Paris, The Drive In
Ok…We have less than a week before MJ and the girls leave for Athens, so we figure we better tell you about Paris. Otherwise we will get hopelessly behind.
Saturday:
We left in the morning for the approximately 4 hour drive. We stopped for lunch at a McDonalds conveniently located half way there. I am proud to tell you, that with the exception of grabbing a restroom break and a coffee at the McDonald's on the Champs-Elysee (which is quite a McDo's, as they call it in France) that was only time we went there during the trip. Even though there was one right at the entrance to the Metro near the apartment. My motto for the trip, "I didn't come to Paris to eat at McDonald's." Including the stop for lunch it took us 4.5 hours to get into Paris, but a little bit longer to actually reach our destination.
One thing that puzzled us on the ring road on the way into town was the no burning/exploding cars sign. My photography skills are not up to snuff, so I wasn't able to get a picture of it as we cruised down the road at 90 km/hr. (Where's the traffic when you need it?) But I did find a picture of it on wikipedia. In Europe they use signs like ours, except without the red slash across it, to show that something is prohibited. The sign with the red slash means it is not prohibited any longer. Amazingly, I also found the exploding car sign on a blog about China, although China uses the red slash like we do. In Europe that would mean an end to the prohibition on expoding cars, or in the alternative, exploding cars are now allowed.
Paris driving isn't as bad as you hear if you are used to city driving. As it was a Saturday afternoon when we arrived, traffic wasn't too bad. We just had to wait once or twice at a few traffic lights.
And we were able to drive around one of the old gates in the former city walls. We actually managed to pack light so that everything fit into the Alfa. A small car is key to driving in a large European city with narrow roads and plentiful double parkers. We spent our seven nights in Paris like we did in Rome, in a rented apartment. I guess the phrase is "becoming a temporary local..." Works for us.
The first thing we had to do on arrival was to pick up the key from the rental agency. Even though the agency is located in alley that doesn't have any parking, we were told to pull in and leave someone in the car.
So Sounds good, until you get there and a large delivery truck is blocking access to it. We had to drive around the block which is easier said than done in a major pedestrian area. We finally got through the crowds and found an underground parking garage near the Pigeon-Doo (AKA Pompidou) Center and walked the 3 or so blocks to the agency. (Btw, the picture on the Pompidou website looks so much better than it does in person. The place has a major pigeon problem, seriously. Not to mention a permanet homeless encampment complete with chained down modern camping tents.) 
We had no problems there or getting to the apartment where we were able to park in a garage 100 yards away. Very nice deal... The apartment was a 3rd floor walk-up with 66 steps to the door, as counted by SJ. The building had two secured doors that required a code to enter. The first on the street and the second after you had walked through the courtyard. This apartment was better than the one we had in Rome as we didn't have to go through the girl's room to get to ours and the layout was just nicer. Because people actually live in this city, it was very easy for us to get what we wanted from the, must be half a dozen, grocery stores in the area. Not to mention, the bakery that was literally on each street corner.
After getting settled in, the first thing we did was head out for some provisions. OA was "starving" so we stopped for the first of many Croque Monsieurs and omelettes. Then we headed to the MonoPrix, the more upscale of the many local supermarkets. There we bought some yummy cheese, bread, yogurt and of course, chocolate. The gal that writes a blog that I like to frequent, Chocolate and Zucchini, posted a tour of her local grocery store in Paris not too long ago. I'll let her pictures do the talking. Her store looks pretty much like the one we went to too. And yes, there are two whole aisles of yogurt to choose from. Here are pictures of the cheese aisle, the chocolate aisle, yogurt aisle 1, and yogurt aisle 2. By this time, we were all pretty pooped and ready to get a good night's sleep. We needed to be ready to tackle Versailles the next day.
Saturday:
We left in the morning for the approximately 4 hour drive. We stopped for lunch at a McDonalds conveniently located half way there. I am proud to tell you, that with the exception of grabbing a restroom break and a coffee at the McDonald's on the Champs-Elysee (which is quite a McDo's, as they call it in France) that was only time we went there during the trip. Even though there was one right at the entrance to the Metro near the apartment. My motto for the trip, "I didn't come to Paris to eat at McDonald's." Including the stop for lunch it took us 4.5 hours to get into Paris, but a little bit longer to actually reach our destination.
One thing that puzzled us on the ring road on the way into town was the no burning/exploding cars sign. My photography skills are not up to snuff, so I wasn't able to get a picture of it as we cruised down the road at 90 km/hr. (Where's the traffic when you need it?) But I did find a picture of it on wikipedia. In Europe they use signs like ours, except without the red slash across it, to show that something is prohibited. The sign with the red slash means it is not prohibited any longer. Amazingly, I also found the exploding car sign on a blog about China, although China uses the red slash like we do. In Europe that would mean an end to the prohibition on expoding cars, or in the alternative, exploding cars are now allowed.
Paris driving isn't as bad as you hear if you are used to city driving. As it was a Saturday afternoon when we arrived, traffic wasn't too bad. We just had to wait once or twice at a few traffic lights.
And we were able to drive around one of the old gates in the former city walls. We actually managed to pack light so that everything fit into the Alfa. A small car is key to driving in a large European city with narrow roads and plentiful double parkers. We spent our seven nights in Paris like we did in Rome, in a rented apartment. I guess the phrase is "becoming a temporary local..." Works for us.The first thing we had to do on arrival was to pick up the key from the rental agency. Even though the agency is located in alley that doesn't have any parking, we were told to pull in and leave someone in the car.
So Sounds good, until you get there and a large delivery truck is blocking access to it. We had to drive around the block which is easier said than done in a major pedestrian area. We finally got through the crowds and found an underground parking garage near the Pigeon-Doo (AKA Pompidou) Center and walked the 3 or so blocks to the agency. (Btw, the picture on the Pompidou website looks so much better than it does in person. The place has a major pigeon problem, seriously. Not to mention a permanet homeless encampment complete with chained down modern camping tents.) 
We had no problems there or getting to the apartment where we were able to park in a garage 100 yards away. Very nice deal... The apartment was a 3rd floor walk-up with 66 steps to the door, as counted by SJ. The building had two secured doors that required a code to enter. The first on the street and the second after you had walked through the courtyard. This apartment was better than the one we had in Rome as we didn't have to go through the girl's room to get to ours and the layout was just nicer. Because people actually live in this city, it was very easy for us to get what we wanted from the, must be half a dozen, grocery stores in the area. Not to mention, the bakery that was literally on each street corner.After getting settled in, the first thing we did was head out for some provisions. OA was "starving" so we stopped for the first of many Croque Monsieurs and omelettes. Then we headed to the MonoPrix, the more upscale of the many local supermarkets. There we bought some yummy cheese, bread, yogurt and of course, chocolate. The gal that writes a blog that I like to frequent, Chocolate and Zucchini, posted a tour of her local grocery store in Paris not too long ago. I'll let her pictures do the talking. Her store looks pretty much like the one we went to too. And yes, there are two whole aisles of yogurt to choose from. Here are pictures of the cheese aisle, the chocolate aisle, yogurt aisle 1, and yogurt aisle 2. By this time, we were all pretty pooped and ready to get a good night's sleep. We needed to be ready to tackle Versailles the next day.
posted by MJ at 11:07 AM
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