Paris, France

Paris was, unsurprisingly the best place we've been for food so far; what was slightly less expected was the quality of the breakfasts. The French don't seem to take the first meal of the day as seriously as they take lunch and dinner, but there was an amazing little café near our hotel which served incredibly good "tradition" baguettes with jam, fresh-squeezed orange juice and perfectly scrambled eggs. We went there every morning we were in town. Their coffee, however, leaves much to be desired, and it's the only gustatory victory the Italians can comfortably claim over the French outside of gelato. Even the English have somehow figured out how to brew coffee better than the French.

Our hotel was also in close proximity to the Eiffel Tower; a roughly ten minute walk brought us within up-skirt range of the thing. It was very cool to see in person, and it's kind of neat that you can just wander all around it without much ado. I was sort of expecting it to be cordoned off at the base or some such, but save a few uncharacteristically serious-looking French military guys it was easy to see the entirety of it on foot. Of course, they charge the pants off you if you want to actually go up onto it, which we intended - but never quite managed - to do. More's the shame, but it was quite pretty at night, most especially during its hourly light shows.

Riding the metro was also fun; I think it's interesting to see the various public transportation options in other countries, and by "interesting" I of course mean incredibly depressing given how much more substantial and streamlined they tend to be in comparison to our own. The stops and the trains in Paris were so much frequent than, for example, those of BART it was ridiculous. If the trains ran like that in the Bay we'd have such a vastly improved commute infrastructure that we'd all finally have time to finish our back stock of Fernet Branca. But, c'est la vie, as they say (which I'm pretty sure translates to "Fuck it, let's have a baguette").