Day 82 Road to Paris

Monday February 24th.

I did not sleep last night – a terrible case of insomnia – I ended up watching a movie on my iphone – Next – which I enjoyed and reading a good portion of War and Peace.

I cannot stop thinking about the impending end of our trip; all of the chores that we will need to accomplish when we arrive home and the upcoming re-immersion into work.

Today we get up and hit the road by 9:30 am. Not too bad – I am not unhappy to be leaving our room. Although it was cheap it was very bare and people came in and out throughout the night – the walls are thin and the floors above us shook with their footsteps.

We decide to stay on the toll ways and we make it to Paris a little after 3 – after paying about 55 Euro in tolls.

Our only stop was for fuel and a quick lunch at a roadside cafeteria.

We are hopelessly lost as we arrive at Paris but somehow stumble across the Garde de Nord as if we had driven there 100 times. We park the car underneath and head the less than helpful tourist office.

Thorough the drive we were planning what we wanted to see and based on our choices decided to try to stay in the Marais part of the city. We got a room at the Louvre Rivoli a 180 euro. More than we were hoping to spend but we do want to be comfortable and given the size of Paris the location is important given how many things we are going to accomplish in the next few days. Saturday our flight leaves for NJ.

The room we got is called a suite very small but the location is what we hoped for.

We parked on the street risked a parking ticket for the last hour of metered parking as we could not figure out the parking ticket machine.

We moved our bags to the room and went out for dinner.

Dinner was ok – the best thing was the wine.

Back to the room we are all exhausted and head to bed – we need to get an early start.

The weather changed from 20 to 13 Celsius as we approached Paris and the sky grew overcast.

I am very glad we changed our plans and came up through the south of France. We saw such a beautiful part of the country, the weather was great and already we can tell the difference in attitudes of Parisians v. the other French we have met.

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