I LOVE PARIS

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Sitting at the COS airport. Things are pretty FUBAR with people trying to board flights and weather problems somewhere...Ithink Dallas but also making connecting flights to Denver. I'm glad we've got a 3 1/2 hour layover in Chicago...we might need it. Keeping my fiingers crossed.

Oh and thanks Viking. We were pre-screnned and we didn't have to take out all our elecltronics or TAKE OUR SHOES OFF. It was a good morning.

Our flight to Chicago was on time and uneventful except for the fact that we were flying in a tiny tin can with tiny seats. It was uncomfortable but we arrived in Chicago much faster than I expected. Layover at O'Hare was about 4 hours. We had lunch and bought wifi that should last for the whole trip. Not sure if it will work in Paris but it will work in 11 days when we return home.

I am writing this as we are leaving Canada and are out over the Atlantic. We've had dinner...it's been a really long time since I had an inflight meal and it hasn't improved. Lucky for me, I was hungry. The seats on this plane are almost as uncomfortable as the ones in the puddle jumper. No wonder people pay big bucks for business and 1st class.

This plane has tiny 5" screens with movies, tv shows, etc. I watched "Way Way Back" or something like that and the last episode of "the Office". I didn't sleep any more than an hour it was so damned cramped and call kept twitching everyy time I'd start to fall asleep.

I'm going to read for a little while and then try to sleep. It's only 8:30 by my clock from home and 7 hours later in Paris. We will be arriving around 9 a.m. which is about 2 a.m. in my internal clock. We'll see how the jet lag goes. It will help a lot if I am able to sleep a little.

That's it for now.

11:00 a.m. Paris time...something like 4:00 a.m. Sherrie time- Sitting in the hotel waiting until we can get our room at 3:00. We are very tired. Paris is exactly like I thought it would be...we went walk-about and stopped at a little bistro for cafe creme (some of my very fluent French) and a chocolate croissant. Very Parisian. I've pictured myself doing exactly that. We are right in the middle of the city center. Right now I'm so tired I can hardly think.

2 and a half more hours before we get our room. I'm in Paris and all I want to sleeeeep.

Talked to several Viking refugees also hold up in the lobby and finally got our room keys at about 2:30. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I vaguely remember Cal bandaging my knee when I did a near face-plant on the moving sidewalk. This one up and down hills and caught me by surprise and I managed to save my face but sacraficed my knee. Now I will have matching skinned knee scars; one from last year slipping on the ice and now this one doing my graceful thing at Charles deGalle airport. Klassy. I woke up from my nap and I recovered enough to go get something to eat at about 6. The little bistro restaurant at this hotel is called Jazz. I wanted something light and ordered a goat cheese salad with dried apricots and walnuts. It was delicious. For dessert Cal and I shared a creme bruleè and then we walked down the street for coffee at our new favorite bistro. There is a big high-end mall right across the street from our hotel so we wandered around in there, decided we couldn't afford anything...Rolex, Hugo Boss, Burberry...you get the gist and went back to our hotel for the night.

I've had so many people tell me that going to Paris is a must on anyone's bucket list. I've always been kind of meh about it but decided that this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up and I'm very glad I did. This city is so vibrant and exactly like I thought it would be. The traffic is completely insane. There are all these tree lined streets and very old apartments, very tiny and expensive.

I've noticed that people dress up more here then they do in Colorado Springs but hey, it's Colorado Springs. I would guess that most big European cities are more formal than say COS or Denver or even Dallas. Men in suits and women dressed professionally. It's a different world. I will try to post some pictures tomorrow.

Tomorrow we tour the city in the morning and I'm hoping to go to the Musee d"Orsay tomorrow afternoon.

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Photos

Le Meridien Etoile - Hotel Paris
Lobby. Very familiar with this place since we had a FOUR HOUR WAIT FOR OUR ROO!

View from our window
Hotel & Convention Center across the street from our Hotel. There was a whole high-end mall in this building.

Our Room
at the end of the universe. We couldn't been farther away from the elevator unless we had been in another room.