Paris and the Marriott

Dinner at Maison de Campagne in Poncelet Market, Paris

Sally, Stephanie, Me and Allison at Notre Dame

Woke up bright and early, had my shower, got ready and made myself scarce so that my roommates had room to move when they did their stuff. A group of 10 of us walked to the station and caught the train to Paris Nord station changing trains in Liege and a couple of other towns. The 7.5 hour trip passed reasonably quickly and some of us did homework and assignments, while others slept, read or chatted.

Once we arrived in Paris we took the Metro to Franklin D Roosefeldt station which was the closest station to our hotel – the Marriott on the Champs Elysees. Yes, we did pull off that stunt. We booked a twin room and a king room for 10 of us. Four of us checked the rooms in, carrying most of the luggage while the others waited outside. We had extra door keys given to us. When we finally got everyone in, the allocation was 4 in the twin room (which was fine as there were 2 double beds) and 6 in the king room (not sure how they were going to configure themselves – 3 guys and 3 girls). The only thing I was particular about was having a bed – I wasn’t going to sleep on the floor. As it turned out, there was ample bedspace in our twin room.

After a wander up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe we had a stint at Macka’s to use their free wifi before getting dolled up to walk to dinner in the Poncelet Market area behind the Arc de Triomphe at a restaurant called Maison de Campagne. Th s dinner was organised by the faculty and was an excellent evening with first class food, wine and service. (I’m amazed how little these students actually know about food preparation. It seems they haven’t really studied it at all and have concentrated on the theoretical side of hotel management.) A few of the girls wore super high stilettos and struggled walking the distance to the restaurant. I very sensibly wore flatties.

We had purchased a few bottles of wine prior to dinner with the intention of going to see the Eiffel Tower all lit up and perhaps some fireworks. Sounded like a good idea at the time, but when the time came I couldn’t think of anything worse. I just wanted to lie down in bed and have a long sleep. The kids all went out, though. Will find out in the morning what they got up to. We’ll go on the red Hop-on-hop-off tour bus tomorrow which seems like an easy way of seeing everything. (The guys from the first group who went on the bus tour today got 2- day passes and therefore sold us the second day to use tomorrow.)