Paris certainly lives up to its reputation. Around the airport and outskirts of the city, it looks like just any other city. Freeways, concrete buildings, billboards everywhere. But once you get into the center… Oh man.

But before I rave about the architecture and food, let me back up for just a minute.

Our two flights — one to Minneapolis and second to Paris — went about as well as you can expect when you spend 11 hours on full airplanes. They left and arrived on time, the hostesses spoke French and English, and the food was surprisingly good… and surprisingly familiar.

We had a chauffeur pick us up from the airport and drive us to our apartment, which was really easy and convenient.

But back to Paris itself. I haven’t had a chance to really get pictures of it, but every single building has wrought iron across the windows and carvings everywhere. Unfortunately, I don’t know any of the architectural terms to describe anything, but needless to say it’s beautiful.

Here’s a building we saw on our way back from dinner-

And here’s the amazing view out our 4th floor apartment window-

Yes, that’s a cathedral. From the 1500’s. Wasn’t even mentioned in the information we got about the place. And the dome is where people went to sell grain in the late 1800’s. The stairs we climb up to get here are stone and worn down unevenly. They have hooks driven into them to hold rods which hold carpet in place. Everything here has so much history. Anything build after the 1800’s looks strangely out of place.

The single meal we’ve had here was amazing. Most of us jumped straight into the strange new food and were not disappointed. Dad’s appetizer was some sort of salad guacamole with raw salmon and mine was goat cheese on toast with honey. And then we ordered rabbit, calf head, and duck. Here’s the rabbit-

Hey, when in Rome. Or Paris. It was all delicious. There was some distinct cultural differences though. We spent two hours at dinner, even though most of it was just waiting. And that was the norm. Everyone just sat and talked, ordering tea or coffee when they were done eating and sitting around for another half hour. Because of that, you have to ask the waiter to bring your check- they don’t just bring it when you’re done eating like in America. We realized that after maybe half an hour.

We’ve only been here ten hours, but Paris has been amazing so far. Tomorrow we have hop on, hop off bus passes, so we’ll see most of the main sights. Look for those pictures tomorrow!