Paris Day One

It's been an amazing first day in Paris.  Paris will take over this blog for the next couple weeks, but I will try to keep a foodie twist! 

I got into Paris a little after noon (Paris time) yesterday and navigated the train with a connection to the metro to meet my friend Kim at the Tuileries metro stop.  We then walked to the apartment she's been in for a week and I'm sharing with her for two weeks.  I only slept two hours on the flight over, but did pretty well.  At the apartment I freshened up and then we headed out into the rain for 3 -4 hours to walk and get something eat.  When we came home and I finally went to bed I slept for a glorious 12 1/2 hours.  Yes, the Eiffel Tour is still impressive in the rain.

Today we walked for 8 1/2 hours with very little resting.  A few small bites to eat, but probably less than 1 hour total sitting.  It was a glorious day with only one brief rain shower.  We covered a lot of ground.  In the area of Les Halles, look what I found.  It was like a cooking hardware store!

It had every thing you could want.  You should have seen the collection of rolling pins, whisks, tart pans, and more!  Below you see every possible size of cheesecake rim hanging.

I can only possibly share a small number of the pictures I took today.  Below you can see the ceiling of Saint Merry church.

How cool!  They have whole blocks where only electric cars can park!

On the Ile De La Cite, the island in La Seine that houses Notre-Dame, is a year around flower market.  It was beautiful.

I need to play more with the Panorama feature on my phone.  Isn't this a cool picture of Kim?!!?  We are constantly taking pictures of random very cool buildings. 

This is Saint Jean XXII square behind Notre-Dame et moi.

The flowers are very pretty, especially the tulips right now.  But there are never "just" tulips.

As we headed up toward the La Sorbonne, unknowingly as we thought we were Ile St. Louis, we saw this amazing row of specialty shops.  It is amazing how you get your cheese, meat, bread, chocolates, pastries, fish and more all at individual shops.  It means the variety and quality of what you are buying is exquisite.  Because if that boulangiere's baguette is not up to snuff you can go around the block!

The Patisserie windows are amazing!  We have not gone past window shopping yet, but no doubt that will come soon.

Dinner tonight consisted of two glasses of wine and sharing an appetizer of crusty goat cheese with an endive salad.  They brought the bread and bowl of thinly sliced sausage just because.  The selection of charcuterie (ham, sausages of all different sizes and variety, pate, etc) is amazing here.

And finally the sun was setting on La Seine and Eiffel Tour as we walked home.

Bonsoir!