Paris in a Bottle

So that's right, the title of this blog is "Paris in a Bottle." Why? I'll tell you. There's an old French saying that roughly translates to "With ifs and buts, you could put Paris in a bottle." The closest saying we have in English is probably, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." So the title of this blog is to remind myself that I'm here because I'm done wishing, so I'm actually in Paris. If you want to know the story of my flight and my first two days, read on. If you're bored, then don't. I won't be offended. In fact, I won't even know. So my flights? Yes, I left from Minneapolis/St. Paul on September 1st and had a layover in Chicago O'Hare. From Chicago I flew directly to Paris (after about an hour's delay because of airplane maintenance of some such thing).

It was a long flight, and I was seated next to a French couple who were extremely concerned with constantly being attached at the mouth. I felt awkward. There was also a little boy a row behind and a few seats over from me. We played with my pillow/snow leopard. His parents were impressed with my ability to keep him quiet. I was just tired.

Both of my bags arrived at the same time as I did, which was a major surprise. People like to lose my bags. They like to lose my bags A LOT. I somehow managed to put on both backpacks and the messenger bag and grab the rolling suitcases and get it
-on the RER (a BIG subway train),
-off the RER, down the stairs,
-up the stairs,
-down the stairs,
-on the Metro (smaller subway train),
-off the Metro,
-up the stairs,
-up more stairs,
-down the stairs,
-back on the Metro,
-off the Metro,
-up the stairs,
-up LOTS of stairs,
and to the hostel to check in.

Then I brought my luggage down more stairs to the luggage storage room because the rooms are closed from 10am to 4 pm for cleaning. This is not uncommon... just mildly inconvenient. I locked up my bags and was satisfied with the security. I wandered around Paris and discovered I was very close to La Bastille:

Fabulous.

Now I'm out of time on the computer, so I gotta go!

A bientôt!