Adventures of Lady Korynta: Paris part 1

When Kyle first mentioned that he would like to participate in a conference with other PhD students, I was excited to find out that it would be held in Paris. We debated on whether or not we could afford an extra trip while Annika and I were in Norway and decided that it was an opportunity that we shouldn't pass up. Kyle was invited to join a group of students from universities around Norway. Each student submitted a paper and then they met together to discuss and critique each other's works. There were also lectures from the professors attending. Kyle's adviser in Bergen, Lars, was there and I finally got to meet him. By participating, the conference paid for Kyle's hotel and meals while we were there. We had to pay for our tickets (pretty inexpensive flying from Norway), and then my meals. We decided to extend our trip by arriving the evening before the conference started and stayed an extra night at the end. Luckily, the hotel was able to extend our time there and we wouldn't have to move between hotels.

We arrived in Paris the evening of January 24th. Side note: We had a layover in Amsterdam and it's a great airport to spend time in. Wish we could have had longer between flights. Kyle and I had discussed whether or not we should bring our stroller with us. We opted to bring it because of how much walking we'd be doing around the city. This decision was quickly challenged, as we encountered a lot of difficulty accessing train platforms and subway stations because there were no elevators or gates wide enough for our stroller. Kyle got stuck in an automatic door at the airport while trying to get Annika through in her carseat and then the stroller separately. Lots of frustration the evening we arrived, along with our travel coinciding with a big event in Paris and delayed trains. There were so many people on the train into Paris that I was afraid that Annika was going to get hurt by the crush of riders. A local woman assured me that this was not typical and that I should not let this experience influence my opinion of the city. She was great in helping me stay calm with so many people around. With the help of friendly people, we were able to get all of our things up the stairs from the subway. Luckily, our hotel, which was close to the Luxembourg garden and palace, was easy to find.

Our room was originally assigned to Kyle as a single person, so it was really tiny. There was about 2 feet of space on all sides of the bed. Annika had to sleep between us because there was no other room. After the first two nights, we were told that due to the fire code, there could not be more than 2 people in that room and that we needed to move. That was fine with us, as it was tricky to get everything up the little elevator. They moved us to a much larger room (without charging us more) on the ground floor and that made it possible for me to get the stroller out on my own. The downside of moving to the different room is that we were on the street level and it was noisier. The view from our 5th floor room was very nice and we could see the very top of the Pantheon, which was only a few blocks away. The hotel did have free wifi but the only place we could get the signal was by having the computer on our bed.

Stay tuned for more Paris posts!

Who could have guessed that Annika would be at the Park Cafe in the Amsterdam airport before being at our favorite Park Cafe in Glacier National Park? :)