The Last Time I Saw Paris

While I've been to Paris many times over the last couple of years for work I haven't had a chance to really spend any time in the city until this weekend. My friend Michelle was heading to Paris for work and I decided to tag along for the weekend. At first we were going to stay in a hostel but then I remembered that I have tons of points at Hilton and we might as well splurge a little. I redeemed some points to stay at the Hilton, since I am currently a gold member I was upgraded to a room on the Executive floor. This meant I had a view of the Eiffel Tower from the room and access to the lounge with free breakfast and drinks all day. Not too shabby. I was quite entertained by Michelle's reaction when she saw the view, the amenities in the room like bathrobe and Crabtree & Evelyn toiletries and the fact that we got free food and wine. What I found most interesting about the Hilton was that almost everybody in the executive lounge was American. I guess it's only natural as it is a US chain and most Europeans would stay at a European chain or a boutique hotel instead.



With all the luxury at the hotel I did still manage to wander around the city all day yesterday and most of today. Overall walked over 20 KM over the

past 2 days. Ike made an appearance yesterday as well. To the right you can see Invisible Kangaroo at the Eiffel Tower. I've discovered that the tower is much nicer late at night than during the day. On Friday night after dinner we walked over and there were very few people around, during the day the place is mobbed. I didn't take my camera out on Friday but Michelle did and I was giving her pointers on how to take night shots of the tower by finding something to balance the camera on for support. I really wish I had my camera as she was getting some very strange looks and I would have loved to have captured them. She had found a garbage can to put the camera on but all the cars going by could see was a person crouched behind a garbage can looking up at the tower, no way to tell that there was a camera involved.


Today since we were already living the high life at the Hilton we decided to end our visit to Paris with lunch at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon. It was by far one of the best meals I've had in a while. We almost weren't able to have lunch there but we convinced the hostess we could be gone in an hour and she allowed us 2 seats. Here's just a couple of shots of our meal.

Speaking of photos I will be uploading the shots I took over the weekend to my photography site at some point on Monday.