I Have Arrived, or, The Bitch is Back

Bonjour monde!

After a twelve hour flight next to the most insane American ever created (I will blog about this in greater detail later. I have pages and pages written about it in my notebook), I arrived in Paris at midday yesterday and then spent a very long time waiting for my bag to arrive at the baggage claim (if there's one thing that American airports are slightly good at sometimes, it's getting all the bags there in one go, rather than sending out a steady drip of luggage) and then waiting for my Laotian cab driver to believe that I wasn't Italian (Es tu italien? No, suis americain! No! Ouais!)

I met my parents at the apartment and we wandered around the Eiffel Tower and the Champ de Mars. There is a Christmas Village (Village de Noel) up at the foot of the Champ de Mars right now. I have taken many photos of all of this, but I forgot to bring my Compact Flash reader so there will be no photos until I am back in the United States.

My brother and his fiance arrived at 10 last night, and so we got a late start today.  I was the first person awake today, at 10:30, so I made us a pot of coffee and put out our Parisian breakfast spread: bread, cheese, jam and ham. I was not allowed to buy fig jam at the marche yesterday ("Gross!" my father said), but this morning Nathan and Emily wished that there were fig jam. Stuck between a rock and a hard place I am.

We are going to take a stroll through the 7e visiting Les Invalides and go through the Pletzl to end up in the Latin Quarter. If we have time we will take my mom to Ile St Louis where there are a lot of little craft stores.

I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane

While those of the Christian faith celebrate the birth of my homie Jesus, I am figuring out what to put in my carry-on for Air France Flight Number 83, San Francisco International to Charles De Gaulle, leaving later today. As those readers who have the pleasure of spending any amount of time with me know, the family has decided to forgo the usual Christmas voyage nearer to the equator (most recently Hawaii and Costa Rica) to brave a slightly northern lattitude and the decidedly non-coastal pleasures of Paris.

The last time I went to Paris, I arrived dazed and confused in the morning, looking something like this:

That is, in fact, exactly what I looked like. I took that photo on the RER from CDG to Gare du Nord  on my way to meet my friend Rebecca at our hotel near the Bastille. As you can see, I was quite tired and wearing a blue hoodie, which was once a staple of the Seth wardrobe, but now unrecognizable to most. I also had a lot more hair going on back then as was the fashion at the time. But that was in July, when Paris is muggy and prone to thunderstorms. We were there during a then-record heat wave, and it felt more like a California summer than anything else.