Food

I'm not sure I've EVER eaten so many "unhealthy" things in one day (while also NOT having ingested even one remotely healthy item). I tried...really I did. I kept thinking I should buy a piece of fruit at a corner stand but it just never happened.

Here is what I ate today:

Croissant for breakfast
Brie sandwich on baguette for lunch
Chocolate croissant for dessert after lunch
Ice cream
Falafel
Another chocolate croissant for dessert after dinner

No vitamins, fiber, or protein in sight!

First update

Holy Europen whirlwind, batman! The last couple of days have been a crazy cyclone of activity.

We arrived in Amsterdam at 5 am on Tuesday morning (which was 11 pm for us after having left Atlanta at 3 pm). Neither of us slept at all on the plane beacuse it was daytime for us and our seats were supremely uncomfortable. I was totally boxed into a seat that didn't have a window and since it was right behind economy comfort, the guy in front of me had extra reclining action that totally imposed into my space. Anyway.....after arriving into the actual city of Amsterdam, we proceeded to refemiliarize ourselves with its charm. We walked around the Jordaan neighborhood and the Red Light District for about 4 hours. 

And then the jet lag started kicking in a bit so we headed back to the hotel to get a bit of a rest in before our exciting evening plans with my friend, Sumir. I napped for 3 hours (Bill didn't for whatever reason) and then Sumir arrived from Apeldoorn, where she is staying for about a month while doing research on bonobo chimpanzees. (She is working on a phd in evolutionary psycholog in a dual program at St. Andrews University in Scotland and somethingorother university in St. Etienne, France). We had a fantastic dinner at a great restaurant in the Red Light District called Tales and Spirits where I had one of the best drinks of my life. Well, actually, I had three. The best part about the drink was the name. It was called an "old whore".  Awesome.

We had a grand old time catching up with Sumir. I hadn't seen her in a year and a half since the last time she was in Atlanta (but we go back to Miami days).  At the end of the evening, we sent her off on a train back to Apeldoorn and we eagerly returned to our hotel to CRASH the F out.

Except......fate would not have it. Both of us woke up around 3:45 and we just could NOT fall back asleep. What a nightmare to be utterly exhausted but unable to sleep. There was no reason for it either. It was 4 am there and to us, it was like it was 10 pm after 48 hours of not sleeping! How is that possible?! But we were wide awake and having to bide our time until daylight.

After the restless night, we were also kind of stressing about getting to Paris. The train fare was exorbitantly high (258 euros for both of us) when we were expecting it to be around 70-90 euros. We really should've planned ahead but I guess I just assumed it would be reasonable. That was dumb.....

On a positive note, the train was fast as shit. At one point, our iphone compass speed tracker thingamajig clocked us at 197. Crazy! So we arrived to Paris around 5 pm.....made our way to our hotel in Montmartre, and then had another dilemma. Our hotel room smelled like a dead animal. When the front desk clerk told us we had been upgraded, we didn't realize it meant a complete assault of our olfactory sense. And then on top of that, the toilet was possessed and wouldn't stop flushing! We really tried to be ok with the situation.......rationalizing it like "oh, it's paris. We can't expect too much." But then we decided to be spoiled about it and we requested a room change. Thankfully, it worked out great. The room is a tiny bit smaller but does it really make a difference when the room only fit a full size bed and a desk to begin with?!??!?! It smells great by comparison!! The neighborhood is super cute. It's way above the rest of the city and there are a lot of beautiful views all around.  We ventured out for a delicious dinner (Bill had steak and I had braised beef) and then strolled around the immediate area.

This morning (after a fantastic night of sleep, finally!!!!), we woke up to our first real day in Paris! What a city. It's all hustle and bustle. We made our way to the metro and figured out how to buy a discounted pack of 10 tickets (called a carnet and pronounced "car-nay") and then rode it down to the Notre Dame. Our day was long and I'm writing this pos now at 10:25 pm after 12 hours of exploring the city. Only about 1.5 hours of that was NOT spent walking so our feet are SOOO weary!!! Here is what we did and saw:

Pantheon (neoclassical monument that celebrates France's history and people)

Had a picnic on a bench overlooking the Seine river

Notre Dame (700-year old cathedral)

Deportation Memorial (memorial to the 200,000 French victims of the Holocaust)

Ile St Louis (tiny little island in the Seine river that is now home to one of Paris' most exclusive neighborhoods)

Latin Quarter (former artsy bohemian neighborhood that is like "quintessential Paris")

Saint Chapelle (another Gothic church)

Pont Neuf (Paris' oldest bridge)

Boat Tour (after having walked for several hours already, we came across their docking area so on a whim, we bought tickets aboard a one-hour tour)

Holocaust memorial Museum (different than the Deportation museum; it had history and photographs and lots more information)

Ate a "take away" dinner in the Jewish Quarter (i had falafel; Bil had scharma)

Musee d'Orsay (museum that houses the best collections of impressionist art including Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, and others)

Wearily rode the metro back to hotel and commenced writing of blog post. 

The end.

And we're off....again!

We're leaving on Monday on a 2-week trip to France. Our general itinerary is shown in the map below.

We're flying into Amsterdam and spending one day and night there since we thought it was so charming in 2009. We will also meet up with my friend, Sumir, while we're there. Then we'll take a train to Paris and spend 4 days there. On the 19th, we will rent a car and spend 8 days traveling the countryside including the beaches of Normandy, Mont St Michel, the Loire Valley, and the Dordogne Valley.

Hand me a glass of wine and get in my belly, au pain chocolat!