Leaving on UA IAD-CDG
We left Wednesday afternoon and got through security reasonably quick.

We each had a rolling carry-on so we did not check bags. That proved to work
well.

I had bought a few Briggs & Riley bags on sale at $135 each, which is
a great bargain as these are guaranteed for life (even against airline
damage) and very well made.

We sat in "Economy Plus" and had plenty of
legroom. The plane was 1/3 full in economy and almost empty in business.

They served champagne, then a meal, and lots of water although they quickly
ran out of bottled water and started serving plane water.

Each of the seats has an invididual screen although as usual the movies
weren't much good. I watched a bit of Simone but didn't like it so I read
most of the time.

When we arrived, we walked through the CDG airport with its space age ramps and waited 1/2 hour for the car service that was
supposed to be there waiting for us.

There were hundreds of French troops waiting inside the airport. My guess is they were on the way to the Ivory Coast but I never knew for sure.

We rode into Paris with two American
students who were each studying for a semester and staying at hostel near
our hotel. The cost of the car service was as much as a taxi so we would
have been as well off or better with the taxi as it turned out.

We arrived at the Comfort Inn Mouffetard. The rooms are extremely small but
the facilities are adequate. The soap they give you is the size of a postage
stamp! Our stay included breakfast which was excellent croissants
(indescribably light), excellent bread (you can't get bread like that here,
anywhere), hardboiled eggs, jam, ham, and great strong coffee.

Rue Mouffetard
Rue Mouffetard is a very old street on the Left Bank in the 5th arrondissement. It can be considered part of the Latin Quarter or not. It is right near the Sorbonne, with the Pantheon around the block from our hotel.

This part of Paris was founded in the 12th century by Abelard, a priest, who
famously fell in love with Heloise. It is a charming area with narrow streets. Notre Dame is right down the street.

I would stay there at that hotel again because it is such a superb location.

Part of Rue Mouffetard is one lane and accepts an occasional car, with the
rest being walking only. It was part of a street that stretched from Paris
to Rome in ancient times. There are some of the same facades and some signs
from the middle ages. It is a marketplace street with excellent cheese
shops, creperies, small restaurants, fish mongers, meats, chocolatiers etc.

I never saw such fresh fish or such perfect produce in my life. And it does
not have a pretentious feel to it.

We parked our stuff and while Robert slept we went to the Musee D'Orsay. It
was a train station that was going to be torn down but was saved.

Some collections from the Louvre were moved here including paintings and sculpture.

Gaughin, Renoir, lots of Bonnard, many other things. There is an incredible huge clock in the great central hall where the trains arrived, and that is dedicated to sculpture. It is very much worth seeing.

I was in a state of collapse so we headed back and rested until dinner time.

I had loaded my new Palm phone with a Zagat's guide, a complete map of Paris
that gives you step-by-step directions, and a complete guide that takes you
to any museum or monument via the Metro, again with step-by-step directions.
I used this the whole time, that night to find a restaurant.

We walked there, Le Petite Prince de Paris. The food was superb. I had duck
rillettes with bacon, and I think I had a steak with a heavenly bearnaise
sauce. For dessert, Robert had a chocolate rice pudding that was far better
than it sounds, while I had a delicately light cake made from roasted
almonds with an incredible sauce. Naomi ordered a veal chop with carmelized
onions for her entree.

The Louvre in two hours
Friday we went to the Louvre. We too the Metro there. The Metro has a lot
of steps, few escalators and no elevators.

The windows on the cars open,
which creates a refreshing breeze. We saw a violin player on a Metro car,
and there was a small trio of classical musicians playing for coins in the
station.

At the Louvre we entered under the pyramid, checked our coats, and headed
into the exhibits. Since the Louvre is an endless maze, we looked around a
bit and headed towards the Mona Lisa. It is located past endless hallways of
old Italian and Renaissance art.

Normally there is a huge line but there was
no line due to the time of year. We also looked at some other Da Vincis,
lots of other stuff, and a few Vermeers including a famous one of a lady
sewing.

After about 2 hours we left the Louvre and headed into the attached mall,
which is a very expensive high class kind of place.

Naomi and Allie bought a few inexpensive things while Robert and I headed upstairs to the food court for some beverages. The food court is Paris: excellent purveyors of food you would never see at most restaurants let alone a mall food stand.

We headed over to the Ecole Militaire Metro stop and walked to the Eiffel Tower. On the way we got roped into a fabulous lunch at a little boulangerie. Naomi had fish, Robert and I had steak, and I forget what Allie
had. I also had a marvelous house made chicken liver pate.

At the Eiffel Tower, one pillar was open for walking and one for going up the elevator. This was crowded although it only took 15 minutes to get to the elevator. The weather was extremely cold, with a biting wind that made it seem like you had nothing on.

The elevator stopped at the first level,
then the second, and we had to get off and wait in another line to get to the top. The cold below was nothing like the cold up here. It was as chilling and frigid as I have ever been in. Finally we got to go into the second elevator to the top, which is fully enclosed thankfully.

The view is magnificent, nothing like it in all of Paris. It feels like you are in a
highrise building so it is not scarey at all.

We walked up a flight of stairs to the highest point you can go, which is a
platform that is open to the air but covered with steel mesh. It was too windy to go to the windward side, so we stuck to the leeward side for a few minutes. Eiffel had his office here. He must have been in good shape as I doubt the elevator was there at the time (it was first installed in 1899),
so he would have had to walk.

There is a lifesize model of him and Thomas
Edison talking, in what was his office.

We descended without incident and there, Allie and Robert bought a few things from the extremely aggressive hawkers.

For dinner we walked to the Reminet. It is a fine little restaurant with more of a nouvelle feel to the food. The desserts were incredible -- I had the best chocolate thing I have ever had anywhere, and everyone else's
desserts were similarly incredible.

We walked back to the hotel and went around the Pantheon. This resembles the
US Capitol building in many ways, neo classical and built in the 18th
century to commemorate one of Napoleon's victories (although Napoleon fell
from power and never finished it, it was finished later on and made into a
church, then seculuarized, then a church again, etc.)

Blustery Saturday
On Saturday the weather turned quite ugly. It was not only very cold, but also snowing a cold, miserable snow. We got out of the hotel and walked to Notre Dame.

A marvelous pipe organ concert was underway and we just sat and listened. It was magnificent. Finally we left and walked around and then couldn't take it anymore so we ducked into a pizza restaurant. We enjoyed wonderful pizza, hot tea, big salads, and even dessert. Then it had stopped snowing and we went to the Musee D'Cluny. This is a medieval building that is remarkable, and there are old Roman baths (cold, called the frigidarium, and hot), along with some heads from statues that were taken several hundred years ago from
Notre Dame, and later found in the basement of a bank.

The best thing about the Cluny was a set of tapestries of the "Lady and the
Unicorn", huge elegant and very interesting tapestries hundreds of years old, illustrating the five senses. There was also extremely ancient stained glass that you could see close up, really remarkable, and many excellent wooden religious carvings.

While exploring the museum, we heard chanting and discovered a concert going on in the museum.

For dinner, we ate at Le Volant. It was rather far away, so we had to take
several Metros which turned into a small misadventure.

We waited in the station, and they kept announcing that the Metro was going to be late. Finally, we decided to go up to the street, lose the value of our tickets, and take a taxi.

Not so easy. The taxis were all busy. It was by now 9:00 and we had a 9:00 reservation, and it was like rush hour with every taxi occupied. After a lot of frustration, and after trying to call the restaurant (unsuccessfully), we used more tickets to try the Metro again. Again it was still broken. Finally the train came and we arried at 10:00, an hour late.

The restaurant is a small room with closely packed long tables. You sit down next to other people. Everyone in Paris sits down to eat with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, so it was quite smokey. The proprietoress was very unfriendly at first, but finally relented and found seats for us. The meal
was quite good, although Naomi got the wrong order on the appetizers and things became very frosty after that.

On Sunday, we walked around Rue Mouffetard some more, and saw the most incredible accordian player. He was obviously classically trained and brilliant. He played a toccatta from Bach, one of the Four Seasons, and was so good it sounded like a whole orchestra. Everyone was listening and
dropping Euros into his bucket. I bought a CD from him.

Allie wanted a crepe nutella so we bought one and it tasted good.

We headed to the Arc D Triumph. You have to walk up 240 steps on a spiral staircase. Admission was free, as it always is on the first sunday of every month. The view there was fantastic, and we could observe all the
architectural details and things like the mosaic designs in surface of the
streets.

We walked around the Champs D'Elysees and bought a few things. We had lunch at a little chocolatier and boulangerie. We had excellent crepes, and wonderful tuna sandwiches. Then we walked to the Grand and Petite Palais, which were both closed. We walked around the Jardine de Touleries, and Allie went on the carousel. Robert and Allie got cotton candy. It was a wonderful,
subtle cloud color rather than the typical pink you see here.

We walked around the Place Vendome and took a taxi back. The driver tried to take
advantage by charging a higher rate but we caught on and paid what we were
supposed to.

We went back to the Petite Prince for dinner and called it an early evening.

We had a taxi pick us up the next morning made it to Charles De Gaulle. I
used some upgrade coupons and we upgraded to business class.

The flight was quite comfortable and we got in late afternoon.

The weather was and had been nicer in Washington than in Paris. But there is no city like Paris. I would not hesitate to visit again in the winter.

[This message has been edited by richard (edited 02-10-2003).]