You can see pictures from this day here.
The first day we left for the airport wearing only our backpacks, and we used the time to get used to the packs. We didn’t have much break-in time, but mine was really comfortable and carried the 10 kilos inside without a problem. Kuniko’s pack was bothering her shoulder a little bit, but by the end of the trip there was no problem at all. We returned a library book at Akashi library on the way to the airport, and then got to the airport and took off for Bangkok.
We had quite a bit of time to kill in Bangkok airport. The flight to Bangkok was 5 hours, but we had almost 8 hours to kill once we arrived. The airport seemed almost set up for that situation, though. They had a huge building full of shopping, food, and amenities. We ate some airport-authentic Thai food and it was great – cheap, spicy, delicious. We didn’t want to buy anything since we would have to pack it the whole trip – so we made a list of things we wanted to buy for the return flight.
Eight hours is a long time to kill, but we managed to do it. The airport was full of interesting people. The people were from many different countries – there were shieks and woman dressed in black head-to-toe robes. With all the different cultures walking around it made it fun to observe what people were doing. Bangkok has a lot of native fruits that were selling really cheaply, so we drank fruit juices from fruits that we had never heard of, and finally in the evening we were ready to go.
The next flight was a 10 hour flight to Paris. That went really easily, since we were both so tired from staying up eating and drinking and shopping at the Bangkok airport. We both went right to sleep – I slept through take-off which was a first for me. I vaguely remember somebody waking me up to ask me what I wanted to eat, and I think I looked around stupidly wondering where the hell I was. Later we managed to get some food, though, and we slept for most of the flight.
We arrived in Paris around 8 in the morning, and by the time we caught the shuttle bus into the city it was around 9. They dropped us off right next to the Arc de Triomphe, and we were on the ground and sightseeing from then until the end of the day.
Paris was an interesting city. Right away you could tell that it was old, but a different kind of old than Japan. The layout of the city and the buildings were really different than American cities, and I found myself interested in the simplest things, like the amount of cafes per block and how buildings jutted out into the street occasionally.
Our next stop was the Eiffel Tower, and our timing couldn’t have been better. We were in line to go to the top just a few minutes before they opened, and we got up to the top in just a few minutes. The view from the top was excellent, and I took lots of pictures from up there, as well as plenty around the base. I went kind of crazy with pictures – I came home with just under one thousand pictures taken on the trip.
After the Eiffel Tower we stopped in at a café for some sandwiches. It was our first experience trying to speak with French people, and luckily we had a nice waitress who was patient and smiled with us as we tried to order. I kept smiling for the whole trip, and that ended up being my most effective communication tool.
It was amazing how much nicer people where if you greeted them in their language, and then asked them if they spoke English in their language. Combined with a big smile, we hardly ever met anyone who wouldn’t smile back and try to help us.
We did lots of sightseeing in Paris the rest of the day. We went to the Louvre museum and saw, among many other famous paintings, the Mona Lisa. The museum was huge, and I think we really only scratched the surface.
In the afternoon we found our hotel and got set up there, dropped off our backpacks, and then had a mind-blowing delicious meal for dinner at a small restaurant that we found. Throughout France and Italy we noticed that people had dinner much later than what we were used to. Most places opened for dinner between 7-8 p.m., and we were used to eating around 5-6 p.m. The place on the first night opened up a little early for us, and we had a feast. We had an avocado salad for an appetizer, and Kuniko had a four cheese fondue while I had a steak. Everything was great – the cheese fondue was off the scale for cheesiness, and we drank a half liter of wine and had all the free French bread that we could eat.
Ordering wine in Paris was fun. Of course you could order by bottle or glass, but they had a cool system where you chose the wine region you wanted to drink, and then they delivered a little pitcher of the wine that you could pour yourself.
On the way back to the hotel we ate some gelato, stopped at a grocery store to marvel at the low low prices of cheese and wine, and then retired with sore feet from walking all over the city. It was a big first day.
