The plan was simple enough. Come home from work, sleep, stay up all night, sleep on the plane, and voila - no jetlag when we arrive in Paris! The plan was WAY easier said than done, though.

First of all, when I got home from work, I was all kinds of wound up and excited. Joe had hardly gotten any sleep the night before and was about to collapse on his feet. He said we should sleep, so we laid down, and in seconds, Joe was snoring. I had my eyes closed, but my thoughts were reeling and it seemed to take forever to fall asleep. After what seemed like a very short work dream about folding costumes at the children's theatre (something I'd done just hours earlier), Joe woke me up. It was 10pm, time to eat dinner, do laundry, and pack.

We were ready by the time the shuttle came at 7:30am. I had even managed to meditate, to calm down my slightly panicky brain and visualize everything going well. Because it's not like it hadn't occurred to me that we were going to be landing in a foreign country in a clearly labeled American plane on September 11th. Those thoughts coupled with my maternal freakouts about the cats being alone for a week were slightly unsettling. But Joe reminded me that they'll probably enjoy having the place to themselves, which is true (in fact, I imagine them throwing wild cat parties in our absence, with everyone rolling on the floor getting high on fresh catnip. If I find out about any parties like that, well... Let's just hope I don't!). And as far as the September 11th worries, I just had to hope there would be no problems, and as evidenced by my writing, everything went just fine.

Oh, and before I go any farther and freak anyone out, the cats will have a petsitter checking on them daily. Even with that in place, I manage to worry about them. I can only imagine what the worry level is like being a parent of an actual human child - yikes!

We arrived at LAX two hours early for our flight. I tried to pass the time by doing some puzzles in my games magazine, but I just fell asleep in my chair, as did Joe. When I woke up, I went on a search for a sandwich. One deli at the airport sold sandwiches, and charged NINE dollars for them. But, I was worried about being starving throughout the flight, so I went ahead and got it, then headed back to my seat to wait for boarding.

The first flight was 5 hours, to Philadelphia. They served snack and lunch boxes, afterall! It was pretty good food, too. I slept a tiny bit, and read my book and worked on a puzzle that I gave up on eventually because it was so difficult.

We were only in Philadelphia a short time before getting on the next plane. We had enough time for us to buy some water and for me to do some Yoga stretches. The second flight made me happy, because Joe's and my seats were off to the side. We had our own tiny row to ourselves! I scarfed down my nine dollar sandwich before we ever took off, because I was so hungry. It was all right, but definitely not worth nine dollars! Shortly after take off, we were served dinner, and I ate all of that, too. I slept a lot, and at one point, Joe and I watched a movie together on our tiny screens. The movie was Hitch, a romantic comedy that I liked much better than I thought I would!

And suddenly, we were in Paris!

I was starting to worry about the fact that I was the person we were counting on to speak French for us. I don't know much at all, and Joe speaks less French than I do! I was trying to remember as many French phrases as I could on the flight. That, my friends, is called procrastination. I thought of all the people I know who DO speak French, such as my sister-in-law, Heather, who is fluent in several languages, or a number of other people, and suddenly felt stupid that I hadn't been practising French with them all summer long. Man! Oh well, we were already in France. I had to accept that I was one of the typical obnoxious American tourists who expect all the French people to speak English. Sorry, French people!

Then, I managed to screw things up in a spectacular way really early on. We were walking towards the door to get a taxi, and before we even got there, there were taxis by the side of the road. The guy looked at me and said, "Want taxi? Yes?" and then looked past me when I looked around to see who he was talking to. I thought Joe, behind me, had nodded or something, so I went over there to get in the taxi. We took it, and apparently, it was some kind of luxury taxi, costing twice as much as a regular one! Joe was frustrated because it was a lot of money, and he hadn't nodded to the guy at all, contrary to my misunderstanding. D'oh!

Then it took a million years to get checked in, but once we finally did, we were relieved to head up to our room. It's small, but nothing like my Hobbit Hole in London. The bed is incredibly firm, and the pillows are made of down feathers. No problem, I thought. I'll just do what I usually do, and call the front desk to get some foam pillows. As it turns out, this is when some French would have come in handy. It took talking to three people to find someone who understood my request for new pillows, and when I thought one guy finally understood the word "allergic," he had some more feather pillows sent up. "They don't understand, and I don't know how to tell them what I want," I said to Joe, a little sadly, and resolved that I'd just have to sleep on our sweatshirts.

I wanted to nap right when we got in, but Joe said that was a bad idea. "Let's just go," he said. "If we can stay up until 8:00 tonight, we'll sleep through the night, and we'll be fine." That was the new plan.

We both showered, which helped me feel much better, though I was such a dork. I thought our showerhead was just really low and the towels really small. It turned out that the showerhead height is completely adjustable, and I was using a hand towel.

Anyway, we walked about a mile and a half down to Notre Dame, and as we walked, I was just amazed by it all. "I'm here, in Paris!" I kept thinking. And to be there with Joe was just so cool! When I was in Italy and London, I kept wishing Joe was there, and now finally, I'm on a trip abroad, WITH my awesome husband, for the very first time. What a fantastic feeling! I'm not even sure the last time we flew someplace together. I love travelling with him!

Joe pointed out that the buildings were really old facades, but had such modern stores inside them. The duality of the old architecture with modern signs was really fascinating to see. As were the very tiny cars with cool license plates, all the French signs, and interesting shops we passed along the way, all of which were closed, Joe told me, because it was Sunday. Interesting!

Even more interesting was the wig shop we passed. I saw many colorful wigs in the window, behind the store bars; yellow, green, purple. and more. And suddenly, a memory of a dream I had a long time ago flooded my mind. I saw myself in my dream in that same exact spot and had a moment where dream life and real life totally coincided. The deja vu feeling lasted a good ten seconds or more and it kind of weirded me out, but in a good way. I like that feeling. It makes me wonder if there are bizarre and magical things happening in the universe that I can only attempt to understand.

Soon we were at Notre Dame, and walked inside. It was so dark and peaceful inside. Yet, simultaneously, there was a quiet buzz of excited talking from tourists who'd probably been waiting a long time to see this place, and frequent flashes from peoples' cameras as they captured snippets of this amazing structure on film, hoping to capture the feeling of the place as well, to last them beyond just that moment.

The tall arches and ceiling were simply amazing. The sheer beauty of the stained glass windows was astounding. When Joe showed me the elaborate coffins, I felt so strange realizing someone's body was in there, their bones mere feet from where I stood. How incredible. The work that went into that is just unreal. I thought about the people who built it, how much their religion must have meant to them to devote so much time and resources and energy to forming such a gorgeous place of worship. Of course, maybe there were politics behind it, and powers that be forcing poor workers to build it. I like the idea of the first story better. But regardless of how it happened, it can't be denied that it is amazing that it happened. It's beautiful.

The altar devoted to Mary was incredible. I loved the colors in her painting, the way they softly blended together. I loved her candles and the white roses laid out for her. Joe bought me a candle next to the ones that burned so brightly by her altar, for which I am incredibly grateful. I love my Mary candle!

   

There was a very nice girl who asked me to take her picture. She barely spoke English, but after I took it, she asked, "May I help you?" and motioned to my camera. I said, "Sure!" and the picture actually came out pretty nice. Excited tourists are so cute! (And yes, I'll go ahead and include Joe and myself in that group - hee!)

Joe and I took a few more pictures outside, and as we walked, it started to rain. We were both very hungry, so we searched for a restaurant with a nice menu. We found one and as we walked in, a waiter said, "Bonjour! Deux?"

I nodded. "Oui, deux," I said.

Then he asked me something that I COMPLETELY did not understand. I paused, hesitated, then asked meekly, "Uh, parlez-vous anglais?"

He said slowly, "Oui, yes. Smo-king? Non-smo-king?"

"OH! Non, please," I said.

Joe laughed when we were seated and said, "That was funny. 'Smoking? Non smoking?' 'Parlez vous anglais??'"

"I didn't understand him, I'm sorry!" I said, embarrassed.

I heard our waiter greet more people that came in, and realized where I'd gone wrong. He said, "Fumer? Non-fumer? Smoking? Non smoking?" But because his accent was so thick, it sounded like, "Smo-KEEN," which I thought was more French I didn't know! God. I felt like an ass.

Joe and I both had the steak, which was freaking incredible, and quite filling. The French fries were amazing, too, but I didn't eat too many, since I didn't want them to irritate my stomach. We also enjoyed the fresh French bread, and our sodas - Coke for Joe, 7Up for me, both served with lemon slices, which I found really interesting (and tasty!). As we ate and enjoyed our meal, we watched the rain pour down harder outside as cars drove about and people brought out their umbrellas.

Joe and I said we should probably go back to the hotel, since we expected the meal to wake us up a bit, which it hadn't at all. We were tired beyond words.

The waiter returned and asked, "Fromage?" followed by something else I didn't understand. But I got stuck on the first word. Cheese? I wondered. Why is he asking me about cheese? Is he asking if it was good? Was that a cheese sauce for the steak? When did we have chee--

But my thoughts were interrupted by Joe asking me, "Meg? Do you want some cheese? Dessert?"

"OH!" I said, realizing the waiter was offering it, awaiting my response. "No, thank you," I said awkwardly.

Before the waiter walked away, Joe laughed and told him, "We just got in from Los Angeles a few hours ago, and haven't slept much in the past couple days, so we're a little out of it!" The waiter seemed to laugh a little, but at the same time, not to care much. Oh, well. We paid with a credit card, but there was no line on the receipt to leave a tip, and we could NOT tell from the receipt if they'd included gratuity in the meal. So, we guiltily and embarrassedly just left after we'd paid, before our waiter saw us again. I think we may have stiffed the guy. Sorry, waiter!

We took the metro back to the hotel, and called the elevator. The doors opened and Joe motioned for me to go first. I did and suddenly banged into something. But I wasn't sure how! Then Joe was behind me, and touched the elevator doors, which opened off of my body and let us both in. "Nice catch," he said.

"I didn't see it!"

"Oh hunnie, I'm sorry, I expected you to catch the doors with your hands before going in," he told me.

"I didn't see them closing at all!" I couldn't believe the elevator had just closed on me like that. My arms ached from the not yet visible bruises I'd just incurred. We were back in the room before we realized we still had no water. We went back outside to find a market (against my better judgment! Clearly I was so tired I was a danger to myself!). Luckily, I saw a supermarche, which we headed into. I didn't see any water, so I asked the lady at the counter if she spoke English. She said, "Anglais? Non." Uh-oh! I hadn't expected that! She asked the lady who'd just purchased something if she did, and as it turned out, she did enough to help us get a large bottle of Evian. Holy cow, I'm glad that other lady was there!

We went back to the hotel again, enjoyed some water, and relaxed on the bed for a minute. That's when we realized we weren't going to make it to 8:00. It was only 5:00pm, but we were tired enough to settle in the for the night. So much for dinner!

About an hour after we conked out, I woke up with a horrendous charlie horse. Luckily I managed to throw off the covers and stand up before it got too bad. Then I rubbed my leg until the feeling that my calf was going relapse into a cramp went away. I managed to fall back asleep fairly quickly.

We woke up a bit after 11pm, and turned on the t.v. And at 11:30pm, we saw a special episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, on CNN (the only non-French station on t.v.). We were so happy about that! It was about Katrina, and was extremely funny. "Obviously, New Orleans is to blame... for existing. If you didn't, maybe this wouldn't have happened!"

Joe was asleep before the end of the show, while I stayed up and read my Paris book. I looked up how to ask for a bottle of water. My book has a list of phrases, one of which was bottle. It said, "bottle bouiteille boo-TAY," which, because I'm twelve years old, apparently, totally made me laugh. Boo-TAY! Shake that boo-TAY, everyone!

I went back to sleep at 1am (yes, on my makeshift sweatshirt-pile-pillow), and woke up at 5am, with back pain. I realized that I was awake enough that I wasn't going back to sleep. So I did some Yoga stretches and began writing, which brings us to this entry! Joe is taking a shower. I will do so, too, in a moment, and then we'll go explore more of Paris. I'm SO incredibly excited to be here, I cannot even tell you! It's going to be another fun day, I'm sure!