Friday, June 13, 2008

She Went to Paris

I went to Paris Wednesday night for Thursday meetings with GdF and returned that night. Very fast trip and no sight seeing. It was Geert and myself meeting with one colleague from GdF to discuss future synergies of the combined group.

We stayed at the Waldorf Trocadero (no relation to THE Waldorf). The rooms were tiny, and my view was of a wall, but the hotel was very nice and I would stay there again.

The two best parts of the trip were (1) the food and (2) the commute. I love the typical French breakfast (or what I think is typical as I've really only seen it in France, and in Europe I suppose) of baguette, cheese, meats, and tea. And, at the 'canteen' (aka cafeteria) at GdF, I had an individual pizza that had slices of brie melted on top - wow - that was good! The commute in the taxi from Gare du Nord to the hotel, and from the hotel to GdF, was great because we drove through L'Etoile (aka Arc du Triomphe). That is one big monument. When you're driving up to it, it's size is massive and impressive. And, driving around the ginormous rotary is fascinating. TEN streets come into it. You can see from the map how crazy it is, and why it's called L'Etoile (the star). And, you can see how close the hotel was to it, and the Eiffel Tower (although I didn't see it because we got to the hotel at 10:30 p.m. and left at 8 am.)

I know we have to go back to Paris early July, but am not sure if we'll go before then.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Yum, that breakfast does sound delicious.

On our interns' budget, we went to Paris on a coach/ferry/coach ride, leaving from Dover and landing in Calais. Not as sexy as the Eurostar, but we had the added bonus of our guide pointing out seemingly endless WWII battle sites in northern France. They also drove us directly to a huge liquor outlet off the highway in Calais, where people crammed a bunch of booze in the back of the coach. Ah, budget travel!

Nancy said...

I think all hotel rooms in Paris are tiny, unless you are in one of those lap of luxury places. We weren't.

When we were in Paris a couple of months ago we found the typical Parisian breakfast to be espresso and a glass of wine.

Not for us, you understand, but for the Parisians who stopped in the cafe where we ate our breakfast of omelette fromage.

Oh no, we waited until at least 2pm to start drinking. I mean really.

My spell checker says the spelling of omelette is wrong, but it looks right to me.