Foreign

 

Settled at our hotel in Paris.  Difficult transfer from airport.  Basically sleep deprived from flight, which in America we would call a red eye.  Not fully adapted to the six hour time difference.  And coffee deprived with an absence of more than 48 hours.  Cannot get SIM card to work in cell phone.  T-Mobile contact told me they fixed it but didn't.  At least I learned how to change a SIM card in my current phone.  One more T-Mobile demerit.  Consider a different carrier after the Holy Days which start shortly after I return home.

Paris, and I presume the rest of France, definitely differs from what I have become not only used to but dependent upon.  Not being able to have portable access to FB in my pocket is definitely a hardship.  Had a mishap with my new camera, not permanent damage.  Hotel room a bit cramped, though probably larger than a cruise ship would have offered.  Even the dogs that people walk on the sidewalks appear UnAmerican.  But no panhandlers or homeless people bedded in storefronts thus far.  That's probably UnAmerican too.

Mostly adapted.  Pâtisseries where we had lunch last night and breakfast today were top-notch experiences.  Walked the perimeter of my hotel.  Charm in one direction, in the other a small enclosed park area with an iron fence.  Architecture probably from some era just before Art Deco.  Or maybe since Art Deco originated in Paris, what we have here is the precursor to Miami's South Beach buildings or NYC's Chrysler Building.  I saw a few penthouses, but mostly fronts with carved design.  Streets are rather wide for a city.  From the air and from the highway that connected the airport to town, the buildings had more of a Soviet look.  Tall rectangular structures, plain boxes of about 10 stories, mostly white or other neutral shade placed in clusters.  No external architectural features. Probably where most of the people can afford to live, or maybe why there appear a dearth of homeless people.

Not a lot of traffic on a Sunday morning.  For all the great Cathedrals people come to Paris to see, I did not encounter anyone walking to a local church for worship, let alone a church itself. I would have expected more of the small businesses to be closed this Sunday. One lantzman, a young fellow with a white kippah, who did not seem too concerned about being attacked.

Our hotel seems to survive with tourist contracts, a mixture of tour groups and a fair number of airline staff assigned to this hotel fort their rest period.  Various tours have signs or tables.  People in corridors or elevators with airline uniforms.  Hotel seems American.