"Bonjour!Comment ca va? Parle vous Anglais?" "Merci"

Day one in Paris and these couple of phrases have managed to get us by so far. Just as well because we are fast approaching the limits of my French ;-) We landed at Charles de Gualle airport at 7:30am feeling pretty weary but certainly well fed and happy after a very smooth flight. Thumbs up Etihad!

Signage was great and we managed to pick up our luggage and hop on the train to Gard de Nord hassle free, surprisingly without any customs check. Once at Gard de Nord however, we had a 'confused tourist' moment with transferring to the metro...very easy to find the correct line but we wanted to purchase a multi-day Mobilis pass or alternatively a tourist 'Visite' pass and there were no occupied info booths in sight. Our bags were feeling pretty heavy by now so we decided to make do with a single day ticket and find a tourist office later.

Now, we had been warned that Parisians can be rude so we were quite pleasantly surprised when, while trying to figure out the ticket machines, the young man behind us stepped forward and in near perfect English offered his help and started to explain the options. After locating the 4 day Mobilis pass, we put our card in to pay and received an error.

Thats when it got a little crazy, and our French friend got a little sneaky.

Sneaky Frenchman: "I think it is because your card is not french, do you have cash?"

Us: "No not enough, do you know if there is an exchange or ATM here?"

Sneaky Frenchman: races through the french screens and after mumbling that he is just testing to see if it is a machine error, suddenly whips out his own card and before we can say boo he pays for 4 tickets, with his own money. "Here are your passes, now you need to pay me cash"

Us: WTF. "Um.We just told you we have no cash. We didn't ask you to buy those! We needed to go get cash"

Sneaky Frenchman: "Well I have just paid my own money. What am I to do? One of you must come to the ATM with me, it is four of you so 160 euro"..then eyeing Gems wallet, "yes I see you have enough, you pay me back please"

Us: "woooah hold on, you only paid 42euro, we saw that...that's 4 one day passes not 4 four day passes"

Cue argument, with Sneaky Frenchman trying to talk his way around his little fib, which included tactics like flashing around a card on a lanyard and pretending he was metro staff, and eventually giving up when he realized we are not so easily fooled. We paid him the 42 euro to avoid a scene and got out of there.

Oh dear. Not a great start but luckily the tickets are a genuine full day pass and for the rest of the day everyone else has been genuinely friendly!

We jumped on the metro to Republique (near Bastille) and made it to our apartment easily, but a little too early. The owners have been nice enough to allow us to drop our bags at 11:30am and then check in anytime after cleaning at 12:30pm, instead of the usual 4pm. So we sat in a little cafe, ordered coffees and watched the world go by, starting by then to realise and appreciate that we truly are in Paris!!

After dropping our bags off in our lovely little apartment, we spent some time just wandering and window shopping - patisseries, fleuristes,fruit stalls, cheese shops, chocolatiers, wine shops, shoe shops...so many shops and all so enticing! We ate macaroons, sat in the park at Place de Vosges (wikipedia tells me this is the oldest planned square in Paris), visited the Place de la Bastille and it's July Column, and stumbled across the beautiful church of Saint Paul Saint Louis. Loving all the architecture and little old alleyways. Loving Paris in general!

We arrived home at about 3pm after a quick grocery shop, finally got to shower, cooked and ate some pasta and then gave in to the jetlag. Mark and I had sworn to stay awake until at least 7:30pm to try to get our body clocks sorted but I failed miserably. Ben,Gem and I crashed right after dinner, while Mark soldiered on and after attempting several times to prod me awake, went for another wander. I woke up at 8:30pm and it was still light outside, it's now midnight and I'm wide awake while Mark is sleeping soundly and kicking jetlag ass. Sigh.

Tomorrow we are off to see some of the big sights - Eiffel tower, Notre Dame and Arc de Triomphe, which is a little bit exciting! Early start so I had better force some sleep.

Bonne nuit!

Ok so I googled that one. Whatever.

Liss xox