Oui Oui We're in Paris!

After a very long flight from SFO, we finally reached our destination. Well, the Paris airport at least. We took a bus to baggage claim in which I discovered my first French phrase. I have no idea what it means though heh.

We didn't wait long for our luggage so after we got everything, we went out to meet our driver who would drive us to our host's house, Sandrine. On the way we snapped a couple pictures.

Upon arriving to Sandrine's house, she graciously presented us with my first taste of French foie gras with toasts, wine & lunch. I have to point out here that this was also the first time I experienced a term called aperatif (sp?). This is very common in French culture where you eat before you have the main course. Kind of like our appetizers here. Lunch was roasted pork loin and a salad with simple country dressing (dijon mustard, vinegar and olive oil). I also snapped a picture of the newspaper to let you guys know what day it was. December 15th was the day we arrived in Paris!

We rested and organized after lunch and decided to go out and see the town. What better way to spend the rest of the afternoon than to go to our first brasserie? Justyn had coffee and I decided on a beer. Very refreshing :)

The next morning we woke up early and hit up the nearest patisserie for some baguettes and pastries. To my suprise, I didn't feel like eating a baguette, so I ate a quiche lorraine instead. The thing to note here is the line waiting to get into this place. According to Sandrine, this place is the most popular one in town (outside of Paris at least).

After getting breakfast, we found a little Christmas festival going on. We got some hot mulled wine & roasted chestnuts. The picture of Ashley is her posing in front of a manequin (I know that's probably spelled wrong) in a motorcycle shop. We also stopped off at Ed which I most closely identified to our 7-11 except with actual groceries.

For dinner we went to a place near the brasserie which sold pizza & gyros sammiches (Hey, don't ask me, I'm just a tourist). The restaurant didn't have a bar, so we went back to the brasserie to have dinner and drinks. Note the red and green beer. Yeah...

The next morning we took the metro into Paris to see the Louvre.

At last we arrived in Paris to do some walking around before hitting up the Louvre. We stopped off at a nearby cafe to have some coffee and relax before the massive amount of walking around we'd be doing.

After coffee, we started our walk to the Louvre (which deserves it's own post). We saw some erm.. interesting things on the way. Oh, and the French are used to crossing the street without waiting for a green walking person sign. Tsk tsk... That's why Justyn's running in one of the pictures. That's right folks, New York hot dogs.