafe in no time, and I taught Alison how to say “more water, please” so she could ask for it when the waiter returned. (She cracked me up by repeating it over and over.)
Once we sated our hunger a bit (I got salad and 4 fresh cheeses, none of which I recognized, all of which were good) we explored the Arc de Triomphe and had fun trying to find the perfect spot for a photograph.
All this photography worked up an appetite (yes, *again*) and we realized what we REALLY needed were some crepes. We found outdoor seating at a cafe on Champs Elysees and ordered up the most delicious crepes I’ve ever had. They were topped with ice cream and chocolate syrup! (Probably Nutella–Paris is huge on Nutella.)
Something funny: there are lots of ads in the metro stops for McDonald’s, but here it’s called McDo.