Oh Internet, how I've missed you.

I've been in Paris for five days now and I'm slowly starting to adjust to the city life. I'm still incredibly jet lagged and my inability to sleep during normal hours has contributed to quite a bit of four A.M. dinners. It's also been snowing for a few days now. The city is really pretty but the sidewalks aren't shoveled so walking anywhere is a pain.

My hotel is quite lovely. It's situated on a quiet street in the 15th arrondissement, just two metro stops from the Eiffel Tower. Upon my arrival they said the hotel would be undergoing reservations this week and that the room I reserved, on the first floor, was unavailable. They upgraded me to a double bed on the fifth floor (there is an elevator) free of charge! I've yet to actually see any construction though.

The only problem I've had with my hotel is that I can't connect my laptop to the wifi (pronounced wee-fee) network. I bought the WIFI access code (€5 for my whole stay) and I've only been able to connect to it on my iPhone. I think they might have been having issues with their login page though because even my iPhone would only stay connected for 30 seconds at a time my first two days.

This leads me to what I perceive as the biggest lie in France. It's probably not an intentional lie, but as an English speaker it is somewhat false advertising. There is a French company, Free, that offers a membership to join their network of hotspots around the city. Free Wifi COSTS MONEY.

For this very reason, I have yet to connect my laptop to the Internet here in France. The places I've found with wifi gratuit (actually free wifi) are public parks around Paris. I could lug my laptop to the nearest one.... But there's currently an inch of snow on the ground and I don't love my laptop enough for that.

As a result, I'm currently writing this post from the Blogger app on my phone. I attempted to find the Internet cafe in my neighborhood today but I didn't check the hours and it's closed on Sundays, oops.

TL,DR;
Jayme wrote a really boring post about the #struglife in Paris.