On to Paris

We woke this morning to wet streets and cloudy, threatening skies. Our plan had been to get up early, head to Brussels, and do a quick three-hour walking tour before our 1:15 pm train to Paris. With the rain that seemed a lot less attractive.

Instead, we had a leisurely breakfast and ambled down to the main square around 10, picked up a bus for the station and hopped on the train for Brussels that left at 10:30.

By 11:30 we were sitting on a bench in Brussels Midi station waiting for the train to Paris. We stuck our heads outside, but it was raining harder now. Also, there's really nothing interesting to see at the Midi station; the interesting sites are at the Central station and the trip didn't seem that attractive now that it was raining.

We took turns sitting, watching the luggage and walking around. We picked up some sandwiches, sodas and paprika-flavored shoestring potatoes for a picnic lunch on the train.

Around 12:30 we headed up to the platform to wait for the train, but it was already there, so we found our seats. The Thalys train is one of the very high-speed trains that goes from Brussels to Paris in a little more than an hour. Last time we were in Europe, we had a Eurail Pass, so we were always in the first-class carriage. This time we bought 2nd-class tickets, and the seats were a little more like economy-class airline seats. Still very nice, but a little cramped.

As we pulled away from the station, we brought out our lunch and books. The train was really fast and really quiet. Several times we paralleled a freeway and we passed the cars going our direction like they were in first gear. Kathy fell asleep right after she finished eating, but I wanted to make sure I knew how to get on the subway and find our apartment once we got to Paris.

At 2:30 we stepped off the train at Gare du Nord, paused a second for a picture, and set off in search of the Metro (which was right in the train station). I stopped by a Tabbac shop and bought a carnet of 10 tickets, we found our line and hopped on.

Four stops later we were at Les Halles, walking through the mall and up the escalator into a sunny, busy Friday afternoon in Paris.

Our apartment was about two blocks from the Metro stop. We passed the door once. It looks just like this one, but it is actually two doors down. Following the instructions sent to us by Vacations in Paris, we let ourselves into the building and finally opened the door on our home for the next week.

The apartment was very nice but we immediately had one disappointment. One of the selling points was the view, directly across from the l'Oratoire du Louve. The city of Paris, though, has begun restoring the building, so the entire facade is draped in white, which isn't nearly as attractive.

The rest of the apartment was great. It has a separate bedroom and bath along with a small, but nice kitchen and a large combined dining-living area that looks out over the street. There's also a small balcony.

Our first order of business was to do some shopping. The "house book" left in the apartment said that the best grocery-household shopping was on Rue Montorguil just north of Les Halles. That looked like only a few blocks away, so we took off walking.

As we walked through the park at Bourse de Commerce, we were surprised to see several homeless people sleeping on the street and in doorways. I didn't remember seeing that back in 2007.

Rue Montorguil was indeed a great shopping street in the Parisian sense. There was every kind of store; cheese shops, bakeries, fish mongers, butchers. We weren't quite ready for that, though; we wanted something more like a Ralph's. Fortunately, on the corner, we found a familiar sight: Starbucks.

From the guidebook, I had "memorized" the location of a good grocery store, "Monoprix". I had also "memorized" the map to get there. It seemed like we walked for every, and, when we didn't find it, we purchased some more subway tickets and headed back home.

We stopped by a local grocery (kind of like buying groceries at a 7-11) and got eggs and milk. Once we were back in the apartment, I looked up the address again, and realized that we should have been looking for 21 Rue du Opera instead of 51. We also realized we had forgotten quite a few things, so, at 8:00 pm we made one last run and found the Monoprix.

It was a really nice store and we got almost everything we needed. By 9:30 (early, I guess, by Parisian standards), we were home and unpacked, and headed for bed.

Tomorrow, the Left Bank.