Nashville to Paris
In preparation for the trip, I forced Vicki to do earlier bedtimes the week before leaving, so that by Sunday night, we were going to bed around 6:00 p.m. and rising at 2:00 a.m. The plan is to have already shifted 3-4 time zones before leaving so that the jet lag adjustment on our travel day isn’t as bad. We’ve done it twice now, and it works. The only problem is that after waking at 2:00 a.m. on travel day, what do you do while waiting for your 11:35 flight. Well, if you’re like us, you head for the airport early and see if you can score an earlier flight (9:35 for us). Of course, this lengthened out wait at DFW, but it’s not a terrible airport 

So we did get the earlier flight and met up with our siblings in DFW around lunch time. Due to thunderstorms earlier in the day, our flight to Paris was delayed by about 40 minutes, and we ended up landing about 30 minutes late (around 10:00 a.m. Paris time). We were in the back of the plane (row 41—seats highly recommended on seatguru.com), but it emptied out quickly. We got through passport control in about 5 minutes and exited to find our Avalon rep. He wasn’t there at first, but showed up within 5 minutes. Another couple said that they’d waited longer. 

We had a 5-10 minute walk to the bus where we met two buses—one for Avalon’s Seine cruise and ours for the Moselle/Rhine cruise. The full sized bus set out for our hotel with 8 passengers on board. When we arrived, we were greeted by the cruise director, Hyndrik. He gave us a quick run-down of planned activities. Our afternoon is free, and there’s an information meeting downstairs at 6:00 p.m. tonight. Nikki, Avalon’s Paris rep, came over with room keys for us and porters brought our bags up to the room (their tips are included in our Avalon prepaid gratuities). The Hotel du Collectionneur is a large business hotel located near the Arc deTriomphe and the Courcelles Metro stop. We got a nice room on the top floor with a small balcony looking down on the Rue de Courcelles.  

So we were in our rooms by 12:15. After a brief rest and clean up we left the hotel on foot looking for lunch. There’s no shortage of restaurants in Paris, and we wound up at Brasserie La Lorraine. It was pricey, but we figured that once we got on the ship, we’ll be finished paying for meals. Vicki’s description follows: 

Ann and I chose it and wanted to splurge this once.  We kept telling ourselves that this was pretty much the only meal we were having today.  We had yogurt and coffee on the plane this morning.  Anyway we got the special luncheon with a starter, entre, and dessert.  It is called the “Tradition Menu”.  We had a choice of starters one was a roasted vegetable plate which Ann ordered.  Larry, George and I chose the cold pea soup.  When they brought the soup bowls there was a froth of goat cheese in the bowl with some fresh peas and herbs (including tarragon).  We were kind of staring at the fluff with herbs in the bowls when the waiter brought our green pea soup in little individual decanters.  We poured it over the froth and it was very good.  We ordered salmon with zucchini as an entre.  George ordered rump steak with French fries.  The steak was served with a “gravy” like sauce and George said it was really good.  Larry wanted to order the cod ceviche for his entre, but I told him it was raw.  No one believed me so George looked it up.  Larry went with the salmon.  We all had profiteroles with bourbon vanilla ice cream and hot chocolate sauce for dessert.  Here’s a picture: 

Can you tell I am pretty pumped about the lunch?  

After lunch we walked on over to the Arc and then back down the Champs-Elysees and looked at all the high end (very high end) shops up and down the Champs-Elysees. We also walked down Avenue George V. I like to check out the Lamborghinis and Ferraris in front of the Prince de Galles and Four Seasons George V hotels.  They tend to have Kuwaiti and Qatari plates. 

We got back to the hotel a little before 5:00 and I took a quick nap before our meeting at 6:00. Our cruise director Henrik conducted the meeting. He’ll be with us all week. He’s a real veteran. I found lots of favorable comments about him on cruisecritic.com going back to 2005. Folks at the meeting were very friendly, and significantly younger than the people we’ve sailed with on previous river cruises. Although the ship holds 128 passengers, we’ll sail with around 80 people. I talked briefly with Henrik, and he believes that Viking’s massive addition of river ships has resulted in many more beds than there are cruisers to fill them. He said that something like 15 Viking longships are sitting unused because they can’t fill them. 

We were full from lunch, so we skipped dinner. As I write this, it’s 7:30 p.m., andVicki is “sawing logs.” It’s about time for me to join her.