Nous arrivons!

It's 7:00 pm in Paris. I have no idea what time it is in my body. It feels like the day started with us getting ready to go to the airport, but that of course was yesterday. The non-stop flight was so smooth and quick that we hardly had the sense of time passing. Certainly not the sense of getting any sleep. And then we were in Paris.

Which is incredible, by the way. Our apartment is small, and I am large. But to be able to get any real estate at all in this part of town is unbelievable. We are less than a minute's brisk walk from the Seine, right in the heart of the Left Bank.

 The neighborhood is vibrant, filled with restaurants and eateries of every description (we sampled some Lebanese fare this afternoon), bookstores, galleries, and shops. I even found a big and tall men's store.



After settling in and getting something to eat, we walked over to the island and visited Sainte Chapelle, something we never got to last time we were here. Built by St. Louis in the 1230s and 1240s, it is a triumph of late Gothic engineering, and seems to be made of glass.

We then walked over to Notre Dame, went in, and just sat there and marveled. After a while we went outside and had a crepe with Nutella and marveled some more. What a place.

FYI, Paris is about as beautiful in October as she gets. Most of the leaves haven't started to change, so we still have that to look forward to. The flowers are blooming like winter is never going to come, especially the roses.


Very tired. More tomorrow.