Parlez Vous Francais? No.

My first day in Paris is turning into evening. Feeling fine after splitting a bottle of champagne and now a bottle of Bordeaux (more of that, later). It took me awhile to navigate the airport (wow, if you thought our baggage carousels were bad, they ain't). But I got my bags and even got my shuttle, which took me right to the door of 3, rue Jacques Callot. The apartment (pictures to follow as soon as I buy a USB cable) was built in the 1700s, but it's quite cool.

But forget the apartment for now. As the shuttle (a Volkswagon minivan) drove me through the streets of Paris I got a rush like you wouldn't believe (okay, maybe you would believe it). If you remember my post about Denver, about the feeling I get when I'm downtown and how that must be like the feeling nature nuts ... uh, nature lovers get whilst (hey, I'm buzzed people) traversing the great wide outdoors. Well, multiply that by a whole bunch and you'll start to get the idea of how I felt seeing this city for the first time. There's just an immediate urban feel and vibe that washed over me. I fell in love at first sight.

And, of course, it was so wonderful to see my beautiful wife after so long apart.

And now to the grape products. As those who know me know, I don't much care for grape products (wine or champagne, though I like dessert wines and port), but I'm in freakin' Paris, so I'll drink the freakin' wine (the sales guy at the wine shop was British, which I found amusing). The amazing thing is that we've drunk an entire bottle of champagne and now a bottle of Bordeaux, and we're not drunk. We have some healthy buzzes, but if we'd drunk this much back home in Colorado, we'd be passed out by about now. Is it the altitude difference? Is it the better grape products (they do taste better here, so far)? I'll leave that to the historians to debate.

Au revoir!