Welcome to Paris

After an overnight flight to Copenhagen that involved a tiny seat, a few mediocre movies, and little to no sleep, we made it to Europe. We went through customs, had a million people ask Sahil where he was going skiing (smart guy decided we should bring his skis from Colorado to DC to Paris being that we will be skiing in Geneva), and finally made it to the gate to embark to beautiful Paris. We boarded the flight and arrived within 2 hours at Charles de Gaulle and gathered our luggage, although for some reason, while our flight was on time, our luggage was delayed...not sure how that works. Sahil's explanation was, "This is Europe - Things move more slowly. They get 2 months of vacation for pete's sake!" We eventually gathered our luggage (after the skis finally arrived) and moved on to the taxi stand, only to get rejected by the first taxi driver because the skis were too much of a nuisance. Luckily, the second taxi driver welcomed us and the skis and we were off to our new home.

In the cab ride, the cab driver began conversation by asking where we were from. When we responded with Chicago, he exclaimed "You come from Obama-land!" He then proceeded to tell us his uncensored opinion of Bush. It was a warm French welcome.

We finally arrived to our new home and after debating whether we should tip the cab driver or not, Mana remembered that during her year in London it was not customary to tip cab drivers, so we went with our instinct and learned later that we were right. We stared at the front door with the instructions that our landlord would meet us there, but did not realize we needed to press a button in order to get into the building itself. So after asking a few people on the street if we could borrow their phone to call our landlord, a kind woman finally walked in front of us, pushed a button, opened the door and let us in to our building (which she was not a resident of).

We were greeted by our landlord who was REALLY sweet. She and her husband had collected a bunch of Paris brochures to help us get an understanding of the lay of the land, showed us around our adorable Parisian loft with huge bay windows which overlook other typical European buildings, and left us a bottle of champagne in the fridge to celebrate our first time living in Paris!

In true form, we made ambitious plans to go around the city for the rest of the day and planned to take a short nap which turned into 6 hours :P oops.

We woke up eventually and went out to dinner with a few friends from home and enjoyed Tapas in the Latin Quarter and great french wine into the wee hours of the night. We even stopped at a gelato shop for some yummy hazelnut and cream gelato. Our first day in Paris definitely set the tone for an exciting 3 months to come!