Stephanie and I hit the ground running, or walking, rather. Trying to make up for lost time and being on a backwards schedule, we were wide awake at 4AM. We began our day combing the streets for a place to eat so early in the morning. We soon found a small diner just opening and were briefly satisfied with our croissants and espresso. Then it was off to watch the sunrise at the Eiffel Tower. 

 

We continued on to the Arc De Triomphe as we looked for another cup of coffee, which was harder to come by than expected. Being our first day and full of energy, we were eager to explore Paris on foot, which we later regretted. Yet, we saw a lot of the city and most of the quintessential Parisian icons.

Having finished our coffee, we became accustomed to the life of a tourist by renting a toilette for a small fee. The rest of the early afternoon was spent at the Louvre, crossing off the must sees of the Mona Lisa and Vinos de Milo.

 

Other highlights included the medieval Louvre and a Greek granite bath we found highly comical. Although, the Mona Lisa did have a paparazzi like environment, we have been pleased with our timing. It has been the perfect combination of lack of crowds but still warm weather. After a prolonged nap we finished up the day with at the Pompidou (modern art museum) which also had great views of the city and Sacre Ceour at sunset.

 

 Centre Pompidou

 

Our experience with Parisian food was somewhat lacking early today. Having gone to a small open café at the Louvre, we were dismayed to have our waiter bring our sandwich in a prepackaged box. Our brick oven pizza made up for it later.

Well, The Glovers are off to Europe, and it started poorly from the beginning. Having been so proud to work a direct flight from Dallas to Paris, we were somewhat disappointed as we sat at the Gate in Lubbock “International” Airport as our plane from Dallas departed. Rain delays in DFW sent ripples to outlying airports, where we experienced an inbound grounding. Once the grounding was lifted we had burned so much fuel sitting on the runway that we had to return to the gate to refuel. Once we refueled, the inbound grounding was back in effect. At this point, we feared it was likely we would not get out of Texas that night. Luckily, the iPhone paid for itself. Although, the American Airlines operator told me we were out of luck, I had searched the flight schedule on their website and found a later flight connecting through London Heathrow on British Airways. After 45 minutes on the phone, we were all set with our new itinerary.

Aside from the mass chaos of London Heathrow (i.e. 300 meters of gateways, 3 flights of stairs, 1 escalator, customs, more walking, a 10 minutes bus to the other terminal, security, and more running) everything else went smoothly. We arrived safely at 16H, instead of 9H as planned, but were grateful to have made it to Paris on the right day.

We eased into Parisian life slowly with a nice walk around the Montparnasse neighborhood and a lovely dinner at restaurant name La Place. The food lived up to its name. We had a delicious meal of Escargot, beef tartar, Magret de Canard (duck), and a pear crumble.