Sunday, June 26th, 2005
After 14 hours, my plane finally landed at Charles De Gaulle Airport at 1.10pm on a nice Saturday afternoon. I could feel my bones cracking inside every inch of my body. But apart from that, I felt surprisingly fresh and didn’t feel sleepy at all, despite only having slept for 4 hours during the entire flight. Maybe it was the excitement in me, maybe I was alive from the adrenaline rush. I don’t know. Besides, it didn’t make any difference.
After resting a while and changing into something more comfortable, we went out. It was almost 4 and we headed to Rue de Commerce for a walk around. Rue de Commerce is sort of a shopping area lined with pharmacies, bakeries, fromageries*, boutiques and fruit shops. I couldn’t resist from buying a bag of cherries here and ate them while walking, gazing into the windows of the shops lined up on this busy street.
Tired of walking, we stopped at Rue Cambronne for a hot drink at Le Paris Cafe. Incase you don’t know, the little city of Paris has about 4,000 cafes spread out. Well, cafes and creperies, to be more precise. It was amazing, for everywhere you looked, on every corner and sideway, you could see a cafe with its little tables and chairs lined outside facing the street. I had a nice big mug of hot chocolate and we watched the rain fall as we sipped our hot beverages.
When the rain stopped, we left and carried on walking until we reached Champs de Mars. Champs de Mars is a green park at the foot of Eiffel Tower where people and dogs sit, sleep, read, play, or have picnics when the weather is fine. We found a nice spot and laid out our picnic rug and got ready for dinner. I could see couples smooching, children playing and dogs catching ball around me. The sun was bright eventhough the air felt cold for my Asian blood. We stayed here until around 10pm before we headed back home. The sky was still blue when we left and the picture you see below was taken around 10.05pm on my first day in Paris.
*Fromagerie = A special shop that sells cheese
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