Author Archives: Dave Hodson

Day 3 – Paris

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Today, Nadine’s nieces and nephews wanted to visit Euro Disney.  Instead of joining them at Disney, Nadine and I decided to explore some local sites on foot.  The day was a little overcast, with some periods of sun and some some brief periods of light drizzle, but otherwise a good day for walking around.

After breakfast at a local cafe in the Opéra area, we walked past Place Vendome to Rue de Rivoli to Place de la Concorde.

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From Place de la Concorde, we walked up the Avenue des Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.

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After visiting Arc de Triomphe, we headed over to the Eiffel Tower.  Since it was threatening to rain, we decided to hop on the metro to our next destination.  The Paris metro, while rather dirty, smelly and run down, is very extensive and can take you just about anywhere quite easily.

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I’m not sure what the security threat was, but French soldiers with large weapons were walking around everywhere.  France can put up a fight?  Who knew!

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After our tour around the sites, we walked along the Seine and back to our hotel.

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After a brief rest, we met up with Nadine’s family after their day Disney, and headed out for dinner.  We took the metro back to the Champs Elysees and selected a restaurant.

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Back at our hotel, we took another quick walk around the area.  Below is the opera house at night.

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Below is the Academie Nationale de Musique on the other side of the opera house.

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Here is Nadine standing in the doorway to our hotel.

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Day 2 – Arrival in Paris

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Our flight from Zurich to Paris was scheduled to leave at 9:00 AM, giving us 1 hour and 10 minutes to clear immigration and security and change terminals to connect to our flight with Swiss.  We arrived in Zurich about 20 minutes early, which gave us a bit more time, so we were able to grab a snack in the Swiss lounge and do some shopping in the airport.

Zurich airport is very efficient, and were were through all the formalities and in the other terminal within about 20 minutes of our Air Canada flight landing.

After breakfast in the lounge, we did some shopping here!

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The Swiss flight was comfortable.  There were only 3 passengers (including us) in the business class cabin, so it was comfortable and quiet and the service was excellent.  We were served our third breakfast of the day (the first being on Air Canada before landing and the second in the Senator lounge), so we arrived in Paris very well fed.  European domestic business class is not as spacious as North American business class, but for a short flight of 1 hour and 15 minutes, it was more than adequate.

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Arriving in Paris Charles De Gaulle airport brought back memories of the last time we were here.  We were in a different terminal this time, but it smelled just as bad as the other terminal!  There is simply no comparison to the efficiency and cleanliness of Zurich airport.  After claiming our luggage, we took a taxi to our hotel in Paris.

Because the primary purpose of this trip was visiting Nadine’s family, we selected a hotel near to where they were staying.  We chose the W Paris – Opéra, which was in a great location about a 15-minute walk from Tsiry and Anita’s hotel, right by a couple of metro stops, surrounded by several nice cafes, and our room had a great view of the Paris opera house.  Below is the hotel entrance.

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The room was a little small, but that’s to be expected in Paris.  It was very clean and modern, with a lot of historic features.  Here is the view from our window.

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After getting unpacked, we met with Nadine’s family and got caught up over lunch.  The last time we had visited was our trip to Madagascar in 2006.

Our first family trip was to the Musée Grévin.  Below is Nadine and her two nephews posing with a very life-like wax replica of Bruce Willis.

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After spending a day seeing some local sites, an aunt and uncle of Nadine’s who live in Paris joined us all for dinner.

Feeling rather tired from jet lag and a lack of quality sleep from spending the night on an airplane, we headed back to the hotel after dinner around midnight to get some sleep.

Day 1 – Leaving Toronto

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Today was such an uneventful day, it probably doesn’t even warrant its own blog entry.

We flew out of Toronto into Zurich on an overnight flight, so after driving to the airport in the afternoon, we checked in for our flight, stopped into the Maple Leaf Lounge for dinner, and boarded our flight.

Here we are arriving at the International Maple Leave Lounge at YYZ.

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And after an hour or so in the lounge, we proceeded to the gate to board the flight.  It was particularly crowded in the gate area, so the lounge was a welcome oasis.

Here is Nadine getting settled in her pod.

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The flight was scheduled to depart at 6:10 PM and arrive in Zurich at 7:50 AM the next morning, which is 7 hours and 40 minutes of travel time.  Therefore, if I was to have any hope of enjoying our first day in Paris, I was going to need almost all of that flight time to get some rest.  Shortly after take-off, I decided to skip dinner and try to get some sleep early.