Brad Feld

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Things I Learned During My First Week In Paris

Jul 08, 2011
Category Places

Amy and I have had a great first week in Paris. The weather has been amazing, the food has been incredible, and the cell phone experience has been abysmal. Here are a few things that I’ve learned.

  • Running on the Champs-Elysees at 4pm sucks. Go to the Bois de Bologne instead – it’s great.
  • I need a lot of sleep. Sleeping until 13:00 is fun.
  • It’s not worth the effort to get a local SIM card.
  • Being a vegetarian at lunchtime is tricky if you like hanging out at a brasserie.
  • French women often forget to put pants on under their short frilly nightgown-like tops.
  • Smart cars are everywhere which makes Amy laugh.
  • Nespresso coffee is delicious. So delicious that you should have four each morning. Wheeeeeeeeee.
  • Balconies rock. At least the one we have does.
  • Amy rocks. But I knew that already.
  • We need to work harder at picking sushi places. Conveyor belt sushi is mediocre.
  • No one seems to be paying attention to the Tour de France here. At least we aren’t.
  • Paris is more ethnically diverse than Boulder.
  • French people are nice if you say “Boujour, je ne parle pas francias.” They smile and then speak in English.
  • You can buy pajamas at the Monoprix.
  • Lots of fun Americans came to Paris this week including @fredwilson, @kimbal, @jason, @johnmaloney, and Cliff Shaw.
  • FNAC is not the train station (something I’ll be able to tease Amy about for a long time.)
  • There are a lot of paid porn channels on the TV which I may have accidentally subscribed to while trying to get the Wimbledon final on TV.
  • There is less dog poop on the street than a few years ago.
  • Everyone here smokes at night and outside. They are about a decade behind the US on this front.
  • 16 degrees C is the right temperature for me at night in the bedroom.
  • I kind of like walking up six flights of stairs several times each day.
  • Two glasses of wine at lunch is too much for me but a bottle at dinner is just right.
  • Google Voice doesn’t work in France. But who needs a phone anyway.
  • It’s smart to bring backup glasses with you if you can’t see very well for when your glasses break.
  • French is a hard. I give you poison and poisson as an example.
  • Lunch takes two hours here. That’s a good thing.

Overall we’ve spent of our time in the 8th and 17th – just hanging out, getting acclimated, writing, and living our life. I expect we’ll explore next week. And no, I am no longer carrying around my cell phone because who fucking a needs a cell phone that costs $17 a minute to use.