A Paris

The day of arrival last Sunday was a mess. I couldn't sleep on the plane. So, once we arrived, I was extreemly overtired and confused. Customs was almost non-existant compared to Canada. That suprised me.

I literally just gave some young guy my passport to look at. He asked me (in French of course) if I was here on vacation. In Paris, I replied yes. Then he went on to point out how coincidently we were born in the same year and are the same age. Everyone else was simply asked why they were here and let through and he wants to make small talk in French when I haven't slept for nearly 2 days!

Finally, after a brutal little conversation he wished me a good vacation and I was off to pick up my luggage, then be ushered out the door by some men in plain clothes.

The driver that I had arranged to take us to the apartment was waiting (he was 2 hours early) so we went with him. We finally arrived at the apartment, which was lovely, to the suprise of the cleaning lady who hadn't yet finished and she only spoke French. She was very nice anyway and we managed to get by with our somewhat limited vocabulary.

Then, we were hungry so we ventured out. But of course, it was Sunday in Paris and almost everything was closed. We ate our first food in Paris, sadly, at the McDonald's down the street. Nonetheless, we had to speak french to order and the menu is different in France. This proved to be difficult as our jetlag set in.

This ended up being the only place in Paris where we encountered some form of rudeness. Later, we found a small corner store that was open where we bought 12 cans of pop, cookies and some fruit for 30 Euro. The cashier was very nice, even joking with us a bit.