Paris - August 27-31, 2018

The start of our five week Europe trip.  We flew from Denver to Charlotte, NC, had a four hour layover in Charlotte before flying on to Paris that evening.  An 8 hour time difference means we left Denver at 7 AM (got up at 4 AM), and arrived in Paris at 7 AM the next day.  Took the RER train and Metro to our airbnb apartment in the Marais District.  We could check in at noon, which was fortunate, but still had to wait around in a park for a couple of hours before noon arrived and Jean - Pierre let us in and gave us an orientation to the place and Paris.   We took a nap, shopped for some food, made dinner and then crashed again...a little tougher jet lag this time...our flight was basically in the afternoon and evening Denver time, so we weren't all that tired then, but by the time we were in Paris it was night time biologically.  Anyway, not counting that first day, we had three full days in Paris, and we managed to catch many of the "biggies" while walking around 40 miles in those three days.  Fairly amazing even by our standards.  The "biggies we bagged" were the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Champ d'Elyse, the Louvre, and Saint Chapelle church.  We also saw the Presidential complex, the Place des Voges, toured Victor Hugo's home, and spent a long time at Shakespeare and Company, a left bank bookstore where Hemingway, et. al. used to hang out.  And of course we walked the Parisian streets for hours, so we felt we had a great feel for this beautiful city.  Donna read that Paris is ten times more densely populated than New York City.  There were a lot of people to be sure, but as always, away from the major tourist spots, it felt very manageable.  Paris has an outstanding metro system with stops everywhere, but since we are crazy walkers, we only used it once other than coming and going from the airport.  Contrary to their reputation, we found the Parisians to be friendly and most helpful...we had several instances where locals offered to help us with directions or using the metro ticket machine, etc. (although it is actually pretty straight forward, and helpfully offers English as a language choice).  Although I always say I prefer the countryside (which I still do), I really enjoy exploring these big cities with Donna...not something I'd do on my own though.  So let's see Paris.