Planning this for a long time, and it’s finally here. My friend Kathy and I flew Air France from LAX to Charles DeGaulle and arrived one hour early. The new international airport is very fancy. How about that Champagne and Caviar bar to enjoy while waiting for your flight.

The flight was pretty bumpy but the food was pretty good — Chicken with Balsamic Cream, Polenta with Spinach. The chocolate brownie was actually pretty moist. But  adding my two glasses of champagne made it all perfect!! We woke up to breakfast, not realizing that it was already daylight, and we were an hour early landing in Paris. When does that ever happen! We barely had time to eat our feta and Spinach Fritata, Chicken Sausage with Mushrooms and Potato Croquettes, when we had to prepare for landing.

We had to wait almost one hour for our driver to take us to our hotel. It was a comdedy or errors and ended up being very annoying. By the time we got to our hotel, it was time for check-in. Even though the plane arrived early, waiting for our driver ate up our extra tourist time.

Melia Vendome is a pretty hotel but the rooms are small. It wouldn’t be so bad though if two women didn’t pack so darn much stuff.

Kathy’s daughter-in-law Carla came to our hotel and brought us museum passes and metro rail passes for our stay in Paris. We then treated her to dinner at Frenchie’s Wine Bar. What a treat!

More champagne for me, and then we shared small plates of  Four Cheeses from Neal’s Yard Dairy (Dorstone Pasturized Goat’s Milk, Lincolnshire Poacher Cheddar, Durras Pasturized Cow’s Milk  and Calston Bassert Stilton), Burrata with Heirloom Tomatoes, and Raviolis with Butternut Squash and Smoked Sage.

After this culinary adventure, we literally wandered the streets, looking in store windows.

If it takes as long to blog as this first one did, I may not be doing it everyday.