September 16 - Arrival in Paris

We arrived in Paris this morning after an overnight flight from Toronto.  The trip went well with only a few minor irritations.   It took about seven hours to complete the crossing of the ocean, but with the time difference we lost a night’s sleep.

I can’t begin to remember how long it took to get through the ticket lineups before self serve counters and pre-booking web sites became a way of life for the airlines.  We printed our boarding pass at home, printed our baggage tags at an Air Canada kiosk but it still took us about twenty minutes to get our bags checked in.  It took even longer to get through security.

The lounge in the Toronto airport that we waited in before boarding the plane, had a vast array of IPads that you could play with for free. There was internet access and you could even order a meal with these devices.

The cab ride from Charles De Gaulle airport to the Hotel Champerret Heliopolis, took about an hour in the pouring rain.  Paris is being hit by a tropical storm today that came out of the West Indies last weekend with the result that there was some flooding on the highway.

On the way into the city we passed the St Denis Soccer stadium.  This is the host for the 2016 Euro Cup and is the fifth largest stadium in Europe.  It is huge and it holds 80,000 fans, which is twenty five percent larger than Roger’s Stadium in Toronto.  This is also the stadium where those animals know as ISIS started their terrorist attack on Paris in November 2015 by exploding two bombs and killing four people.

The neighbourhood where our hotel is located is very residential.  I think that people that live here are very upscale yuppies.  In one block there is a Masarati, a Jaguar and a Lamborghini car dealership.  The hotel is about a ten minute walk to the Arc de Triomphe.  The apartments are a mix of buildings built in the late 1800’s and newer residential structures that might be twenty five years old.  The hotel room is very small but then European hotel rooms are generally much smaller than North American rooms.

Marg "skyping" home 

View of Avenue de Villiers from Hotel Champerret Heliopolis

The storm passed early this evening so we went out for a nice dinner at a restaurant called L'Entredgeu. Marg had an appetizer of foamed eggs and mushrooms and a main course of veal.  I had octopus and pork breast.  For wine we had a Sancerre wine, which was a bit tart but tasted great after a second glass.