I’m approaching blogging critical mass, so please excuse the bad pun of a title.

We left Rome on October 7, heading to London to catch our connecting flight.  We had heard horror stories about Heathrow and were concerned that nearly 3 hours wouldn’t be enough to catch our connecting flight.  Clearly a lot of people don’t know how to handle airports, since we found it easy to navigate and got there with plenty of time.  We were starving by the time we got there and grabbed lunch at the first place we found in our terminal, which turned out to be an Italian place.  Of course, we found an English style pub at the other end of the terminal later on, but it was too late at that point.

Once on our flight to Paris, we grabbed a cab to our hotel.  On the ride into the city, the differences between Rome and Paris were apparent.  The increased number of tall buildings and modern architecture was obvious.

We stayed at Hotel du Commerce, another recommendation based on Meghan’s past travels.  It offers basic accommodations, but clean rooms and bathrooms with a good location.  Unfortunately, we were on the fifth floor and there’s no elevator.  We left some of our luggage in the storage room, since it was bad enough hauling two weeks’ worth of luggage – including formal wear for all the masses and dinners we had in Rome – up five flights of very narrow and curvy stairs.

After the climb we had a late dinner at the bistro next to the hotel, L’Authre Bistro.  I had steak au poivre while Meghan had a great hamburger.  And yes, the french fries were great!  This meal gave our first lesson in Paris: cocktails are EXPENSIVE.  Usually we’ll have a gin & tonic and vodka & tonic before dinner, but hadn’t the whole time in Rome.  We ordered drinks and were shocked first by the way it was served: all the liquor in the glass with a bottle of tonic on the side with a glowing straw in the glass.  Then when we got the bill, we were shocked by the price: twelve Euro for a drink!

After a long day of traveling, we were ready for bed, so we rested up for our first full day in Paris.