Arriving in Paris!

I decided I kind of like blogging so I am going to give it a shot while I am in Paris with Amy.  Yesterday we arrived at Charles De Gaulle airport; Amy from the US and me from Kyiv. Amy arrived 3 hours before me and we had a plan….she would meet me at the gate but it figures, since I was coming from another country I had to go through the border patrol and I ended up in a different place.  Finally we found each other and off we go to our apartment right next to the Lourve! 

View from our window down to the Lourve

 Once we arrived, we were met by Julia who is the lady who manages the apartment for the owner.  What a lovely lady...not only did she show us the place but she drove us to the place to exchange money….what a wild ride.  People drive CRAZY in Paris.  Unfortunately the place was closed so Julia set off to find us an ATM…by this time, Amy had been traveling over 24 hours so she was exhausted and ready for the car ride to end!!!!  

I have to say this apartment is incredible…it is very centrally located to all the major sites with easy access to the metro and busses.  Literally this apartment has everything; washer-dryer, kitchen with all appliances, wifi, phone where we can call home for free

Living Room

Kitchen

and one bedroom with a huge bed….just to name a few.

Once we got settled, we went off in search of food.  We found a wonderful place down the street with a great selection of vegetarian and vegan food…turns out it was an organic restaurant.  The food was fabulous and the waiter adorable. We had a dessert with some fancy name which I cannot remember but here is a picture!    We of course left a tip and he was so grateful as Parisians don’t tip.

Today we had no plans on the itinerary so we headed off to find a Starbucks…after 4 weeks I was in total withdrawal and there was one with in a ½ mile and yes we walked it! 

Yahhhhooo Venti Mocha!



Amy mapping our day



Next we decided to take in one of the museums on our list, L’Orangie. I am finding out Amy and I are not as good with the map as I assumed we were.  We ended up walking around a long way out of our way to get to the museum basically around the street ;-). 

Since we didn’t have a pass or advance purchase of a ticket, we had to wait in line.  We waited about 30 minutes and entered the museum and bought a museum pass for the next 4 days so we can go to as many as we want as often as we want.  Not sure how many hours of museums I can manage in a day so this will be great to see them as we want to.  This particular museum had murals done by Monet that are lining the walls in two oval rooms designed especially for them.  They were unbelievable…it is hard to imagine the process he went through to paint them.    I was a little disappointed that we could not take pictures anywhere in the museum but I obeyed the rules even though many around me did not.  

After seeing Monet’s work, we headed downstairs and were able to see many more famous artists and a special exhibit of Italian impressionists.  I found a picture on the internet of my favorite piece in the whole museum. 

Song of the Starling by Silvestro Vega

 You cannot imagine the detail on this painting from the sheet music to fabrics on the clothing.  Truly amazing!  We saw paintings from Gaugin, Renoir, Matisse and even Picasso but this painting by Silvestro Lega still sits vividly in my mind.  

By this time we were starving so we headed in search of a restaurant and found a great Italian restaurant….had great food and stopped by the organic restaurant so we could take that crazy dessert back to the apartment for us…

And now we are doing laundry ;-)

Here are a few of the other pics we snapped!