First of all, let me give thanks to all of you who gave me tons of info about my trip while I lurked and read here. It helped *immensely*. I found an awesome deal with United Vacations.com for 7 nights and returns tickets from Albuquerque and stayed at the K+K Hotel Cayre in the 7th. Very very hospitable, lovely hotel. Super nice people. Can%26#39;t recommend them highly enough!!
Since this was our very first trip to Paris, we did all the sights. Louvre, Orsay, Orangerie, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame cathedral, etc etc etc. But really, for me it was the beauty and atmosphere of the entire city that I found the most enchanting. It rained quite a bit while we were there (Nov 17-25) and I didn%26#39;t care a bit. We walked for *miles* and loved it.
The food! OMG. I have never eaten so much fabulous pastry. It breaks my heart now to get up and only see my usual plate of fruit and cottage cheese now that we are home again. And the coffee. Sigh. I had a slice of lemon tart in a little cafe very near the Picasso museum that might change my life forever....
A definite huge high rating to the restaurant %26quot;Petite Pontoise%26quot; for their fabulous but simple cooking, extremely friendly staff, and adorable restaurant. We ate there twice, and loved every second of it.
We travelled around by metro. We took the AirFrance bus from the airport and transferred to the metro at Gare Montparnasse. No problems, everything very timely. There is nothing scary about this option at all! I saw more patisseries on the drive in to Paris than I have seen in a dozen years of living here....
The one and only bizarre and sour note was on our way home, the passport control person at the airport grilled us for about 30 minutes on our passports and green cards (we have Canadian passports and are legal US residents) but she wanted to know where we worked, see business cards (of couse being on vacation we didn%26#39;t have any! so, word to the wise, carry a few of those along!) and how did we pay for the trip and where did we get the money, etc. Of course having paid through an internet travel service, we didn%26#39;t get a specific receipt from the hotel, so we couldn%26#39;t *prove* that we had been there the whole time, either. It was very stupid and bizarre, and I%26#39;m not sure what any of it proved, but after taking all of our documents away and consulting with her supervisor for another 10 minutes or so, we were finally allowed to check in. The lineup for United Airlines was quite long and slow (although most of the slowness had to do with passport control, it seems) and once we were through it was fine. Terminal 1 could use some updating from the looks of it.
Anyway, I can%26#39;t wait to return to Paris some time in the future. We have a lot of other destinations around the world to get to, so I don%26#39;t know when it will be, but maybe next time we have a week off and nowhere to go, it will come to the top of the list again.....
Again, I thank all of you that provided info and help, although you didn%26#39;t know it at the time!
MagieNoire
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Thanks for the interesting report!
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I can understand how difficult it is to eat fruit and cottage cheese after the delicious pastry you had in Paris. No comparison!
It%26#39;s good to hear how you didn%26#39;t let the rain prevent you from walking a lot.
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%26gt;%26gt;%26gt;The food! OMG. I have never eaten so much fabulous pastry. It breaks my heart now to get up and only see my usual plate of fruit and cottage cheese now that we are home again. And the coffee. Sigh. I had a slice of lemon tart in a little cafe very near the Picasso museum that might change my life forever....%26lt;%26lt;%26lt;%26lt;
And isn%26#39;t this exactly how it should be ? That we can go back home with tears spraying out of our eyes realizing that we are now leaving all that wonderful pastry and food and wine and chocolate and icecream behind - and that it will be SOOOO long before we will have any of it again. The dull ordinary day with cottage cheese, celery and tapwater is waiting - and we can sit by our computer and heave deep sighs tormenting ourselves with photos like these:
http://www.letriomphe.net/tartes.htm
plaisirgourmand.perso.cegetel.net/photo7.html
laduree.fr/public_fr/produits/patisseries/pa…
AND we can plan for another trip, can%26#39;t we ??
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