June 19th, Day 3 in Paris

June 19th, Day 3 in Paris, we started out slow and did some laundry. For breakfast we hit up a local bakery which was probably the first time we had any kind of authentic “French pastry” they weren’t labeled but what we ended up with was a croissant bread twisted together with chocolate chips and some sort of filling, it was amazing!!! Very much worth “trying something new” After laundry we repacked our stuff and then decided to go to the L’Defense area, from the brochures it was supposed to be the ultimate shopping and eating facilities, also the Grand Arche which is a more modern arch that looks down to the Arch d’ Triumphe. The architecture was definitely worth it, the shopping and food not so much, maybe because in Columbus we really do have quite a bit of shopping, and restaurants for that matter, but I wasn’t impressed or even taken in by the area from the goods it offered.

The grand Arch was pretty cool it was a very contemporary building surrounded by other very neat looking buildings. Somewhat worth the trip over. We made the mistake (being weary as we were from all the touristy stuff) of taking a taxi from the hotel to the La Defense area and we got probably the world’s worst cab driver. She was a 50ish woman who barely seemed to enjoy driving let along driving a cab :p She was slow and very timid in her driving style, I really don’t think her feet reached the accelerator or she just didn’t know what it did; because she didn’t use it half as much as we thought she should have.

The coolest part of the whole trip was likely the Royal Bank of Scotland tent with a Williams Toyota display. They had a mock F1 car with a game simulator in it. Very cool again to see companies spending more money to make their sponsorships be known and supporting them.

Anyway after making it to the area, taking pix, trying to eat lunch but that failing miserable since the Ching N’ Ling noodle/pad Thai place we went to seemed to be out of anything with chicken in it and I wasn’t really a fan of the beef (or should we say beoff). We did some more walking around, and decided to brave the metro back to the hotel. For whatever reason we hadn’t yet taken the metro yet in Paris.

It was a little confusing just trying to figure out where to get the tickets to get on the train, but once that was resolved the trip was pretty painless. And for a fraction of the cost of taxi ride. Win Win!

Once we got back to the hotel we figured to have an early dinner and get to bed early since we had a 9am train to catch to get our selves to the tour group for the French Grand Prix.

We walked around the hotel neighborhood, trying not to repeat a meal at the same restaurant we had the killer lasagna, but after a walk around a few blocks, and getting sprinkled with some rain we decided to go with what was tried and true as opposed to another sucky meal. This time I had spaghetti and Aaron had a steak pizza. Instead of getting a pizza with lil chinks of steak he got a pizza with a huge slab of steak in the middle (10oz or so); so essentially getting two meals in one.

So good meal, good service and headed back to the hotel. With attempts to get a good nights sleep.