France, at Last

First of all, I want to apologize for my lack of blogging....there really is no excuse to go 6 months without blogging about SOMETHING... So I am back. And blogging from Le Chat Noir Design Hotel in Paris, France where Grace and I are spending the first night of my "I'm turning 40 and freaking out vacation". We both are suffering from some serious jetlag.
The last couple days were a whirlwind of events...I worked right up until it was time to leave (of course). On Wednesday my friends threw me a surprise birthday party at the Spaghetti Factory. After work on Thursday I got my hair done by Aura at Azarra Salon... I now have awesome cherry RED highlights- ooh la la! Then we raced home to pack (no I had not started packing) and get up to the Doubletree hotel in Seatac for about 5 hours sleep before the 5am airport shuttle. We left poor Asya with a house that is a complete disaster and a million dogs to take care of for 10 days..
We flew out of Seattle at 7:15am directly to NYC...We had some lunch there and then tried to find a mailbox to mail two bills THAT ARE DUE THIS WEEK (including my vet license) only to be told that there were no mailboxes in that particular terminal. (And the other terminals were a train ride away).. That's what I get for procrastinating.. So since I didn't want to miss our plane I figured I'll deal with that situation from France... Our next flight was a 7 hour flight from JFK to Charles De Gaulle. The plane was older (no individual TV screens on the seats in front of us- luckily the movies weren't exciting)...but the service was friendly and they fed us- twice! (and didn't charge for checking bags). Grace slept for a little bit..I tried to doze off a few times but wasn't too successful because Grace was awake and bored. We landed without a hitch, found our bags and our pre-arranged shuttle and headed into Paris. The shuttle was full and we got to ride in the front seat with the driver. He pointed out the largest futbol (soccer) stadium built for the World Cup and the Eiffel Tower off in the distance. We also saw some markets he said were open Saturdays/Sundays and Mondays. Our hotel is on a somewhat seedy street- Blvd de Clichy- between Place Pigalle and Moulin Rouge..lots of SEX shops (the window shopping on this particular street is interesting)...but the hotel is great.. Very clean and modern decor (red, black and white) with the Steinlen black cat everywhere. Luckily we were able to check in early as we were EXHAUSTED and it was raining outside. We have a corner room on the second floor. We napped for a while (5 hours?) and then I made G get up so we could find some food and an adaptor so I can plug in the computer and phone.. She was super tired and cranky...outside it was a bit windy but not too cold and the rain had stopped. We went to a big store across the street (the MONOPRIX) and bought diet coke, chocolate milk, chocolate mousse, Kinder eggs, mangos and a miniature pineapple. Grace also found a Disney Princess advent calendar. I got thrown off by the cash registers because they display the cost in francs and euros and tried to overpay the woman. Luckily she gave me back the extra money I was trying to give her! Grace wasn't up for doing anything else except getting some dinner. We walked down to the Moulin Rouge to take a photo and she pointed out a building she thought was a restaurant across the street but it was actually a LIVE SHOW place.. We went into a souveneir shop and bought the adaptor we needed and some postcards. Even though there were many little street vendors selling crepes, sandwiches, gyros, hot dogs in pastry wrapping, we ended up at the Golden Arches for dinner (lame I know but it makes this particular cranky 5 year old happy to eat chicken McNuggets and french fries).. In my mind this vacation actually starts TOMORROW (Sunday).. today is a day to recover from the plane ride and try to get used to the nine hour time difference..
We fell asleep at 8 but G is suddenly wide awake at 11pm... all kinds of activity is going on outside- lots of car honking and cheering.. Lots of people in the bar across the street. I tried to tell her to keep sleeping but she is drinking chocolate milk and watching the only cartoon on TV- a cowboy themed show (in French). Tomorrow we will hopefully walk up to the Sacre Couer/Montmartre area in the morning before getting a cab to the apartment we'll be in for the next week... au revoir for now!