My first opinion: I guess that title is rather disingenuous, since I probably gave my very first opinion right after my Mom gave birth to me and the Dr. whacked me. You might add (if you're mean) that I haven't stopped since.
Anyway, some of you have suggested that I try blogging about our trip to Paris, so here it is: mon avis, my opinion of everything Parisienne.
Caveat emptor: if the reader is French, or knows much French, and would be offended by my butchering of the French language, please log off now. Besides, I can't find the special keys to make all those little accents and funny Cs with tails and all, so don't think you can just cut and paste into google to find out if our hotel is really on the rue Vieille du Temple or not. You'll just have to trust me.
On Friday we left the homestead and the dogs in the able hands of our friends Travis and April, and drove to Beth's parents' house where we left the truck and took a taxi to the airport. We took off in the evening for Reykjavik, Iceland on our way to Paris. Reykjavik looks a little desolate, but I saw a video of the country of Iceland while waiting for our connecting flight, and it looks absolutely beautiful. We decided that we will try to make it there on our way to Norway sometime--yes, all you Scandinavians can give a big cheer right now.
We arrived at Charles de Gaul airport midafternoon Saturday (Paris time) and promptly had our first crisis: the small checked bag that had all of Beth's cosmetics, hair doodads, and lots of other important stuff was lost by the baggage people. Not that they would ever admit that, though. So we filled out a lost luggage form and hailed a taxi to central Paris. Most of the taxi drivers I've had in my trips to Paris (well OK, this is my third trip) have been Tunisian or Morrocan or Egyptian. This one was Lebanese, but his wife is from Paris and he has several relatives in the LA area. You can learn alot from people on a 30 minute taxi ride, except that with his poor English and my limited French, he could have been from Nigeria and had relatives in Miami. He was a lot more sedate than the others I've had, and this was a good thing given the anxious state we were in after the baggage crisis.
We arrived in the Marais in the 4th arondissment and found our hotel, l'Hotel Caron de Beaumarchais, 12 rue Vieille du Temple. It's a botique hotel with only 19 rooms and a tiny lobby just off rue de Rivoli. Our room is on the 3rd floor (which the French call the 2ieme etage, or 2nd floor, since they call their ground floor rez-de-chaussée, and their 2nd floor premiere etage, or 1st floor). Anyway, we take 2 flights of stairs to get to our room, whatever floor it's on.
The room has windows onto the street and a little balcony with just enough room for a tiny table and 2 chairs. We take our breakfast there every morning. The hotel delivers coffee, fresh squeezed juice, custard-style yogurt, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, croissants, baguettes and pain au chocolat (not pain-ful at all since it is like a croissant filled with dark chocolate pieces), honey, jam, and fresh kiwi fruit.
I guess I got that last bit out of exact chronological order, since we're still back to Saturday afternoon. Once we got unpacked, we talked with the concierge (who is also the desk clerk, manager, operator, and guest services director) who directed us to BHV (pronounced bay-ash-vey), a very Target-like place with at least 6 floors of almost everything you could possibly want. Beth's lost bag had everything a girl could possibly need for a romantic trip to Paris, so we headed to the French Target to buy it all back. It turns out that you can get most of the same French brands in the U.S., only cheaper there, so we spent a fortune on face creams and hair spray. I must say, though, that I've never read a claim so vivid on any American face creams as the one that enticed Beth "une peau rayonnante de bonheur" (your skin will be "alight with happiness"). We just had to have that one.
It's way too late on Sunday night, and our "formidable" (wonderful) breakfast will be arriving in less than 7 hours, so I'm going to arret for now and resume in the morning.
Tomorrow: free museums and magnifique cuisine.
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