Aix en Provence up to Paris

We're having difficulties loading up photos but for the past couple days, we haven't had a whole lot to show. It seems that one of the favorite pastimes of Americans is to rip the French for their tendency to sit in cafes and not do anything gainful but that attitude has rubbed off on us because we've spent the past few days doing as the locals do.

This morning we took the TGV ("train a grande vitesse" in French which translates into 'train at high speed') from Aix en Provence up to Paris where we'll spend about a week. The train hauls ass so we made it to Paris in about three hours after which we checked into a serviced apartment similar to the ones we stayed in at Beijing and Manila. It does shatter a bit of the Parisian dream to be staying it the business district of La Defense on the northwestern side but it's worth it for the 4x gain in lodging space. Anyone who's been to Europe knows how small a standard hotel room is so with our four bags, it's nice to have full size one bedroom apartment.

For dinner we opted for French colonial and the easiest type of that cuisine to find is North African. On our last trip to Paris a couple years back, we enjoyed Algerian cuisine but this attempt wasn't as delicious. The staple of North African food is couscous so its just a matter of what is paired on top of the couscous.

Over the next few days, we're lining up some wonderful activities but today was simply a slow travel day.