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Mom drove us to Newark, NJ airport at midday Monday. As soon as we entered the terminal, I was so glad we decided to carry on. The line to check bags weaved all around the building! We waltzed on by the queue and into a short security line. We were through within 20 minutes. It would have been shorter accept that a TSA official flagged Robarn for "inconsistent density patterns" in his left shoe. We're still not exactly sure what that means, but a second scanning confirmed that Robarn was safe to fly.
Our Continental flight to Munich left on time and was packed! Luckily, the attendants were really friendly and cheerful. Fun fact - Germans really like seltzer water; the crew ran out of the yummy, bubbly drink somewhere over the Atlantic. Of course, I was not really able to sleep on the red eye flight. Instead, I occupied myself with reading a Political Science journal and the in-flight entertainment. Our touch-down was perfect - the best landing I've ever experienced. I didn't even know we had landed!
After filing off the plane, we were quickly ushered through Customs and then went through security again to get to
Robarn and Fountain
This is near the Luxemborg Garden. I had just dropped the camera (yeah, it was the first time on the trip that I even touched it, and I dropped it!). our Lufthansa gate for our short flight to Paris. The Munich airport is really quite amazing. It is sleek, modern, and makes excellent use of natural light. Lufthansa has kiosks set up throughout their boarding area with free coffee products. We had a few espresso-based drinks and had new energy for the next part of our journey. Our short flight was on time and uneventful accept that I had tomato juice and Robarn was surprised that for all these years he didn't know how much I like the delicious drink.
At Charles de Gaulle (CDG), we disembarked and followed the signs for the RER for the final leg of our journey. The RER is the Paris area's commuter rail system. For those of you reading in the Philadelphia area, the Metro is like the Philly subway and the RER is like SEPTA. Anyway, a good travel tip is that you can buy your RER tickets at information desks in CDG. One of my francophile professors had warned me that if you go to the RER station, you often have to stand in a long line to pay by credit card or have exact change in coin to use the
Some Building
When you first get to Paris, you want to take pictures of everything. You soon realize, though, that it would take you years to photograph every beautiful building here. automated kiosk. Since an RER ticket is 8,50 euro, most people don't have that much in coin. By buying our ticket at the info desk, we avoided the long lines (and bought a pack of 10 metro tickets at the same time).
We took the airport monorail to the RER station and waited for the express train. About 30 minutes later, we had arrived at our hotel, The Marriott Rive Gauche (Left Bank). We booked our hotels through Priceline.com (and bid on our daily rate, which saved us a bunch of money), so we were both a little concerned that we'd arrive at a dive. We were pleasantly surprised. The Marriott is located on the border of the 13th and 14th, in a nice quiet and safe neighborhood. The room was decent, though the ceilings low and the bathroom just a bit dingy. However, the price and the location more than made up for any negatives.
After a quick shower, we were out the door. We walked to the Luxemborg Gardens, grabbed lunch on the street at a sandwich shop, saw the Sorbonne and the Pantheon, and continued to just explore the city. It was nice to walk
Bullet Marks
A reminder of the destruction the city has experienced over the years. after a long flight and we got to sort of get our bearings as we talked about our list of sightseeing priorities. After walking around Notra Dame, we continued up a main street before stopping for an espresso at a cute cafe. We finished the evening with an early dinner at a quaint corner cafe a couple blocks from our hotel. We shared red wine, salmon, and a goat cheese salad - it was all deliciously simple. Back at the hotel, we closed the blackout screen and collapsed in our bed exhausted.
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