It's really strange. Paris is like all the caricatures that I've ever seen. There are guys on the bridges playing accordion music that makes me want to cry and sound like it's out a 1950's movie - ? Goddard, "A Man and a Woman", stuff like that. There are cafes everywhere - especially on the left bank - I keep expecting to see Communists or existentialists or philosophers. Wine is cheaper than water - at dinner tonight a small bottle of Evian was 3.70, but a glass of Reisling was 3.60. Most of the other white wines by the glass were 4.20, but a glass of coke was 4.30 - no wonder there are so many painters here (though, now that I think about it I haven't seen any painters yet - I guess that's pretty un-Parisien).
Our hotel is on a canal and in the evening there are numerous little groups (10-15) sitting and partying around large numbers of wine bottles. The more active ones are playing bocce or something like it, but on hard packed, bumpy dirt - seems to make it so the intoxication is less noticeable since the roll of the balls is totally unpredictable anyway.
Evening is an inclusive term - we're far enough north that it's still pretty light out at 11:15 (48 deg north latitude compared to 42 in Boston and 40 in Boulder).
Trip over was frighteningly uneventful - check-in took about 38 seconds, the flight was straightforward (though I didn't sleep well), the bags and bikes all arrived in Paris with us - and undamaged as best I can tell (though I haven't built Jean's bike yet). The gods may be saving the worst for later.
The most interesting sight on the way over was a little girl - 4 or 5 years old - who was blind, and running around in the airport, with her seeing eye cane with a plastic ball on the end so that it slid along more easily, running, fast, unconcerned about consequences, with Mom looking on and occasionally trying to get some sort of control - but, appearing to realize that she was beaten and there was no hope. The kid seemed to take great pleasure in running on the moving walkways and trying to guess, with the help of the cane, when she was going to hit the end of the moving belt and trying to keep her balance as she blasted onto the not moving floor. Never saw her fall doing it, but the gyrations were interesting, and the look of alarm on Mom's face was even more interesting.
There's a lot of people here (12 million at a per mile density about 5 times as high as NYC - 54,000 per square mile), plus 40 million tourists per year. Jean and I have been playing a game: spot someone on the street and try to guess what language will come out of his or her mouth. I'm lucky if I guess right 40% of the time. Although, often some of the real classic Parisien types actually do speak French and appear to be locals. (It was rather bizarre to have one of the classic French accordion players looking the part except for the NYC baseball cap.)
The Eiffel Tower really is pretty cool, in a strange sort of way. There's a restaurant there where dinner starts at 220 Euros (about $250 USD). Jean and I didn't check out the menu - went looking for somewhere with more character. The lines were so long that we didn't think of going up into the tower.
Went for a short ride today. Bike path along a canal. Canals are really, really flat. I haven't done anything that flat ever before (well,bowling) only altitude change was a couple pedestrian bridges back and forth over the canal. Pretty urban ride - walkers, baby strollers, skateboards, slow - never been on a bike before - wobbling riders, commuters with hi vis vests lights bells horns, and faster riders weaving in and out among each other. Multi colored, multi racial, multi lingual - quite a few languages that I didn't recognize (Canadian? and maybe others). Did I mention, flat!
No pictures yet, I could write for days and we haven't started yet.
Later.
Made me laugh. Keep writing.
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