April in Paris

Jake and I had the great pleasure of spending the first week of April 2015 in Paris. We flew from Toronto to Charles De Gaulle airport, arriving at 8:30 am. We took the RER blue line to our hotel in the 5th arrondissement, the Latin Quarter. We stayed at the Grand Hotel de Suez which is where we stayed in 1989 on our honeymoon! What a joy it was to be back! I am going to make our trip the basis for the next blog entries, there is so much to tell - and after Paris we went to Rome, where we met up with our daughter, and we traveled on to Barcelona with her. We ended our journey in Belgium where Clementine's been studying for her junior year in college on the Loyola international program. Needless to say - what a wonderful vacation we had! I'll start at the beginning and hope you will enjoy a detailed account of our trip and what lessons I learned during our latest 3 weeks in Europe. I'll break it up in posts. We drove from home to Toronto which is a 4 1/2 hour drive. Flying Air Canada from Toronto was less expensive than flying from New York and NY is a much farther drive; additionally I wanted to fly Air Canada for comparison's sake. The flight leaves nightly at 7:30 pm and arrives early morning in Paris which is perfect. I enjoy driving with my husband, we tend to get a lot of interesting talk in. We left the day before our flight and arrived at Andrea's house in the Lesleyville area of Toronto. Andrea is an old friend who now enjoys dual citizenship and owns a record promotion business, she's an interesting entrepreneur and a lively lady. That evening we had dinner at a new, hot Mexican resto with A and her man. Toronto is a MUST - very international, very cool city. The following morning Jake and I explored the neighborhood - lovely cheese shops and boutiques and cafes etc. before leaving for the airport. For travel I dress comfy but chic: this time I chose to wear newer leggings - heavier material but still stretchy - and layered a tank with a few different tops over it, the final layer a dark denim shirt and my trench coat. Also my topper - a large scarf to be used as blanket, pillow, accessory, whatever it needed to be! I wore my new, but broken in (and ready for lots of walking!), waterproof suede ankle boots. We checked our bags even tho we had both packed only one carry on each! I do not like to lug stuff around, pas chic. Sometime I'll do a packing blog entry, we traveled for 3 weeks with 1 carry on sized bag each! Of course in my purse and the small bag I carried with me I had: earplugs, eye mask, ipad and some almonds, also toothbrush, wipes and water. It's been said a thousand times but be chic yet comfy - travel is exhausting and dirty; you may get cold then hot, need to sleep/relax in a fairly unforgiving seat etc and if you can peel off a few layers and then add them back as needed....you can at least be in charge of something!! The custom lines were ridiculously long but eventually we were on the aircraft - very last row!! I liked Air Canada, the meal was decent actually - a shepard's pie and then, with earplugs and mask on I actually got some rest. Arrival in Paris! We knew to take the blue line RER, but had to ask for help in getting the tickets from the machines. Everyone was very nice and helpful and I always attempted to communicate in french, which I believe pleases them. Tickets and luggage in hand (rolling actually) we took the metro to the stop at St Michel,just a couple of blocks from our hotel. Emerging from the underground into the beautiful light of Paris! The Seine and Notre Dame in view! So happy! Boulevard St Michel is bustling with tourists, locals and the stores and cafes that line it and we roll our bags to the hotel. They are glad to hold our bags until our room is ready so we use the restroom and freshen up and head out to shake off the travel and stretch our legs. To be continued..... xo La