Come fly away

After I got my fill of Les Halles, I ventured down into the Châtelet-Les Halles métro station and rode over to Odéon on the Left Bank. There are two cafés there that I know and I wanted to sit down and have a drink. I chose Le Danton because it was on the shady side of the street and ordered a glass of chardonnay. The waiter brought it with a little plate of potato chips. I watched people scurry by in all directions, crossing streets, getting on and off of buses, and entering and exiting the métro station like ants going into and out of their nest in the ground. I finished my drink and ordered another. It came with a second little plate of potato chips. I devoured them. Now pleasantly light-headed, I walked back to my hotel, dumped the backpack and camera in my room, and headed back out for dinner.

I took this photo of my Air Canada plane (a Boeing 777) at the gate in Paris with my ASUS tablet and then emailed it to Ken.

I planned to walk through the old neighborhood where I spent a few months in 1981 and eat dinner at a pizzeria that we liked back then. The Vesuvio is still there and going strong (apparently they've opened a branch on the Champs-Elysées; wow). I got a table under the awning on the sidewalk and had a pizza, salad, and half-bottle of Valpolicella. Then I wanted to walk it all off, so I wandered toward the river, crossed through the Louvre courtyard, then headed toward the Marais, where I stopped for a cognac (at Les Philosophes on the rue Vielle du Temple) before going back to my Left Bank hotel. I have no photos of any of that because I had left the camera in my room. Sometimes it's better to just enjoy the experience instead of trying to document the experience.

The next morning I had breakfast and checked out of the hotel. I lugged my luggage to the RER and rode the train up to the airport, where I did all the check-in and security stuff. With some time to kill before my 1:00pm flight, I sat in a little café and ate a salad. I may have had a half-bottle of rosé, too. We were soon boarded and took off, on time, for our seven-hour flight to Montréal.