London à Paris

Thursday was another easy morning. Woke up early to say our goodbyes to the girls and Emma before they headed off to school. We made green juices, eggs with ham and cheese and last but never least, espresso. We also had to shower and pack up our bags again because we were off to Paris that afternoon. Our friends Eric and Jamie were meeting us on Friday morning and the plan was for us to arrive the night before and get the AirBnB set up. 

Packed up, we left the London Habeck's house around 11:30 in order to make it to St. Pancreas with plenty of time spare. It was an easy tube ride from their house and we used the extra time to grab some food for the train. 

We arrived at Paris's Gare du Nord after a slight delay, made quick moves to find the Metropolitain, jumped on the 4 line and were in St Germain in no time. 

We picked St Germain for our base of operations (read AirBnB location) because it was an area we wished we had spent more time in the first time around back in 2011.  Our building was a short walk from the Metro at St. Placide. and was easy to find. 

However this was the first time that a host wasn't there to welcome us to the apartment. They informed us that the apartment was on the second floor and the key would be under the mat.  Through our travels we learned that the second floor of a building is what we would refer to as the third floor. This can cause some confusion, especially when the wrong apartment also has a key under the mat. Luckily we figured out we were at the wrong door before we managed to open it and made our inside. 

Confusion sorted out, we were into our apartment and quickly began the ritual of putting our bags down and immediately getting wifi. As I mentioned before, this was the first AirBnB where a host didn't greet us so we we expected a welcome book of some sort to be in the apartment.  Nothing crazy but a little info on the washing machine, wifi codes, etc.  This place had none of that so we had to figure it all out on our own. The wifi in particular was a problem and we couldn't get it to work, even after inputting the 30 character code. After about 40 minutes of failure we unplugged the modem for a reboot and went off to explore St Germain. We wanted to find some gold areas to show the Webber's when they arrived the next day. 

After a quick espresso from a corner brasserie, we wound our way to Ave St. Germain.  We checked out stores, restaurants, little alleyways. Bought some wine, saw Notre Dame after sunset and finally sat down for a bite. 

We both opted for the cheeseburgers which came out mooing at us. I ate mine and Ashley's got a little extra time on the grill. While at dinner we took advantage of the free wifi to connect with the Webbers as we were afraid we would be unable to at the apartment.  Well fed we made our way back to the apartment, where the wifi was now working, and called it a night... well we watched a few episodes of Orphan Black first and had a FaceTime with the Webbers at the airport, but we eventually made it to bed.