We took the Chunnel in the morning to Paris where we made our way to our lodging for the night. After dropping off our bags, we took the underground to Notre Dame Cathedral, which was beautiful! Next, we walked along the Seine River all the way to the Musee d’ Orsay. Here we saw a lot of great paintings. There was a Van Gough exhibit as well as a Toulouse de Lautrec exhibit which were of particular interest. We left and headed back to our hotel to escape the rain.
Getting hungry, we scoped out all the restaurants in the area looking for something affordable as well as either in English or at least something we could deduce what the entrées were. After looking around for over an hour, we finally decided on a place right next to the hotel which had a menu with English translations. I got a fantastic 4 cheese pasta and Jon had a 4 cheese pizza (there were very few vegetarian options at all the restaurants- but plenty of pâté and fois gras). I also had creme brulee for desert (my favorite!). We ended up paying 4 euros for water because we didn’t understand that when asking for water the wait staff will assume that you want bottled water. It would have been trivially more expensive to get wine. Here we also learned that in France you need to request your bill otherwise they will not bring it to you.
After dinner we grabbed some fruit and a bottle of wine from a small shop down the street.