Paris

The flight over contained some screaming kids, but my Etymotis headphones did a good job of blocking most of the noise. After three times on the British Air Denver->London flight, I now have my routine down. Jack & Coke, Dinner with wine, watch movie, fall asleep. I woke up just as the crew was delivering breakfast.

We were a little delayed landing in London due to congestion and when we finally landed we had to taxi around for 10 minutes before we parked in the middle of nowhere. Then we had to take a 10 minute bus ride from the plane to the terminal. I only had like an hour layover in London so I was already freaked about missing my flight. Once I finally got into the terminal, there was a HUGE line for security. Because I had to be at my gate in 20 minutes, I go to go through the "fast track" lane. It really wasn't very fast, but I estimate that the other line would have taken over an hour to get through. They had 2 security screens open (one for fast track and the other for peasants), and neither set of employees were looking very motivated.

I did end up making my flight just in time. I never realized how quick it is to get from London to Paris because I usually doze off. This time I was awake and it was less than an hour flight. Apparently my luggage didn't get "fast track'ed" because it was still in London when I got to Paris. Not a huge deal. We could have waited another 40 minutes for it, but we decided we'd rather get out of the airport and have them deliver it. (To make a long story short, they finally got it to me Sunday afternoon.)

I was dragging a bit, but we stayed up until about 10 on Saturday night. We walked around, ate some dinner, and watched some Rubgy before calling it in. Sunday morning I got up around 8:30, so I feel like I'm adjusting to the time change pretty well. Sundays suck for a tourist in Europe. Most things were closed and the weather was cold and rainy today so we went to some museums. We both agree that we're not really art museum people, so we found some science museums. (FYI - http://www.museums-of-paris.com/ lets you list the museums by category.)

Our first museum stop (after a croque monsieur on the way) was Palais de la Découverte. Like most hands-on museums I've been to, it was full of kids, and half the exhibits weren't fully functional. It was okay, but not someplace I'd go back to. One of the exhibits had information translated into English, but the rest did not. Our next stop was Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace. This was a much better museum and worth the visit. We saw some interesting exhibits on some tunnels that are being built in the Alps, optics, biology, etc. (For the record, Musée des Arts et Métiers is a pretty week geeky museum.)

We were pretty worn out after all that walking around, so we took the Metro back to our hotel area and grabbed a Elephant beer and baguette sandwich at a cafe. Our hotel is really close to the Louvre. It seems like a pretty nice area so far. In the city, but on a side street that isn't really noisy.

Time for dinner now...