We planned to wake up early, see the Louvre and then go to lunch at a 3-star (the highest appellation possible in France). Not so much. We slept until 11am and that meant that lunch was our breakfast. So as to not completely lose out on sightseeing, we took a taxi to a point about ½ way up the Champs Ellysses and from there walked up to the Arc d’ Triomphe.
. . . to talk about the fact that I have jet lag like I have never had before.
It is 3:45am (Pacific) as I write this. I didn’t get enough sleep yesterday and so I went to bed at 9pm, feeling that a good 9 hours would get me back into shape.
At 3am I was wide awake and wondering if we’d actually turned on the alarm. (We don’t have any electrical devices, including clocks, in the bedroom. This is occasionally a problem as we can’t tell what time it is until we go into another room.)
Apparently I’m now an even-earlier riser.
We slept until after 11am, and it easily could have been after noon. We clambered up from the depths of a very good sleep and looked at various walks for the day. (Breakfast was a croissant and hot drinks from a local boulangerie.)
Business Class is _the_ way to fly to Europe, and Melatonin is your friend. We ate well, I had yummy wine (1st Class was essentially empty so the cabin attendant brought me back wine from that cabin to drink — and gave me a bottle “to taste” for the hotel room.) and we slept at least 3 hours. I say this with pleasure because our trip to London elicited catnaps and maybe an hours sleep — TOTAL. *shudder*. Business Class seats are much more comfortable (they recline nearly 180 degrees for one thing) than Economy Plus, and the food was very very good, and so is the wine. It was seriously empty, so we had lots of individual attention. Oh — and the ‘amenity bags’ are great! Eye mask, ear plugs, socks, toothbrush & toothpaste, and really nice moisturizer. All in a very handy bag.
I will now tell you three funny things and the not at all funny thing that came about as a result of their existence. Funny thing about a laptop — it needs power to operate for more than a few hours. Funny thing about France — they have a different power source/plug configuration. Funny thing about the power converter we bought (good for use in 150 countries!): it sisn’t designed for three prong plugs, only two.
So we got a converter at the airport on our way home. That’s why we’ve been silent since the first ‘we’re here!’ posts.