Paris 2014 - Day 1, Arrival

I left my car at Chris and Jason's and Jason drove me to the airport. The flight went well, luckily the 46 high school students, seated all around me, had flown in from Winnipeg that morning and were so exhausted they all slept.
I met up with Aimee and Greg within 30 minutes of landing at the airport. Whew! That had been my largest concern. We had a bit of a delay as the train (RER B) into Paris wasn't running regularly but once we got on it was a smooth, 45 min ride to our stop in the 14th arrondissement. First stop was to a café just outside the train station to get a café au lait, aah, I felt like I was in Paris.

Aimee and I had coffees and Greg had a beer. I love the skinny
packages of sugar.

We found our building, put in the code we had been sent and then buzzed the concierge from the lobby, but no response. Luckily Aimee had paid Bell for 1 month of phone in Europe so we called our landlady, who called the concierge, who let us in. The apartment is larger than expected, high ceilings, big windows, a real kitchen, we are very happy with it (you never know when you book on the internet, quite what to expect). There is not, however, a coffee maker so we went to a little bar on the corner for coffee and a snack. I think we will become regulars as it is a sweet little place and has a very friendly bartender who speaks good English. After he delivered our drinks to us he left us in the bar and went out, bringing back bread and eggs for the meals we had ordered - so trusting.

Next off to a grocery store, there's one just around the corner, to stock up with the essentials. The essentials included olive oil, balsamic vinegar, 12 Stella Artois, 4 bottles of red wine, garlic, Perrier .... you get the picture. After this we will probably just shop for each day.

Aimee, taking a picture, outside the door to our building.

Our building

After putting all our purchases away, we sat and discussed agendas and looked at guide books before Aimee and I ventured out again to explore the neighbourhood a bit more. We found the entrance to the Catacombs (just up the street, in front of the train station) and we are planning to go tomorrow morning. We stopped in at the train station and bought books of 10 tickets for the Metro and the buses. We found a boulangerie and had a couple of croissants. We found a pedestrian market street where I will take a lot of French food pictures to post on the blog and where I think we will do a lot of supper shopping. Last but not least we found a camera shop where I bought a charger for my camera battery which had died and I couldn't find the charger at home (the squirrel strikes again), a very successful explore.