Day 2 - Arrive in Paris, Notre Dame

After landing and making our way through baggage claim and Passport security, we faced the first challenge of the day. The city of Paris was in the grips of a transportation strike, the second in a month. This strike had started on Tuesday, and it was now Saturday, with no signs of it ending. The original plan was to take the RER B train to Luxembourg station, about 2 blocks from our hotel. I had done some research and there were a few options for us, taxi (55 Euros) or bus. We found the Air France bus station and bought tickets (14Euros each). The bus was already there and was being loaded, so we rushed to get our stuff on and climb aboard. They loaded the luggage of the man behind us, but we were the last two allowed on the bus. They unloaded the man's luggage and he had to wait for the next bus.

The busride into the city was a little crazy, since so many more people were forced to drive instead of using public transportation. After about 45 minutes, we arrived at the Gare Montparnasse train station. We had been told that we could take a taxi from the station to our hotel. We double checked in the station that the Metro was not running (it was not) and decided to look for a taxi stand. After wandering around for a few minutes, we figured that we would start walking towards the hotel and look for taxis on the way. The walk took us through the streets of Paris and Luxembourg Gardens. After walking a mile, dragging our bags behind us, we arrived at the Hotel Cluny Sorbonne, in the Latin Quartier. We checked in, dropped our stuff off and went back out into the streets. It was about 1 PM.

We decided to walk the streets of the Latin Quartier, which was on my planned list of things to do. The Latin Quartier has tons of restaurants and shops. I have also just learned from a quick hit on Wikipedia that it was named the Latin Quartier after the Latin language that was spoken at the universities there in the Middle Ages. Thanks Internet!

I used my spidey sense to remember where the best creperie in town was from my previous stint in Paris. I just wandered around, I believe with my hands out- although I have no idea how this helped- and would turn down this street or that, until I found where the crepe cart used to be. It was no longer there, but a permanent installation was in its place. We had our first of many crepes, both of us getting ham, egg and cheese. Delicious!

We decided to head down to Notre Dame, which is located on Ile de la Cite, the larger of the two island in the Seine that were the original heart of the city. It's a beautiful building and has a larger open square in front of it that allows you to see it from afar and get good pictures of it. In the Middle Ages, small, shack-like homes surrounded Notre Dame and filled this square. We toured the inside and walked around the garden behind it. We decided against paying to go up in the tower.

Instead, we headed off of the Ile to the left bank of the river. We walked through the section of town that I had stayed in when I did my 6 week summer study abroad in college. We walked to Hotel de Sully and the Place des Vosges, which is the oldest square in Paris. We stayed for a minute, then turned around and began our walk back to the hotel. We stopped by the grocery store and picked up a few bottles of wine. As we walked back across the bridge toward the hotel, we had this very French moment. We got back to the hotel at around 6:30PM, laid down on the bed for a second and passed out. I woke up at 10Pm and was so confused as to how it was 10AM and still dark outside. I figured the time difference out, woke Larry up and we decided that we should eat dinner. We headed out to Le Bistrot 30', where we had Burgundy Beef stew and a bottle of Beaujolis Nouveau, which is a bottled version of the 2007 new Beaujolis wine. They celebrate the release of this wine with a week long festival, which had been the week before we got there, so Beaujolis Nouveau was everywhere.

We left the restaurant and headed back to "our" creperie. I had a Nutella and banana crepe, which is artery-clogging bliss and Larry had one with sugar and lemon juice, which is refreshing and tasty. We went back to the hotel and crashed.