back from my travels

Wow, its been a whirlwind week, but I'm back from Paris and happy to be so. Paris was impossibly gorgeous but also impossibly exhausting, so being able to sit on my sofa and sleep in my bed is a joy. I'm still recovering from it all, but in sum, Paris was...

• ...beautiful. I know it's cliche, but everywhere I looked was a postcard. I know I'm not exactly a world traveler, but Paris was, by far, the most stunning place I've ever seen. At one point my colleague and I took the wrong Metro exit and ended up in a Parisian ghetto, and even that area was beautiful. It almost got to a point where I don't even notice it all after awhile because beauty was everywhere I looked, but the French sure know how to build a city.
• ...exhausting. For those of you who are accompanying me to Italy this summer here's some words of warning - pack light, wear comfortable shoes, and don't expect to sleep. The tour company's goal is essentially to cram as much as humanly possible into the trip, so sleep is a luxury. The hardest part was getting off the plane after seven hours in the air at hitting the ground running for a full day of walking tours and museums. I think I was awake for something like 35 hours on that first day. Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely worth it, but this was the kind of vacation that you need a vacation to recoup from.
• ...challenging. Like a typical American jerk I didn't bother to learn any French before going to France. I had been assured by several people that it wasn't necessary, that everyone there spoke English, so I'd be fine. And for the most part I was, but it is decidedly not true that everyone speaks English. On the one night that Deb and I were left to our own devices for dinner we had a nearly impossible time finding a restaurant with English menus and English-speaking employees. Ultimately, we chose a Mexican restaurant because I could maneuver enough Spanish to order something. Perhaps we should have been adventurous and picked something at random from a French menu but..well...we weren't. Needless to say, I'm planning on learning some Italian before this summer.
• ...action-packed. In four days, we somehow managed to visit The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Champs de Lyse, the Palace of Versaille, take a nighttime boat ride on the Seine, shop at an outdoor market, see a show at the Moulin Rouge and take several walking tours of various parts of the city. Did I mention that I'm exhausted?
  

It was a bunch of other stuff too, but the biggest souvenier that I came home with is a cold and I'm still feeling pretty wiped out, so this is about all I can manage to write at the moment. If you are interested, I've uploaded a whole mess of pictures onto my flickr account, which can be accessed here or throught he badge on the right.

Oh, and I missed you. Did you miss me too?