Paris Revisited: Day One- Arrival and Antiques

The long flight wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. First of all, it turns out that AirFrance has an absolutely superb in-flight entertainment line-up. I was actually sad that I would need to sleep on the flight. Even watching movies non-stop for both the flight here and back would leave me sad that I had missed a few. But in the end, I just watched about an hour of Harry Potter, got half the plane in an uproar when I dropped my iPod and couldn't find it, and generally amused the same half of the plane with my antics trying to crawl over my sleeping seat partner (did it successfully both times, by the way). I'm pretty sure the entire coach section thought I was Lucy Ricardo brought back to life. But I found the iPod, and my seat partner was nicely rested when he got to Paris. Apparently, he is coming home for the first time since a year's deployment in Afghanistan (American soldier). I tried to stalk him when we got off the plane, to see the family reunion, but he had luggage checked, and I didn't. So I let him have his privacy and made my way into Paris.

A little worried about the state of my hair and make-up at this point, because when I first got on the plane, the flight crew spoke to me in French. As I exited, they spoke to me in English. I think I looked distinctly less polished. 

I actually got to Laura's place with minimal mishaps- a benefit to having lived in the city before, I would imagine. Problem was, when I got to her place at 10am, I realized I wasn't positive which one exactly was hers. I remembered the right range of numbers, but not the precise one. I settled on it being one of two numbers (it turned out I chose the wrong one), and awkwardly waited on the street for about 20 minutes. Obviously, this didn't work. Luckily, I had exited the Metro station right in front of a Starbucks, so I went back, bought a random green tea, and used their wi-fi to make contact with Laura. It all worked out, and I was able to drop off my stuff, meet The Puppy, and go grocery shopping (read: bread, goat cheese, crumpets, Nutella, peanut butter. Quite literally what I subsisted on for my entire semester here).

Nootka and her mommy, after I woke them up to let me in the apartment

The main adventure of the day was finally going to a Parisian flea market. I meant to the entire time I was here last year, and just never did. When we first got there, I could see exactly why I had never bothered:

Just a bunch of aggressive salesmen and plastic merchandise. Fortunately, Laura persevered, and we found the awesome flea-markety section, full of antiques and books and buttons and truly vintage clothing:

There were also some fun winding alleys full of antiques, but I forgot to get pictures. Sorry.

When we got back in, I was pretty well bushed, working as I was on about three hours of fitful plane sleep, and only about four hours of fitful can't-miss-the-plane sleep the night before that. So I canceled my plans to go see the Eiffel Tower, and we stayed in for the night, with pizza, the puppy, and an episode of X-Files. And then I got to stretch out on an actual bed (futon, rather, but when compared to an airplane seat...) and sleep for 12 hours. Bliss.