Leaving Paris

We may have figured out how French have their breakfast. First of all even on a weekday don't expect a cafe to open before 8 or 830am. Most Parisiand don't seem to wake up before then. Haven't come across a 24hr Starbucks here. On Sunday we had breakfast at a wonderful bakery called "Paul". We hadn't really figured out what all the things on the menu were but with a leap of faith and with our knowledge of "un baguette", we placed our order. It ended up being half baguette, orange juice, coffee, hot chocolate, butter and jam. We then observed a madamme next to us order pretty much the same thing. She sliced her half baguette lengthwise into half, smeared the butter and jam on it and dunket it into her hot chocolate. Don't know if that is typical, we may need to observe more instances of this to make a generalization.

We are now at the Paris CDG airport waiting for our plane to Delhi. Paris has snow today, so it's probably a good day to get out of here. Our taxi ride took about 45 minutes here, we may try the RER (fast metro/train) again when we get back from India at the end of March.

One funny thing I noticed during the flight on the TV monitors was that the French for "in-flight entertainment" was "Distraction en board". Kind of fitting for TV in general, isn't it ?

On the Air France flight, we sat next to this very pleasant Lama named "Lhakdor", who lives in Dharamshala (where the Dalai Lama lives) and who has been the Dalai Lama's translator for 16 years. He is now the Director of Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, which is also in Dharamshala. We had very nice conversations with him. Towards the end of the flight we exchanged "business cards". After he looked at mine, he smiled and said "I think we can do business with you".

We arrived at the Delhi airport about an hour late due to air traffic and circling in the air a few times. Another half an hour or so at the immigration, and half hour ride to Gurgaon, we arrived at the Ananda Center at 1am.

India stories to follow ...