Travel days are always stressful but Becky and I finished up our packing and got the dogs to the boarding with minimal fuss and had already decided with a 2:30 flight time to eat lunch at the airport. I will give a shout out here to Austin Airports move to more local dining options and Becky and I had a good lunch at the Peached Tortilla. The first flight was a painless one to Dallas and we had no issues getting to the gate in Dallas for our long flight to Paris. The flight was long and uncomfortable as usual in coach but nothing particular to write about there. On arrival at CDG we got through passport control (the path to which had these interesting boarding and deplaning rotating doors that let so many in going one way and so many the other in turn it was interesting to say the least but quite the bottleneck).

We caught the train to Paris after figuring out which ticket machines took cards as we had minimal Euro cash. On arrival in Paris we took the wrong exit from Gare du Nord but pretty quickly got our bearings and walked to our hotel just outside of the Gare de lEst station next door as that is where our early Sunday train to Munich would depart from. We got checked in, cleaned up and changed and decided as it was just about noon we needed to move about to try and stay awake as long as we could (neither of us slept on the plane). With the “gillets jaunes” (yellow vest) riots happening mostly down by the main tourist drag we decided to go back to one of our favorite places in Paris, Montmarte.

In Montmarte we went to a small christmas market and Becky had her first “vin chaud” (hot spiced wine) and then to my delight we took the funicular up the mountain to Sacre Couer. We walked through Sacre Couer which is among my favorite cathedrals anywhere with it’s domed top. It was beautiful and of course reverent inside and also a nice break from the cold wind which hit us up on the mountain there.

Afterwards we decided to go to the Dali museum and see it which was fun. We particularly liked his Alice in Wonderland series which neither of us had seen before.

After that we saw a sculpture of a man stuck in a wall that was interesting and then proceeded to the Cafe du Moulins which is the cafe where Amelie was filmed. Amelie is one of our favorite movies so it’s always fun to stop there for a coffee and a hot chocolate. We decided we were winding down about then but it was still early so on the way back we scouted out the train station, Gare de l’Est, so we would have our bearings early the next morning. There was also a Christmas Market there so we wandered through looking at all the food and crafts. On returning to the hotel we decided supper was out so we asked about a bakery and got some things there and at the super market near the hotel and just ate in the room. We video chatted with Mom and Dad (anyone that wants a call get the app Google Duo and let me know when to call!) and then basically organized our stuff for the early morning and started to wind down. I did get to watch the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi in French which is highly recommended! Germany tomorrow!