Three Days in Paris

We arrived around 10:30 am after a comfortable flight.  It turned out to be easy to get into Paris on the train and the Metro.  We walked to our neighborhood-a great one with a walking street just off of ours. This would come in very handy later the first night.  We were  met at the apartment and given keys and the code to get in.  (Note to self-do not choose an electronic device as the only place to store a code.) We walked around and ate lunch on our walking street.  

Our apartment was lovely...it had its quirks including the fact that internet could only have one user at a time-can you imagine 4 Zavalas and ONE internet connection?  Hence, my lack of blogging-we were all fighting for precious minutes and, of course, mine got used up dealing with work crises.  But the light from the bedroom window is lovely...

Our neighborhood has many shops and plenty of cafes and was perfect. 

 I love that you can walk in the middle of the street and then stop for drinks-it's so lively and so active.

I had to take a picture of this restaurant because Lisa and I always eat there when we are in
DC because it's hot and they have the best gazpacho.  This chain really did start in Paris.

The archway at the end of our neighborhood's walking street.

We then went across the city to where Mariana had her classes.  The students were doing readings of their work and Mariana decided she wanted us there for support.  We met her friends and had some lovely food at the reception after the readings.

All the food was so beautifully prepared.

We were so close to the Eiffel Tower that we walked there and took some photos. It was dusk and the light was beautiful.  (We had left Nana to go out with her friends to celebrate-she met some great people that she will see back at NYU.) It was amazing walking through her school neighborhood and seeing the Eiffel Tower peek out between buildings.

This must be it!! 

Yes, it was!!

The Seine was beautiful and we had to do the photo thing...Luis even had Gillian lie down on the grass to photograph him and she got a rash for her trouble.  Here are the best shots.

Gillian fits right in

The sight was so moving.  

It was a perfect evening.  We walked all around and took tons of photos from every imaginable angle.  And then...

We needed to use a code to get into our apartment gate...the code was in Luis' phone which had died. (Remember I said it wasn't good to leave the code only in an electronic device?) It was midnight and we were gonna sleep on the street.  But as luck would have it, everything in our really cool neighborhood was  open and we went to get wine and asked the bartender if he could charge an iphone for a few minutes to get our entry code out...he said, "Which one?  Iphone 2, 3, 4, 4s??  got a charger for all of them"  so we stayed and had wine, and got our code and got into the apt and slept...that was the only night...Parties and fights the other two nights until 4 am....the real Paris???