We had been planning, or at least talking about, going to Paris for Thanksgiving ever since we had seen really cheap airfare last year at this time. The cheap airfare came though again, so we set off this morning with our friend Ami (“Dubbs”) around 10:45 am, heading for Toronto for our direct flight to Paris.

The drive to Toronto was uneventful, except for a gas pump being weird that was not working right, and probably cost us money in that it would not let me cancel the transaction and I think the next guy got a free tank of gas. C’est la vie.

Our flight was at 8:45 pm, so I was hoping to be at the airport by 5:45. The border crossing into Canada and the traffic around Toronto can both cause delays, so I build in extra time. As such, we were at the airport at 4:30. We also got though security much faster than when we went through last June on our way to Austria, so we were at our gate before 6:00. So, for the first time I can ever remember, we went to a real restaurant in the airport and ate a sit-down meal, because we had time. That was actually fairly pleasant, and a good break from the typical airport routine.

The plane left a few minutes late, but since it was a direct flight, that did not matter much. The flight went well, and I even managed to get an hour or an hour and a half of fitful sleep on the plane. I also got my butt kicked in three games of trivia against Mer and Dubbs, using the plane’s entertainment system. I tried watching one of the Harry Potter movies, but I gave up on it after about thirty minutes when it was not grabbing me. Mostly, I read a book and tried to sleep some.

We got to Paris a little after 10:00, went through the border control, and got our luggage. We hiked the 17.997 miles to the airport train station, and we transferred across a couple of metro lines, getting to our little Paris apartment around 1:00. In all, it was about 20.5 hours, door to door.

Meredith and I always nap as a way to fight jet lag, and so we slept for about three hours, and Dubbs even managed to grab about an hour and a half of sleep, which is rare for her. Meredith and I showered, and so we were ready to hit the town about 5:00 pm. We headed out, and got to the bottom of the stairs in the apartment building. The last step was not carpeted, and it was a different height from the rest of the stairs, and it was dimly lit, and so, sadly, Dubbs missed the step, and twisted her knee badly. Since she has had injuries to her knee before, it was fairly serious. She was in some pain and could not do stairs very well, but she was still game to go out, so our compromise was to get a taxi to take us to Notre Dame instead of taking the Metro (subway), which would have involved a ton of stairs.

That turned out to be a blessing. Meredith’s plan for the evening was to use a taxi to go around the main sights of Paris, to see them all lit up at night. For some reason, the taxi driver, who was a very nice man, took us a short way up a hill to Sacre Coeur, a church that is a Paris landmark. By the time we got there, Mer had decided we should just use him to take us around Paris, so that worked out well.

Mer and I ducked into Sacre Coeur to see the inside of the church. Dubbs passed on it since it involved stairs. Inside the church, we experienced another one of those magical travel moments. The Sunday evening mass had just started, and a nun was singing, and it was beautiful in the acoustics of the massive hall. We listened to the end of her chant or song, and then we had to get back to the taxi. It was beautiful, and unexpected, and those moments are why I love to travel.

For the next two hours or so, our taxi driver took us around Paris, which really is a gem to see lit up at night. Meredith loves to get an overview of major cities when we visit them, and this was a good way to do just that. We saw a ton of sights, but some of them that jumped out at me included:
– The Moulin Rouge, which is the red-light district of Paris, and was still very busy even on a Sunday evening. Oddly, when the driver asked if we wanted to stop for a few minutes, Meredith said no.
– A huge new-to-Paris Ferris wheel at one end of the Champs Elysees, which lines up beautifully with the Arc de Triomphe and is impressive with the Eiffel Tower in the background.
– The Champs Elysees was lined with a “Christmas village,” which featured well-lit booths set up along the street for the Christmas season. They were magical-looking with all the pretty lights.
– We circled the Arc de Triomphe, which is impressive as a monument, but also interesting with the free-for-all multi-lane traffic circle around it.
– We drove by the Eiffel Tower, and we were lucky enough to be there at the top of the hour when the five-minute light show plays on the tower. It was impressive.
– We swung by the Louvre art museum entrance, and drove around the huge building.
– We stopped at Notre Dame to see the outside of the church.
– We finished the tour by driving slowly by impressive window displays showcasing animatronic and whimsical polar bears.

Our taxi guide dropped us at a restaurant about half of a block from our apartment, and we went inside, where we ate an excellent and leisurely meal. That wrapped up our first day in Paris, and we were all pretty pleased with how it had turned out.