Paris Is Expensive And Other Brilliant Observations

Paris only made #13 on the list of the World’s Most Expensive Cities (with London at #2, great – I’ll be there a couple of days this week), but with the declining dollar everything is 50% more expensive, which is really brutal.  Ordinarily we’d do a lot of Christmas shopping on a trip like this but not this year.  European vacations are not good for Americans right now.

So far everything has been going great – we’ve spent so much time walking around that I haven’t had much of a chance to eat poorly, and in fact I have gone out running the last two mornings – a loop of about 3 miles, with a portion of it running up the Champs-Élysées towards the Arc de Triomphe.  So far in my morning runs I have only seen one other guy running, and he also looked American.  I don’t think the French have any fat to burn off.

On Thanksgiving Thursday I had breakfast on the plane, which was an egg biscuit, fruit and yogurt.  Then we didn’t eat again until around 7:00pm where for Thanksgiving Dinner 2007 my wife and I shared an appetizer of smoked ham and slices of a baguette, then I had a Niçoise salad and a Steak au poivre.  Portion sizes were smaller than American standard.  Quality was superb.

Yesterday we skipped breakfast at the hotel (turns out there is a charge for just the simple breakfast) and ate at a local cafe where I had a 3 egg omelette with ham, which came with a very small salad and a few slices of baguette.  For lunch I had a ham and cheese crepe at a stand overlooking the Eiffel Tower, and for dinner I shopped at a Mono Prix and picked up a loaf of bread, some ham and some cheese, and some fruit (and OK, a little chocolate, but I haven’t had any yet).

Enough about me, more observations.  Very few fat people here.  Portions sizes much smaller than American.  Food excellent.  Have found everyone very friendly.  Everything expensive, it’s cost me EUR 12.75 so far just to write this post!  I forgot my European adapter and my laptop ran out of juice so I need to use the hotel’s business center computer.  Hotel rooms very small.

2 more fun days in Paris before I start work on Monday, then I leave on Tuesday afternoon for London after seeing my wife off to the airport.  It will be harder to keep up on my fitness plan while alone but I’ll be working hard to do it.  Running every morning will help.