Off to France and Italy with my students! Arrival and Montmartre

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Bonjour de Paris. We arrived here this morning after a fairly uneventful flight across the Atlantic! Most of us only caught a little bit of shut eye as it was so hot in the cabin and of course there were good movies to choose from. I watched The Iron Lady about Margaret Thatcher and Martin Scorcese's Hugo. The food and service was also great and the students were very well behaved! I even had a lengthy conversation about French politics and the state of the economy with a fellow traveller toute en francais!

Once we arrived in Paris we did a little bus tour into the city via St. Denis and took a stop to see the Eiffel Tower at the Trocadero. Our city guide Karine gave a lot of interesting info about the city. They are about to have the presidential election in France next week so there is a lot of advertisements about the election... this could be a decisive shift for France as a country. It will be interesting to see what happens. On our way into Paris we saw a lot of visible abject poverty of people living in tents under underpasses and in parks... these are clearly the impacts of the economic problems in France.

We are staying near Opera Garnier and not far from Lafayette Shopping Centre. For lunch we had amazing baguette panini sandwiches... I had pont l'eveque and jambon. Delicious!

We are also not far from Montmartre and Sacre Coeur, so we walked up to the Cathedral this afternoon and got a beautiful view of the city. I have been excited about all the wall art and graffiti about and it was beautiful to walk inside the cathedral again. We also walked around Place du Tertre where the artisans are and into the gift shop of the Salvador Dali gallery.

Dinner tonight was in a place called Rich...We had a special potato pie, dijon beef with rice and an apple pastry for dessert. The kids liked the food, but not the entree so much. Went to buy some brie cheese and crackers from the convenience store... it was honestly 1.31 euros for a pointe of brie cheese--if only.

We are now about to head to bed after a long day of travel--but some of us managed to get a game of euchre in first.

Hope you are doing well.

bisous de Paris.

love katy

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