Back! (AKA, Paris 1.1)

The whirlwind known as early Spring is finally winding down.  I hope.  April and May felt more like half a year than a couple of months.  And I'd have sworn our trip to Paris lasted at least 3 weeks, instead of the 7 days spent wandering, shopping, eating, and drinking.

Now that I'm back on the radar, it's time to share some of my favorite images!  For both your and my sanity, it will not be like the overwhelming posts of trips past (what, your eyeballs can't deal with 100 photos in a row?).  While in Paris, I was able to get free Wi-Fi in the evening and spent that small window of internet access posting 3 pictures per night.

So, I'll do the same here, expanding to no more than 5 images per post.  We'll start chronologically for the first few rounds and see how that goes.  While this blog is typically shopping-focused, it feels impossible to convey my time in the City of Light without including the full array of activities, so you'll see some food, architecture, and general street scenes.  And yes, I did snap pics of various stores (when I could, with Colette being the exception - boy, were they on top of shutting down the shutterbugs, security men lining the floors and all).

Feel free to comment on what you see - maybe you walked along the same quai, sipped a glass of rosé in that very comptoir, or just like the darn photo.


Let our edited journey begin...  :)

We have a tradition of kicking off each vacation with a nice cocktail from Surdyk's Flights, oh so conveniently located at MSP airport.

It's amazing how the architecture alone can tell you that you're in a different country.  Here, we're fresh out of the airport and in line for a weeklong Metro pass (as in the Paris subway system, which we used countless times and enjoyed immensely).  I had to snap the apartment that towered above us like a big concrete linebacker.

After navigating through the RER and Metro, pulling our luggage up and down escalators and stairs (note to my architecture pals, Paris - and I suspect most of Europe - is an ADA nightmare), we popped out of our subway stop to be enveloped in brilliant sunshine, blue skies, and the new, melodic trill of the French language.  This is the view from our apartment.  J'aime!

Another view down the street.  

We were fairly jetlagged by the time we reached our destination, a very lovely apartment shared with my parents in the 7th arrondissement (district).  After a decidedly heavy lunch of boeuf and red wine at a nearby restaurant, I needed a rare nap, thanks to my failure in getting any sleep on the plane and a body clock that had been catapulted from the middle of the night to noon.

Nap time is a good place to stop for now.  I'll be back shortly with some images from our first evening in Paris.

Au revoir!

Images:  my own