Nous sommes arrivés à Paris hier, le 19 juillet.
Our plane arrived at Charles de Gaulle yesterday at about 8:30 AM, or 1:30 AM Minnesota time. I slept for about two hours on the plane before they woke us up for breakfast. Not surprisingly, I and the rest of the family were pretty tired all day long. We got to our apartment in the late morning. We are staying in the fifth arrondissement, i.e. the Latin Quarter.
After a couple of hours of resting but not sleeping (because I wanted to make sure that I would be plenty tired come bedtime) and lackadaisically unpacking, the girls and I walked over to the Jardin des Plantes, a name which Molly thought was redundant. The walk really refreshed us, and I felt like I got my second wind. The gardens are nice enough, though not really anything special. However, the carousel was awesome.
The carousel is called the Dodo Manège and contained extinct and endangered animals. The nearby sign explained what all the animals were, when they lived, and how they died off or why they were threatened. It looked a little rickety, so we thought maybe that it had been retired, but a little while later, we saw some kids riding it. Very neat!
For dinner, we headed up to Rue Mouffetard, a nearby cobblestone street that is a bit touristy but still a lovely place full of restaurants. My three course menu for 15 Euros included an exquisite warm chèvre salad, a very good salmon, and a chocolate mousse that wasn’t noticeably better than Jello chocolate pudding.
Slept about eleven hours last night, partly due to being tired, partly due to having a headache which made staying in bed seem like a good option at 7 AM. But this morning I feel awake and more or less like the time outside matches the time in my head.
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