It took us a while to write yesterday's blog because we had to deal with a French computer at our hotel's library. Instead of a qwerty keyboard they have an azerty keyboard, where about fifth of the keys are in different places. That slowed us down a bit, not to mention having to guess the menu items options in French.
Speaking of hotels, we are staying at a wonderful little hotel called Hotel Luxembourg Parc. It is right next to Luxembourg Gardens and the Senate on the left bank. It appears to be a heavily renovated historical building decorated from the neo-classical French era (as my wife says, what would I know). Termite damaged old wood beams are purposefully exposed to improve the ambiance. This hotel was recommended by my old-time friend and colleague of many years, Henri, who is originally French, but lives in Santa Barbara now. Thanks to him we are staying at this beatiful hotel with wonderful service and attention to detail. The location is unbeatable. It is just a few blocks from many cafes, restaurants, farmers market, etc.
While looking for the construction year of our hotel in our room brochures we ran into the fact that there is actually DSL access from our room. Since Suzanne brought a laptop we don't have to fight the French keyboard anymore. Yeah!
Let me mention that the weather is very cold here in Paris. We were talking to a French lady at the airport on Saturday and she said this was unusually cold for Paris standards too. It was -2C yesterday during the day with Accuweather RealFeel at -7C. Walking out of any heated building is like walking into a meatlocker (never been to a meatlocker but I assume they are cold). Delhi will surely be a change of weather tomorrow.
One more thing to mention is that we have been experimenting with pre-adjusting to our destination timezone by getting up and going to bed earlier each day during the week before our trip. On the day of the flight out of Sacramento we got up at 2am, slept quite well during the Chicago->Paris flight, easily stayed up until 9pm'is last night and comfortably got up at 6am (7am for Suzanne) today. I felt a bit jetlagged while at Ananda a day or two before our trip, but so far it worked great at our destination. I strongly recommend this technique if you want to make best use of your time at your travel destination.
Today we followed the historical walking tour as described in Rick Steves' Paris guidebook, starting at Notre Dame and finishing at Sainte-Chapelle. Notre Dame would have been worth every penny of the admission price (though it was free since it is an active church), whereas Sainte-Chapelle was a bit of a disappointment due to an hour wait in the freezing cold and 7.50 euro admission price (since it is now a museum). Sainte-Chapelle is worth seeing if you are into biblical stained glass art due to its massive 15 panels of stained glass and 1100 different scenes, mostly from Bible. What makes it so dramatic is that there is a lot less wall than the stained glass, creating a 360 degree back-lit pictorial view of the story of the Bible. Nevertheless Notre Dame was a lot more enjoyable, with sweeter vibrations and the sheer size of its structure which took 200 years to build. The bell tower tour is a definite highlight, with close look to the many gargoyles and bird-eye view of the city.
Later in the afternoon we took a walk to the Eiffel Tower. It is hard to go to Paris and not visit this attraction. It's well worth it. According to my guidebook, it is 1000 feet tall (6 inches taller in hot weather). Since it was so cold today, I bet you it wasn't taller than 999 feet. We took the elevator all the way to the top (it was getting late in the day, we were getting quite tired and we were at the wrong leg to take the stairs up to the 2nd level), again took the elevator down to 2nd floor, took the stair from 2nd to the 1st level, had a hot chocolate and watched the movie at the 1st level and elevator down to the ground again.
Tomorrow morning we are heading to the airport and from there to Delhi. Stay tuned for more trip diary.
