Boarding my Air France flight was a mess – couldn’t believe how many people try to pre-board before pre-boarding is called! No orderly line up & a hodge podge of people in a rush to get on the plane. Boarding was delayed 10 minutes, take off delayed at least ½ hr due to tech difficulties with the meal heating equipment. Impressive jet, comfortable, own personal tv with free headphones, choice of 12 movies, some tv shows, games, music, etc. Best airline food I ever had – choice of 2 main dishes, free wine, 2 desserts, delicious camembert cheese & baguette. Couldn’t sleep a wink on the plane, as I never sleep before midnight anyways, which is when I arrived in Paris our time (6 am their time) – we arrived on time despite delayed departure, so fatigue only hit me when landing. Plus I had a kid right in front of me who coughed nonstop the whole flight! Crew members bustling about the whole time, very active flight. Didn’t feel turbulence since we were at such a high altitude. I watched “Love & Other Disasters” (sucked!) & “Bridge to Taribithia” (I bawled!). We were fed a second meal about an hour before landing (‘breakfast’!) so it felt like we were always eating or being disturbed.
Shawn told me to expect him around 9-9:30 only as he was going to travel to the airport by metro, which only starts running at around 7:30 am on wkends, and he lives about 2 hrs away from CDG airport. But, since my plane ended up landing in another terminal (way at the other end of the airport from where I was supposed to land!) & I couldn’t communicate that to him, & no one told him that at the airport when he asked at first, he ended up finding me only at 10AM, just about when I was getting sufficiently worried! Our reunion was actually a little bit awkward, it was surreal seeing my husband face to face after being apart from him in for 6 weeks! We soon readjusted to each other on the train & metro ride back to his place on Republique in the 11e arrondissement (district).
After struggling up the many, many flights of stairs to Shawn’s appt for the first time (top pic is view from his balcony!), I marveled how cute Shawn’s apartment is, and how cute he is with the way he has his place set up. He explained how his clothes washer turned out to be a combo dryer as well, and I later found out that his stove/oven has a tiny 1-rack dishwasher attached to the bottom of it! After hazily learning how to use the shower (heated by gas, so you have to get the knob positioned just right, or you either burn or freeze!) and freshening up the best I could, we headed out to get a late lunch, since we were both starving. We settled on a nearby place called Café Charbon & each chose a really tasty dish consisting of chicken breast chunks in a fragrant sauce with pine nuts & jasmine rice, and a mellow-bodied house red wine.
We then went to l’arc de Triomphe & climbed the 284 stairs (don’t forget, after over a day of no sleep for me!) & took many photos of the gorgeous view of the city & the Eiffel Tower. The experience was kind of a joyful blur for me, due to the jetlag & the excitement of being there, I guess!
We then walked the Champs d’Elysees (until the end!) and I was running out of steam fast. We decided on a local Thai restaurant Shawn has had a few meals at called Phu Ket for dinner & we ordered a combo menu for 2. The starter dish was supposed to be a cold calamari salad, but the calamari looked suspiciously like beef strips. We didn’t have the heart to complain & it was good so we ate it anyway. Our meal also consisted of a duck in sauce dish & chicken skewers – all in all, delicious! We headed home, downloaded our pix of the day & I managed to hit the sack somewhere around 11pm (longer than I had expected to stay up on my 1st day! But, I had to follow Shawn’s jet lag elimination/reduction regimen that he swears by – stay up as long as u can on arrival day, drink lots of water, then sleep 12 hrs). Which I did!
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