Bonjour from Paris (Family Part 2)

Well, it's been an exciting couple days for the Chinsky family here, and although I wasn't planning on blogging mid-Paris trip, I really have to keep track of what's happened so far.  I apologize for lack of pictures...I'll add them later when I have a camera-computer cord.

First, a quick recap of the rest of the Prague portion of family vacation, which was great.  Tuesday, I met up with my family in the morning at their hotel and took them to Rembrandt Donuts, a local bakery chain in Prague that has awesome pastries, sandwiches, and general baked goods, without any English.  So, it's legit, and they loved it.  Dad got a warm apple pastry of some sort, which I know he will remember as the best food of the trip. 

After Rembrandt, I took them around Wenceslas Square for a while, looking a lot, shopping a little, and enjoying the scenes.  We had to stop and get sausages for lunch of course, as we continued eating our way through Prague.  Then, we walked around the Havel Market for a few minutes on our way to explore Prague 3 a little bit.  I wanted to show them the tv tower (also known as the Baby Tower for the statues of babies placed crawling up the tower to make it more interesting/ less ugly).

 On the left, the tower with the babies crawling up; on the right, Daniel, Sara, and I with Prague behind us.

 Dad, Mom, and Grandpa with the Old Town of Prague and Prague Castle in the background.

The views from the top were awesome.  The day was really clear, so we saw all around Prague, a panoramic view I would recommend to anyone who visits.  I headed back to class, and later that night we ate at another nicer place in Prague called Z Vatisi.  It was delicious, and mom and I got the wine-pairing with our meal so it was fun to try.

Wednesday, I pretty much had class all day, so the family wandered around for a while.  We all went out to dinner with my flatmates at a local Czech micro-brewery called Pivovarsky Dum (meaning Beer _____ House - I don't know what the middle part is).  We tried many different flavors of beers from nettle to coffee to sour apple, to more traditional flavors like light and dark and wheat.  It was nice to be together with everyone.

 My flatmates and the different beer flavors at Pivovarsky Dum.

That brings me to today, Paris, day 1.  Paris is a really cool city.  It is about the same size as Berlin, but it doesn't feel anything like it.  Most Americans perceive the French in a certain way, as slightly arrogant and kind of rude and impatient towards tourists who don't speak French.  Today proved some of that true and some of that false.

The flight to Paris was fine, more or less.  There were some issues with Daniel's ticket, but they were all resolved.  I met a really nice Czech guy on the plane, who sat in my row.  He was flying to Paris on business, and was extremely talkative for a Czech person.  We talked about all sorts of things, from school to sports to traveling, to differences between cultures and countries.  It was pretty interesting to listen to him, and his English was good for never having traveled to the U.S.  In the end, he even gave me his card and told me that he usually came to Prague from his home in the southern CZ during the week, so we could get a beer or something.  It was definitely an unusual experience for me as far as meeting Czechs go.  I think he was as curious about meeting an American as I was about meeting a Czech person.

We recovered our luggage, eventually found our ride to our Parisien Apartment, and were off.  The driver was also friendly, and explained what we were looking at as we passed the main Paris soccer stadium, the Arc de Triumph, and more.  My mom found an awesome apartment to rent for the first two nights we are here, and then we are moving to a hotel.

Here is where I will put some pictures of the apartment, but it is truly spectacular.  I don't think real people can find or afford to own this sort of apartment, so it is great that we can rent it.  In the world real estate market, this is prime real estate, equal to something in Georgetown or on the Upper East Side in NY, easily.  I can see the Eiffel Tower outside my window right now, and it is so close.

There are three bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, living room, tv room where Sara is sleeping, laundry room, and a lot of space.  We have all the amenities including full dishes and a tv with hundreds of channels, which dad went through immediately.  There are a bunch we don't have at home, such as Al Jazeera Children's Channel.  As dad said:  "You didn't think I could go through 700 channels in ten minutes.  See, I have skill."  That's my dad.

The biggest challenge of our apartment so far was finding it, as both times we left we had a really hard time finding it on the way home, with multiple wrong turns.  The other challenge we had to using the keys:  they are old keys, and figuring out how to use them has not been as easy as it should be.

We are staying in the 7th Arr/District of Paris, which is traditionally a little bit less touristy and more residential for the upper class of Paris.  The buildings are beautiful (not quite as pretty as Prague, but of course I'm biased).  Right around the corner is a great food market on Rue Cler.  If you know my family, you know that we would much rather spend 2 hours at a food market than 2 hours at a museum.  That was proven true again today, as we dined in a cafe with salads and French onion soup, and then had some great sweets on the way back to our apartment.

 A bakery in Rue Cler that we frequently bought pastries and bread from.

Our plan was then to rest for a bit, hit the Lourve late afternoon when it would be less crowded, and then find somewhere along the Champs Eylsses to eat for dinner.  Turns out that on Thursdays the Lourve closes early, so scratch that plan.  How about go to the Eiffel Tower for sunset?  Nope, that was too crowded also.  So, we then attempted to the find the nearest metro station to Le Tour Eiffel and get ourselves to the Champs.

Bottom line:  it was not easy.  We had to walk many blocks in the supposedly easy Paris metro system, and when we got there the machine was not taking my mom's credit cards.  The women at the information desk either did not speak English or was unwilling to help us, so we basically walked around and struggled at the metro station until we found some change for our Euro bills and put some coins in the machine to give us tickets.

There was a general sense of frustration mounting, so luckily we made it to the Champs safely and found a great restaurant off of the main stretch called Le Victoria.  It was pretty cozy, reasonably priced considering the location, and had good food.  Our waiter was friendly enough, and halfway through the meal he even put on a soccer match that was of interest to the local people at the bar part of the restaurant.  We had a compete French meal, including Escargo, Crepes, and wine.

 Daniel "Mr. Lacoste" has found his store; I try escargo (snail) on the right.

But, unfortunately, we had another frustrating time finding the metro on our way back.  To avoid the long walk we had going to the station on the way to dinner, we decided to walk down the Champs for a bit to find another metro line that ends up closer to home.  But, even though I said it was a good 20 minute walk, no one seemed to want to follow the map.

After darting through some crazy intersections near the Obelisk, and watching grandpa move like he was 25 again, we finally found the metro station, and made it back safely.

Tomorrow will be a very full day.  We want to have breakfast here from the local bakeries, go to the Lourve, Notre Dame, Sante Chapelle, Jewish Quarter, and maybe a couple things more.  We are having dinner tomorrow with my friend Sophie and her family (she is studying in Prague with me and is in Paris this weekend also).  I hope to see my friends Jake (also in Prague, also a friend from school who I'm traveling with over spring break), who is visiting Paris this weekend, and Nikki, also a friend from school and Jake's girlfriend.

Au Revoir!