Bonjour, je m'appelle Matt!

On est enfin arrive a Paris! We managed to get out of the apartment in London and onto our Eurostar train with no problems whatsoever! Matt did his best to become bilingual on the 3 hr train ride by listening to his coffeebreak French lessons. He's very good at saying, "Bonjour, je m'appelle Matt! Je suis en forme!" He hopes that he'll have a chance to use it while we are here.

Our apartment is very "parisien". We're just north of Chinatown Paris. There seem to be a lot of Lebanese and Maroccan shops around.

Once we got settled, we ventured out to do a survey of the area. Imagine our delight to find a bakery and pastry shop right across the street! We're already drooling over our fresh bread or croissants that we're going to have for breakfast tomorrow! Right behind the boulangerie (bakery) is a Monoprix grocery store. Beside our apartment is a shop that sells wine, beer and drinks. We have splurged on the cheapest red and white wine they had in the place (2E30 white, 3E20 red). We'll let you know tomorrow if they were worth it or not.

Just up the street is a small crepe place where we enjoyed a leisurely dinner tonight. Eric enjoyed his 'bol de chocolat chaud'. Our dessert crepe had homemade salted caramel sauce on it ....so good we might have to find time to go back there again!

And of course, since everything we need is right here, we can't forget the convenient condom dispenser that Jac found - 24 hrs a day rain or shine, condoms at our disposal.

Tomorrow we're intending on doing a hop on hop off tour to familiarize ourselves with the city - but first we need to actually find our way there. It doesn't look like the Paris Metro will be as easy to figure out as the London Underground but time will tell. We are only 1 1/2 blocks from the metro station so at least we can find our way back there.

For the rest of the night tonight, we are going to enjoy our wine and each other while Matt tries to teach Eric to play blackjack. (God grant him the patience he will surely need!)