Brian and I boarded the plane in Chicago, took some “anti-anxiety” medication, and woke up in Paris where it was the next day, but still the night before on our bodies.  Very Back To The Future minus the DeLorian.

We grabbed our bags and planned to check them back in with Ethiopian airlines and then see the city before boarding that flight for Africa.  But, we soon discovered, Ethiopian airlines isn’t open until a couple hours before this evening’s flight.  So we checked into a nearby hotel instead, one of those pay by the hour hotels, just a place to stow our bags and take a shower.  And we headed for the Louvre.

The Louvre, it turns out, is closed on Tuesdays.  That’s right, closed.

So we ate some quiche and drank an $8 Coke (sans ice) to stay awake.

Next stop: The Eifel Tower.

Have I mentioned yet that we’re on foot and that it’s raining and 40 degrees outside?  Yep.  It was.  So we walked, through gray Paris and it’s misty precipitation and cold…oh, yea, and wind…all the way to the Eifel Tower, which, is a tower.  What you do at towers is go up in them, like to the top, where it’s windy-er.  So we did.  And thankfully the usual three hour lines were thinned to minutes long by the cold and wet.

Now what you usually do once at the top is see the city the tower belongs to.  But that city – Paris – was covered in gray mistiness so we just looked at that instead and wondered why we didn’t bring heavier coats.

Oh, yea, we remembered, because we’re heading to Ethiopia where it’s 70 degrees.  Ahhh, I can’t wait.

We actually did have a good time in Paris.  It was short wet windy time but good.  Being from a place that tears down building after they’re a hundred years old, it’s always humbling and inspiring to walk down streets built before the American Civil War…way before.  As Eddie Izzard says, “Europe: Where the history comes from.”

Time to shower and head to Ethiopia.