En Velo!

July 31 Wednesday Day 2
Before sleeping last night Jamie had gone online and bought us a membership for Velib. The public access bike service they have here.   Throughout the city there are stations of bicycles.  You check one out, ride to your destination and check it in there.  It's pretty awesome and we thought it would be a great way to get around AND see things AND get some exercise.  Perfect!  

As you can imagine, we were very jetlagged so we were both asleep by 9pm.  After 14 hours of sleep we woke up ready for adventure so we stepped out the door at the bright and early time of 12:30p. Armed with our veblib confirmation numbers we went out in hunt of a velib station and found one after a very short time.  Considering they are about 300 meters apart throughout the city, it wasn't that hard. After bumbling around and encouraging the assistance from a man dining at the nearby restaurant we hopped on our bikes and rolled away.  (With many cautions about Paris drivers from our helper)
 
With plenty of time to get to our tour we didn't feel bad about stopping at every street corner to check the map.  However, coupled with having the check our bikes back in every 30 minutes to avoid  the fees we quickly got stressed about missing our deadline.  Thankfully, we found the river and it was like a highway We flew down the Seine toward the Eiffel Tower.

The tour.  We booked a bicycle tour with a company called Fat Tire Bicycles.
In fact, we booked two back to back.  We toured with Fat Tire for 9 hours! The morning tour took us past the Eiffel Tower, Champs de Mars, the Ecole Militaire,  through one of the first of Napoleon/Haussman planned neighborhoods, down to the Hotel des Invalides, over the Pont Alexander III, past De la Concord, and into the Jardin de Tuileries for a rest and a snack.   After this we rolled past the Musee du Louvre and then made our way back over to the office.  Upon arrival at the office, we popped right on into the 7pm tour (coincidentally with the same tourguide) and off we went again! 
For this tour we went farther across the city, through the Latin section and over to the Notre Dame. Before continuing on we fortified ourselves with ice cream.     Jamie had grapefruit and Shannon had Caramel with salted butter.  It was the most expensive ice cream we had ever eaten, but also the most delicious.   After ice cream we were off!  Through the islands on the seine, past the Saint Chapelle,  St Michele, through the Louvre again, past Lady Di's tunnel, along the river and to a boat.  We hopped on the boat and took a ride down the Seine, complete with wine, a sparkling Eiffel Tower and people all along the banks of the Seine.   After the boat ride, we went back to the office and by then it was midnight. 

Wanting to be daring and bicycle back across the city we went in search of a Velib station.  And while they are indeed only 300 meteres apart that does not guarante that it has available or acceptable bicycles. By this point in the night the bicycles are all taken out or have missing pedals, flat tires or broken seats.   After finally hunting one down and starting to ride, we decided we were hungry.  Stopping to eat, unfortunately in a very posh area of town we paid 42 euro for two hot dogs, a plate of french fries, a water and a beer.  RIDICULOUS.             Also, we had to suffer through an unbelievably drunk lady.   When we finally left dinner, but the velib station near us had no bikes so we walked on.  And on.  And on.  We made friends with a man also looking for a velib station.   And when we found a station 1/2 hour later we discovered that Jamie's bike was not properly "returned"  and we couldn't take out another.  UGGGGGGGGGGGGH.   So, we decided to walk the 3 miles back to the apartment during which time we fretted that we would be charged 150 euro.      Arriving back at the apartment finally at 4am, we showered and climbed into bed.  

French Adventures! Day: 1

On the road again! It feels so good to be back on the road again! 

Lyric references aside, it really really does feel great to be moving about the world again.  But what are we even doing right now you ask?  OK, admittedly our plans as of late have been kind of crazy and understandably people have no clue where we are at the moment.  This is because we've been applying to what we think is an extremely enticing and exciting work opportunity in the frozen continent that is Antarctica (aka the END OF THE WORLD).  While this has recently taken a lot of our energies, we've actually had Europe on our radars for quite some time (we almost visited when we were dating, actually!), so while we were putting all of our (quite lengthy) paperwork together for Antarctica we were also planning our summer adventures in France and Spain, where we will be throughout August and September.  The whole trip breaks down pretty simply as this: first week in Paris, the rest of August visiting one of Shannon's closest friends near Strausburg, and September we plan to hike the Camino de Santiago (the way of St. James).  So yeah, we're pretty pumped!

So today was a travel day that quickly bled into a weird sort of "Lets not get tired and fall-asleep-day in order to avoid jet-lag".  We are currently ahead of MA timezone-wise by 6 hours, which really meant when we felt like it was time for bed, the sun was coming out.  We each maybe managed an hour of sleep on the plane, but we knew if we succumbed to slumber our rhythm might be off for our entire stay in Paris.  So sleep much we have not!

OK but backing up a bit, our trip on Aer Lingus (Boston to Dublin, Dublin to Paris) was very smooth and while definitely worth the price a bit lackluster in the service department (but maybe we are just used to unbelievably good service of the Asian airlines we had the pleasure of flying with).  We arrived in Paris around 9ish, gathered our luggage, and proceeded to have mini heart-attacks when our ATM cards didn't work as promised (solved since then, no worries!).  We took our train to the Jourdain area of Paris to meet our "landlady" for part of the week.  We had heard recently about a interesting program called Air BnB (airbnb.com) that basically turns anyone with a spare room, apartment, house ect into a temporary hotel.  The woman we were renting from was already at the place and was extremely generous with information about the area.  After giving us all the details about the apartment, she headed out and handed the place over to us for the next few days.  It is tiny tiny tiny, but extremely efficient with its space and we are really enjoying it-we'll have some pictures up soon! 

And it turns out this is near some pretty neat neighborhoods.  Our host gave us a few place in walking distance to check out and we totally took advantage of the advice (remember, we're trying to beat jet lag).  We walked for several hours around the area - we saw a street market, had our first French meal (we had trouble figuring out what we were ordering, but we feel better prepared for next time), walked through a beautiful park,and then made our way to the canal.  As luck would have it, a boat was actually going through the lock system which was FASCINATING and neither of us had ever seen it done before.  As luck would also have it, the canal was also right next to the sight of a major summerlong festival called "Paris Plage" (which I think means Paris beach), and was just filled with all sorts of fun little activities (remind you, we were just walking to stay awake at this point and activities of any other sort were completely off the agenda).  But super fun to watch.

Our first impressions of Paris are just exceeding the hype - maybe we got lucky with the area we ended up in, the but the combination of the diversity of culture, the architecture, the FOOD (and affordable wine :), the sane drivers...thus far are all making this a great first day.  Then again, we're on one hours sleep, so we'll see how tomorrow goes!

We have signed up for the city bike program tomorrow so we are really excited to see even more!