Cinq jours Parisienne (premiére)

On a bright and early Saturday morning, two sisters rendezvoused at Charles De Gaulle Airport after four long months apart.  There was some confusion regarding the appointed meeting place, as one sister both lacked a cell phone and, having arrived in a different terminal, was unable to meet the other sister at baggage claim, as agreed upon previously, and unable to tell her as much.  Fortunately, this didn't hinder things too much.

After additional confusion regarding just where to go and some teamwork with a friendly fellow DIS student named Donovan who was on my flight, we managed to catch the appropriate train into the city and checked into our grandly titled budget stay, the Hotel de Paris.  The next priority was lunch, wherein Emily enjoyed eggplant manicottis filled with brie (despite not liking either component beforehand) and kindly listened to my exuding about all things awesomely Danish.  From lunch, we pretty much just walked for a while, until our cousin Andrew, who's currently studying in Paris with Stanford, called us with a meeting place-- Ile de la Cité!

After the initial excitement of simply being in Paris--in front of Notre Dame, no less--with siblings and cousins and so forth, Andrew walked us to Bethailles, apparently a famous ice cream café, then through the Louvre's courtyard, around the Tullierie Gardens, and to L'Orangerie, which is a small museum home to a dozen or so Monet murals.  We're talking gasp-worthy, stare-inducing, very large if slightly blurry water lilies of all sorts, plus a weeping willow or two.

Andrew left to meet with some visiting friends (he has us, said friends, and his maternal grandparents in at that point!), so we walked the length of the Champs-Elyseés, stopping at the Grand Palais for Richard Serra's Monumenta exhibition (very interesting) and at l'Arc de Triomphe.

We re-met with Andrew, now with his Stanford friends in tow, for dinner, after which we took the Metro to Trocadero, where Andrew said we'd get the best view of the Eiffel Tower.  We so did, starting on the balcony overlooking it atop a hill.  We watched the sunset from there in between lots of pictures and oohs and aahs when we discovered the lights sparkle for a few minutes every hour after dark.  I've discovered that certain major sites, when see for real, are a bit of a letdown--you've seen the pictures, etc., so that's sort of that.  The Eiffel Tower, let it be said, was not one of those.

We walked around the park leading down to the tower itself but got slightly lost trying to find the closest Metro station, so we hauled back up and were waylaid when a bathroom stop turned into a free visit to an architecture museum.  We finished off the experience with Nutella crêpes on the subway home and called it an early night-- I'd been up since five at that point, and Emily was working off of 3 hours of sleep over two days.