72 hours in ... Paris

Unlike Madrid, Paris was planned months ago, so it will probably not surprise you to learn we arrived with no hotel reservation, no map, no grasp of the language, and we missed our train home. Oh, and did I mention it was our two year 'anniversary'?

Of course, we *had* a hotel reservation (and a prepaid one at that), but apparently a "computer glitch" had cancelled thousands of reservations the week before, and now the hotel was full. They moved us to the Timhotel Elysee, which was fine, but neglected to mention the Timhotel Saint Lazure was just around the corner, so it was no surprise that we ended up at the wrong one, quite distraught that they didn't have our reservation, either.

We finally got it sorted and checked into our room at 10pm. We had arrived (by train) at 7pm, and had walked the length of Paris at this point, so we just wanted a quiet, local meal. That's when we discovered we were in the business district, and everything was closed for the weekend.

After walking another mile or so, we found a cute little cafe, sat down at an outside table, browsed the menu, and left. This was my first trip to Paris since becoming a vegetarian and, while Jess had warned me it would be tough, I couldn't believe it. You couldn't even get a vegetarian salad! We checked out two other places before ordering cheese ravioli and a salad nicoise sans tuna.

It was supposed to rain all weekend, so that's what we packed for. Needless to say, it was warm and sunny the entire time, except for a brief thunderstorm which we missed (we were inside the Louvre). Of course we did all the sights--a cruise on the river Seine, Eiffel tower at sunset, Sacre Couer, Notre Dame. We'd planned to do the Musee d'Orsay on Monday and the Pompidou Centre on Tuesday, but found out (the hard way) that the Musee d'Orsay is closed on Mondays and the Pompidou Centre is closed on Tuesdays. (We still went and saw the exterior of the Pompidou, then walked around the Marais district.) We made ourselves sick with cheese fondue in Montmarte. We wanted to see Saint Chapelle but ran out of time.

Speaking of "time," that smartphone I was bragging about last week adjusted all of my calendar entries to the current local time. Since Paris is one hour ahead of London, that meant my entry for the 6:15pm train home was displayed as 7:15pm. We got to the station at 6:20pm, and thought we were quite early, until Jess looked at the tickets and realized we'd just missed our train. Fortunately, they just put us on the next one, half an hour later.  (The smartphone redeemed itself when it was able to use GPS tracking to show we were going 186mph.)

All in all, I think the trip summed up our relationship perfectly: A little chaotic, maybe a bit fractious at times, but with a little flexibility and a little perseverence, we had a fantastic time.