Welcome to France

We're here! An update on the journey, as well as things I've learned in France already:

The trip- It went very smoothly overall. We had visited Margaret's brother and his girlfriend in NYC for New Year's. We had a good time, but in all honesty, the highlight of the trip was getting to JFK from their apartment with all (240 lbs) of luggage. Would have been quite hard, except we had the use of an unreturned moving dolly, from an unnamed source. Much easier. Thank you, U-Haul.

The flights were smooth (except British Airways apparently keep their thermostats at 85 degrees). We figured out the RER (commuter train) to get to Rueil-Malmaison. And then the Torture March started. We thought it would be easiest to just walk the 2.4 km from the train station to our hotel. Oh man. We had two enormous suitcases, each weighing about 70 lbs. One of them didn't roll so well, so I tried stacking it on top of the other and then rolling both of them in front of me. Then I had a 30 lb backpack, Margaret had a 50 lb backpack, and we both had shoulder bags of about 15 lbs each. The handle for the one rolling suitcase broke about halfway through. We ended up getting almost to the hotel, completely pouring in sweat, before a kind old Frenchman explained to us that there is a bus that runs from the train station right to the square the hotel is on. C'est la vie. 24 hours of being awake (seeing as I was sweating too much on the planes to sleep) combined with that trip made for pure exhaustion. We slept for 16 hours last night

Things I've learned in France:
1. Grocery stores are the same world round (or at least in France). We walked in to lovely Franprix this morning to the silky smooth sounds of 'Bed of Roses' by Bon Jovi. 'MERICA. So we grabbed our Cornflakes and TP and rolled out. The food isn't different.
2. Just kidding, the food can be delicious (although we did buy Cornflakes). Since we've been here, we've purchased 4 pain au chocolates, 2 baguettes, and 2 croissants from the bakeries on the street. All of which have been GREAT. Mmmmm bread.
3. Wine is also cheap. I can't testify as to whether or not it is also good, but we picked up a bottle at Franprix for 2.50 Euros. It's not great, but on the other hand, for Franzia prices, it ain't terrible.
4. Rueil seems like a fairly pleasant town, kind of like an upper-middle class suburb mixed with Old World charm. Lots of bakeries and such within walking distance. Lots of shoe stores and eye-wear shops (thus our guess that it is upper middle class).

Beyond that, the people were mostly very friendly in helping us get in to our dorm/apartment. It's a dorm, but it's bigger than we expected and fairly new/clean. Maybe we can give you a tour of it later. Tonight I sleep on a beeeedddd of nails / I want to be just as close as / the Holy Ghost is / and lay you dowwwwnnnn... on a bed of roses.
Au revoir, Jon Bon Jovi.