We're in Paris!

Claire and I arrived in Paris without any problems on Friday morning. We found our hotel and checked in and discovered that the ground floor of the building had an organic food store! Yay!

After getting organized and cleaned up we headed out to the Eiffel Tower and the Champs de Mars park -- an obvious place to start, since it's walking distance from here. Then we had a picnic dinner in the park, with food we picked up along Rue Cler (a great street for food shopping, just around the corner from the hotel). Picnicing seems to be the way to go for us... great value for the money, and eating outside in the park is great. We got some very nice walnut-and-olive spread for our sandwiches, some fresh chevre, and made some very tasty sandwiches.

After dinner we took the metro to Champs Elysees and did the window-shopping and people-watching thing there. Back to the hotel and collapsed into bed. Jetlag!

Saturday we started at the Musee d'Orsay. That was great -- took longer than we expected, so we didn't end up doing any other museums that day. After a late lunch we did Rick Steve's "Historic Paris" walk around the Notre Dame and other sights in the historic centre of paris.

We had a late (for us) dinner at a Provencal restaurant near the Bastille square, and then did the Montmartre & Sacre Couer walk late that evening.

Today (Sunday) we are taking it easy. Reading and relaxing at the local cafe, and now we are back at the hotel where I've plugged our laptop into the free internet connection.

Today is the first Sunday of the month and many museums are free. Of course, that also means they will be very busy. We'll probably see one museum this afternoon, but other than that, plan to mostly relax, read, and do some trip planning.

We've got reservations for the Paris-Lyon train for tomorrow morning. From Lyon we'll connect through to Chamonix, where we'll be staying for three nights or so and doing day hikes and other stuff around Mount Blanc. Or at least that's the plan for now...