Paris!

We left NY last night in a torrential rain storm!  You can already feel like you're in France at JFK as everyone speaks French in the Air France terminal!  As always, David fell asleep almost immediately while I tossed and turned, worrying about the turbulence.  I finally got some sleep after a pretty disgusting airplane meal.

Waiting for our baggage

We arrived in Paris to overcast skies and threatened rain.  We took the train to the subway and found our stop quickly.  The address I had down for our rental apartment was 75001 Rue St. Honore.  We found the street, but all the building numbers were in the low hundreds.  After walking several blocks, we finally stopped in a hotel only to be told that 75001 is the ZIP CODE!!  Fortunately, I had a cell phone and a number but when I called the landlord I got voice mail.  I left a message and got a text back quickly.  Then I called the customer service number for the company that arranged the apartment for us.  They took my information and promised to call back in five minutes.  We are still waiting.  Lucky for us, a bellhop from the hotel we stopped in came to see if we needed help.  I received another text with lots of information - all in French - which he translated.  He also spoke to the landlord or her representative when they called back a minute later.  We got the correct address and met the representative at the building.   The apartment is quite small but clean and had everything we needed. 

Inside the apartment

We dropped our stuff and headed out the door for the Louvre.  The location of this apartment is absolutely perfect!  We are within walking distance of almost every sight you'd want to see in Paris!  We got to the Louvre and followed the Rick Steve's Paris book which has a self guided tour of the museum! 

Inside the Louvre

Copycat!

Spectacular ceiling

 Mona Lisa, of course.  It is a fairly small painting on a big wall with lots of people standing around taking pictures.

Venus de Milo

We spent a couple of hours there but then we got pretty hungry so we left to have lunch.  When we walked out of the Louvre, there was some kind of protest march going on  but we had no idea what they were talking about!

Protestors

We came back to the apartment for a few minutes, and we both lay down - big mistake!!  It was so hard to get up again!  I actually fell asleep at the table during lunch for a few minutes!  After lunch, the plan was to go to Notre Dame for a while and then finish up at the Louvre which is open late today.  We started walking to Notre Dame but it was farther than we thought and raining pretty hard, so we went back to the Louvre.  Now we're back at the apartment and someone is napping.  I'll give you a hint, it isn't me!