So I’ve been thinking… we have seeing eye dogs, helper monkeys and Grimace. Our animal friends have been helping us for a very long time. Right?

I was also thinking, I’m surrounded by a large percentage of people who are generally quite angry, having bad days or a genetically pre-disposed to being douchetards. People who generally would be more tolerable if someone just gave them a hug. 

Obviously hugs led me to think of Koalas (and boa constrictors… but that didn’t work for this line of thought)… those little guys essentially hug things for a living. They don’t do much more. Which truthfully must make for a very high unemployment rate amongst these little bears. Which is really sad that we have a whole species that are unemployable… heck we created the Walmart greeter job (entertaining link)… so anyone is employable right? But how do we take the two problems and make a solution? 

I propose every office, building, public transport and maybe even street corner must have a Therapeutic Koala… just like defibrillators, bathrooms and the drawer full of chocolate are mandatory the world over. That way, when someone starts getting all angerful… open the Koala Kase (still working on the name), take out the Koala, attach to the anger sufferer… and BLAMO… 5 minutes of Koala Hug Therapy and everything is good in the world. ‘Cause seriously, how pissed can you get with a Koala hugging you?

Alright, so I’ve been back from Paris almost a week now. Sadly I’ve been rammed with work playing catchup from my absence. I’m actually still working, but photoshop is preoccupied… so I figure I’d have time to post something quickly.

Now, my intention was to post everyday and show some pictures. For technology reasons, that didn’t happen… short version, I should have brought my laptop, but I digress.

So here’s the breakdown of what we saw while on vacation in Paris.

Day 1 (Saturday): The outside of the Louvre, a very cool indoor-ish plazas (?), our neighbourhood and our pillows.

Day 2 (Sunday): Was pretty casual and we went to La Place Bastille (Bastille Square), where we visited a open-air market and a elevated urban park called la Coulée Verte. We took a tour of Paris atop a big red double decker bus… we froze a bit… but it was quite nice. Then we explored the area around le Grand-Palais (The Big Palace), crossed le Pont Alexandre III (the Alexandre III bridge) and walked to les Invalides (the Invalides) and went and checked out Napoleon’s tomb.

Day 3 (Monday): Surprisingly, a lot was closed on Monday. So we ended visiting le Grand Palais again, but this time we got to go inside because it was the public preview before a cross France rally… so it was a morning of incredible architecture and sport cars. Bliss was in affect for sure. From there we moved onto the island known as la Cité and visited la Sainte-Chapelle (the Saint Chapel)

Day 4 (Tuesday): Another sporadic day of adventures. We started off our day at le Musé d’Orsay and saw some impressive art and another example of stunning architecture. Because it was raining we then followed that up with the Panthéon, which I think might have been one of my favourite sites and then a small church behind it called Saint Etienne du Mont.

Day 5 (Wednesday): Was quite the treat as we spend the morning at L’Opéra Garnier (which most people l’Opéra de Paris) which was mind blowing in it’s grandeur. We followed that up with a special showing of a film aimed at tourists called The Paris Story… you’ll have to ask Claire-Lise about that one, I napped. Then because the rain had let up a bit we headed to Trocadéro which is a bit of a square that’s bookended by two huge museums that are on one side of the Seine and walked down it across a bridge to the Eiffel tower. We then capped off the night with a Seine river tour boat trip… which was very much enjoyable.

Day 6 (Thursday): Had us trekking across Paris via a really comfortable train ride to a little shack called Versaille. Ummm… yeah. Wow. Then we went and walked around Notre-Dame… it’s bigger than I thought it was.

Day 7 (Friday): Finally we visited Notre Dame… I was really torn on this visit. It was an incredible building. But I think 30 years of hype kinda ruined it for me. I know that’s weird. But I’m not saying I didn’t like it. We then spent the afternoon in the Louvre. Which could have easily been a three month visit… seriously, you get seriously overwhelmed by the world’s largest art museum. Yes I saw the Mona Lisa.

Day 8 (Saturday): We headed off to Montmartre, once there we visited la Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, which was mind-blowing. We then walked through the streets of Montmartre to the Montmartre Cemetery which again was awesome. We then wrapped up our day, and vacation I guess with a visit at the top of la Tour Montparnasse.

That’s a general gist of what sights we visited and I will go into more detail soon with some more impressions and a lot of pictures. However, I did not thread on who and where we hung out, where and what we ate and a bunch of other stuff. I also want to go into the Paris Pass thing we discovered, our neighbourhood and stuff. So I have some writing and content for quite a while.

But after 8 days I’ve decided I very much love Paris, it’s very much a city I enjoyed and we will have to go back since there was about 180 things I didn’t get to see or do that I really wanted to.

Well here I am, 3 days late on the first blog post, but I had some serious technology issues the last few days. Let’s just say that I should have probably brought my MacBook with me. Oh well, hindsight and all that.

So here’s how I had originally done the first day’s videoblog – 10 things about traveling to Paris. It was a good 5 minutes… But now you get words… And if you’re lucky, pictures.

So without further due, in chronological order…

1: Things you think will take tons of time don’t always work out that way

Well our flight from Toronto to Charlotte, where we would connect to a flight to Paris, left Pearson at 11:55. They warned us to be there 3-4 hours before hand because the long lines for US Customs This meant we were traveling from our apartment to Pearson during rush hour, so we padded out ride a bit by leaving home at 7. By 7:50, we were sitting at our gate. Yup, things went by so quick it was kinda ridiculous.

The flight to Charlotte was also pretty quick, at least to me, since I slept through most of it.ninthink from my perspective, it was like 15 minutes long.

2: Toddlers + Transatlantic flights = Suckage

So, yes we know we’re adopting, so take off those judging pants and hear me out.

We had two toddlers within a 10 foot radius from us on the flight from Charlotte to Paris. Both had 2 meltdowns during the 7 hours flight. Sadly the worse one was around 3 in the morning, where the poor child just went ballistic for half an hour. No one got angry or said anything disparaging, we just all patiently waited for the kids battery to run out. But needless to say, sleep didn’t come easily.

Lesson learned, toddlers aren’t especially big on sitting still, seatbelted to a seat for seven and half hours. But when you think about it, should anyone, really?

3: Charles de Gaule Airport was designed by some Sci-Fi artist in the 50′s or 60′s

My words here cannot do this place justice, but I’ll try. The airport is laid out like a UFO mothership terminal surrounded by mini UFO satellite terminals. Once you “de-plane” you’re lead to this floor-scalator that brings you into a jellybeanish shaped cave bellow the tarmac. It goes down about 25 feet and then straightens for a good 500 feet and then backup into the mothership.

Once in this great big doughnut of a ship you’re moved around floor by floor in the habitrail tubing that runs in all directions inside the open air centre. Then poof! Out the door where you wait for transportation away from the airport. It was all very surreal and felt like Syd Meade had a part in it somehow.

4: Paris looks like every other city in the world… Until you get off the highway

Yeah, I was a little disappointed on our shuttle into the city. The cityscape that was growing around us was generic at best. I saw a Toys R Us and an IKEA… The only thing that made it slightly different was the little cars.

That lasted until we got off the highway, and BLAM! We were thrown into what I had always imagined Paris to look like… Wonderfully ornate, closely packed and zinc roofs. Our first view was La Gare de Lyon… Wow!

It was like a wonderful present wrapped in the most boring wrapping paper ever.

5: Our Hotel

There’s noting bad to say about this little hotel. It’s boutiquey. It’s cute. And it’s in a great neighborhood. Our room was expectedly small, with a queen size bed and a foot and a half fringe of space on its three sides. We have our own bathroom, which I’m told is something to be quite pleased about. The best part is the window opens up onto another street (not the best part) and right bellow our window is a bakery. Smells are stupid good.

However all the electrical outlets in the room didn’t work, so we were moved out on Sunday to a new room.

6: Parisians known their food

On our arrival day we had 3 meals (we arrived at 7am right) all of which were really good. Our breakfast consisted of a ham and cheese croissant from the bakery bellow… We didn’t know it had ham and cheese and hollandaise sauce! it was delicious. But thank god we walked a lot. ’cause eating a cheese covered butter pastry with ham and butter sauce isn’t light on the calorie side. We also had some delicious salads and cheese for lunch and some great brasserie food for dinner. All of which was NOMS.

The coffee… Stupid good. And I’m happy to report we had our first one in a streetside café. Cheesy, yes. Did I care? Hell no.

7: the Paris Pass… It rocks

We aren’t getting paid by them… So this isn’t an ad… But if you come to Paris, get a Paris Pass… You won’t regret it.

This thing rocks, it’s like an all access Paris pass for however many days you chose.

We have a 6 day one… Here are the highlights:

Aid probably more stuff… But I haven’t figured it all out yet.

8: My head blowed up with amazement about 60 times… Brains everywhere, it was gross

Soooooo… Paris right, I’ve been reading about it, and seeing pictures and seeing it in Movies for most of my life… None of those mediums even come close to doing Paris any justice at all. Kinda like describing sex as a physical activity – its true, but kinda misses the point.

I can wax poetic for about 30,000 words on the amazing ness I saw on this first day… And we really didn’t see that much… But let me just pick one thing.

After our café, we walked a couple of block to the Louvre. Again, I’m up on the Louvre, I know more than the average person about it. You know how like it’s the biggest art museum… In the world. These words mean nothing until you’re there. The Louvre, and keep in mind, we were only outside, is huuuuuuuuuuuge. Just gigantic… And it’s beautiful. All of Paris is like this. It doesn’t disappoint.

9: being coherent after all this

So by the time we hit the pillow on Saturday night around 9:30, I had slept about 6 hours since Thursday and Claire-Lise had squeezed about 12 hours.

We were moving and barely communicating shells of our former selves. Which bring us to…

10- Sleep

Best sleep ever. Slept until 8am… Solid, didn’t move.

We only have one working outlet in our room, all of our gear us drained. 2 posts tomorrow.

Have you ever heard of the Sprinkles Cupcake company? No? Ok, well that might be because you don’t live in the handful of cities they’re located in, or you don’t watch Food Network. You see Sprinkles is the world’s first cupcake bakery, in Beverly Hills. They make cupcakes. I hear they’re tasty cupcakes. But what sets them apart a bit is their slightly quirky technology offerings. They have online ordering of course, and an iPhone app, but these pale in comparison to last week’s launch: A cupcake ATM!!!

Now before I go too far into the wonderfulness that is Cupcake ATM, you need to understand I have a slight infatuation with Automats. What are Automats? Well I believe they pretty much no longer exist, but they were restaurants where you got your meal through these massive wall sized vending machines. They were big in the 40′s through 60′s but they have pretty much disappeared by now. They make me giddy in way I can barely describe. Which probably why I find vending machines (Automat’s obvious younger brother) super entertaining.

So back to Sprinkle’s Cupcake ATM… this to me is the next logical progression of the Automat model. Huffington Post kinda went and took a test drive of it during launch day last week… and well… I hope you appreciate it as much as I do.