The flight was 13.5 hours, but I only managed about 2 hours of sleep. Caught up with some movies – Flight, Castaway, Air Force One. Plus some TV – Air Crash Investigation.
Landed in Paris at 06:00 to a temperature of -1C. Got out of the airport at about 07:00 which was pretty good going. Took the train into Paris and I made a slight stuff up and got off the Metro at Saint Michel instead of Saint Marcel. So instead of a 5 minute walk to the hotel it was 35 minutes. I naturally blamed Song.
Couldn’t check in till 14:00 anyway so left the cases and went for a walk and explored which we had planned to do anyway. I studied the map and immediately took a wrong turn, blamed Song, but we were soon back on track.
Didn’t really notice the cold, plus the sun was out so it was probably around 5-7C. We were lucky, it was a beautiful day. Went to the Luxembourg Gardens and saw there was a Chagall exhibition on so decided to do that. Had to queue up for 45 minutes and the jet lag started to hit me, I felt dead on my feet. The exhibition had some good works, but I’m not a great fan of Chagall and there were only a couple of pieces I liked. Didn’t buy any. I think we spent longer in the queue than we did inside.
Wandered around the corner and found a small restaurant that looked good and had 4.5 out of 5 from Trip Advisor so we went in. Good decision, were very impressed. I had a salmon and halibut sushi-like starter, Song had duck pate with toast. For main I had lamb in a filo pastry on bed of eggplant, Song had piece of cod on chopped cabbage. Her piece of fish was a bit on the small side, but mine was very good. I don’t think it was because I’d been eating airline food for the previous 36 hours either. Song’s meal cost 30 Euro, mine was 26. Get used to this, I tend to describe most of the meals, it’s part of the reason we travel.
We didn’t want to go straight back to the hotel because I knew I’d fall asleep and then wake up at 0400 in the morning, so decided to keep going. We headed off to Notre Dame. On the way we approached the Pont D’Arts, took a couple of pictures of the gold-coloured railings. It was only when we were on the bridge that we saw that the gold was in fact thousands of padlocks that people had written their names on and attached to the bridge. It’s a strangely impressive sight. Carried on to Notre Dame with a few thousand other people and took a few photos. It was Good Friday and there was a mass going on. We didn’t bother going in because there was a couple of hundred people in the queue, and being an Athiest I didn’t feel the need.
Popped over the bridge to the Isle de Louis, a small island with lots of quirky shops – chocolate, patisseries and so on. Finally succumed to the ever-increasing tiredness and took the metro back to the hotel. I’ve decided Paris has the world’s smallest hotel rooms, judging by the ones I’ve stayed in. Unpacked, typed this, fell asleep. End of day 2.