Bratwurst und Bier (Bratwurst & Beer)

My parents visited us in early November. Squeezing in between mom’s teaching sessions and our planned trip to Egypt, mom and dad came to Germany for a quick one-week visit. We did a couple of day trips, to Rothenburg and Mainz, and then off to a whirlwind four-day trip to Paris. Paris, the city of lights, was one of the cities that none of us have been. We are really only about five hours away from Paris, but somehow have managed to stay away until then. May be we stayed away partly due to the thought of dealing with ‘rude’ Parisians and partly because Paris felt more like a city in our backyard; we can get to it at some point. Anyway, we left Mainz right at daylight, which happens around 8 o’clock these days and started our merry ways. We had an uneventful drive and reached our hotel by early afternoon. One of the things Patrick had always tried to convince me to try was to stay at a hostel. Call me snooty, but I don’t relish the thought of sharing a bedroom or bathrooms with random strangers, who can just as easy rob or strangle us in the middle of the night. Anyway, since Paris is such a touristy city, hotels don’t come cheap, even during off-season, we opted for a hostel that was recommended by a friend. It was actually a really neat place. All of the rooms had a theme and none of the rooms are the same. We had to share a bathroom between four bedrooms, two of which were occupied by us; the other two rooms weren’t filled until the last night. We stayed at the Victor Hugo room (the author of Hunchback of Notre Dame) and the parents stayed at the Greek gods room.

We spent a total of three days in Paris, saw the Eiffel tower at night, when it was all lit up, the arc of Triumph, the Louvre, view of the city from Sacre Coeur, did the City sight see bus so we got a good flavor of the city, as well as the historical narrative. Parisians were nearly as snooty as we had feared, we found that if we at least tried to communicate in Paris-talk, I mean, French, most folks were very accommodating. Our extent of French was only confined to “Parlez vous Engle?” and “Merci” (don't ask me how to spell these, as I said before, I don't speak Paris talk). :) Another thing that was not overrated was the food… you can find almost any cuisine in the city, we had dim sum plate the first night, fondue and steak on hot stone (cook your own meat on a hot stone… yum!) the second night, and a huge seafood platter that we shared between the four of us the last night in Paris. I think I probably gained a few pounds just the three days in the city. We left Paris the fourth morning and spent a couple of hours at the palace of Versailles and then was back to Germany. It was a jammed pack trip but now we can finally say we’ve done Paris. Oooh la la! :)