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I'm finally getting around to blogging about my trip... I kept a written travel journal but I also want to have kind of a "recap" here on my site. It'll probably take me months to finish it up though, lol. I guess you'll just have to bear with me. :D Anyway, here goes...

Thurs/Fri, October 12-13: Day 1
Waking up early to get to the airport was hard. Security was easy. Probably because we were heading out of the US instead of coming in. Though Rob was asked to take off his flip flops when we were going through security at SFO. Weird, right? Speaking of weird, I saw the craziest thing at the Chicago O'Hare airport (we changed planes there and it is a NICE airport!). I had to use the restroom so I walked into a stall and immediately noticed that there weren't any toilet seat covers. Then I noticed some sort of sign on the wall with instructions. It said to wave your hand in front of the sensor and a plastic toilet seat cover would be dispensed directly onto the seat. When you're finished, you wave your hand again and the toilet flushes along with the cover. OMG. Has anyone ever seen this?!?

Flights were uneventful. But uncomfortable. It's so hard to sleep on a plane when you have no legroom. I barely got any sleep. One day I'm going to fly first class, damn it. :P We landed, picked up our luggage, and found the taxi line with no problems. Unfortunately, the jet lag was setting in. UGH. We left San Francisco at 9:30 on Thurs morning and arrived in Paris at 8:30 on Fri morning. It seriously felt like I had been awake for 24 hours even though technically our flights were only a total of 13 hours. The taxi ride was looooong. We were heading into Paris during the morning rush so it took a little over an hour cause of the traffic. As we got closer to the city, I started to see glimpses of the Eiffel Tower. SQUEEEEE. That's when it hit me. I was in Paris!!! I had been looking forward to and planning the trip for months and it was finally here. :D Our taxi driver took us around the turnabout at the Arc de Triomphe... that was INSANE. Twelve streets feed into the turnabout and it's pretty much every driver for himself. Anyway, we finally arrived in the Latin Quarter at Hotel Claude Bernard, our home base for the week. It's a really small and charming hotel, centrally-located and has all the basics, including free internet access in the lobby! That was a pleasant surprise. When we checked in, our room wasn't ready (it was only about 10:30am) so we left our bags and headed out to get familiar with our arrondissement. And find some food (airplane food was horrible)!

After walking around aimlessly for awhile, we finally walked into a boulangerie to get a sandwich. We managed to order a Croque Monsieur (a ham sandwich with cheese on top, so good) but it was tough. We know almost no French and coupled with the jet lag, we just weren't very sharp, hehe. After some more walking (this really helped us stay awake and adjust to the time change), we decided we needed coffee and happened to stumble upon the all too familiar Starbucks sign. We HAD to go in, LOL. I got a Tall (Moyen) Mocha, which was completely different than the mochas they serve here in the US. It's not as sweet and chocolate-y so it tastes more like coffee. It was to die for. Too bad it was about twice the cost!

We went back to our hotel since our room was supposed to be ready by this time. It was so we grabbed our luggage and headed to the elevator. WOW. I have *never* seen a smaller elevator. It only fits 2 people at a time. So with our huge suitcases, Rob and I had to take it up to the 5th floor one by one. We arrived at our room, opened the door and found that it wasn't much bigger than the elevator. LOL. We freshened up and unpacked and then decided to do some more walking so we wouldn't be tempted to fall asleep. According to the trusty street map, the Luxembourg Gardens are just a few streets away so we headed in that direction. As we approached, we grabbed a mozarella, tomato, and cheese panini to enjoy in the gardens (YUM -- the bread was so soft and the cheese so flavorful). The flowers were still in bloom so the garden and its fountains were absolutely breathtaking.

We then set out for Boulevard St. Germain to find Monoprix, which is a store that carries grocery and household items. We purchased bottled water, orange juice (I was still a little sick at this point), and miscellaneous snacks for the week. It was now 5pm and we were *exhausted* so we went back to the hotel. We watched CNN for awhile (it was the only channel in English!) and finally went to sleep at 8pm.

Oh man, sounds like it was an exciting adventure from the first.

I remember, my French hotel's elevator was tiny too. It must be a French thing.

Can't wait to read more! Going to look at your pics now.

I'm enjoying hearing all about your trip. I'm hoping to go sometime in the next few years.

Cool first-day review, Kel! Our hotel room was quite big, but like you said our elevator was very very tiny, too, they're just typically French. Can't wait to read about the next day!

Sounds like a very interesting first day. Can't wait to read about the rest of the trip!