Paris first day

I am back home from my three week trip to Europe. I am going to attempt to write as much as possible about it, but we'll see since I do get bogged down with details. Since I wrote a lot of notes during the trip, I'm going to write as if I was writing it at the time/place of the note writing, although I will add to it as needed. I will also post date to correspond to when the notes were written.
I'm not sure where these first notes were taken, so...
My flight out was rather uneventful. I was annoyed as usual by the insane security measures that any four year old could defeat with five minutes of thought. Of course thinking people know that it is all show for the gullible to feel more safe, and I'm sure that some of the security does protect us, but damn is it a pain in the ass for and a boon for the bottled water industry. I am happy though that they lifted the ban on lighters.
I drank a couple little bottles of wine compliments of my friends at Air France, and watched some French movie about a teacher of troubled students that didn't seem to have a plot or an ending. It was reasonably entertaining though. I was entertained to find that my dinner was Bœuf Bolognaise, which happened to be the exact main dish I had made for my dinner party on Wed. For some reason I was kind of surprised to find that it was identical right down to the little pearl onions, although mine was of course much better. I think it is just strange that all of these random recipes that I find and make actually exist outside of paper and this might be the first time I've come across something that I've made, besides something that I sought after eating it.
I played some hangman in French and was pleased to actually do alright. I could understand a lot more of the French I heard around me - almost everyone on the flight was French - than I had expected, and I finally learned the proper pronunciation of 'ainsi' after asking the guy next to me.
Since I've arrived in Paris I've found my French to function shockingly well and have found the locals to be fairly friendly and helpful.
Right now I am sitting in a street cafe in a square at Rue Censier and Rue Mouffetard, near Ave des Gobelins. I find this name amusing and it is all over this part of the city. (I later will find out that it is named after a family of Dyers and Tapestry makers dating back to the 15th Century, who eventually became quite wealthy)
It's weird, all of this does not seem to feel all that foreign. I have been to Europe enough times, and Paris is quite typically "European" as I seem to have defined it in my head. While eating in a restaurant that could have been in New York, I even caught myself thinking, "man, there sure are a lot of French people here." My first impression of the city was that it's quite like NYC, but without all the cars and assholes. In a way this is true, but certainly not correct. For one, people are frustratingly slow for a guy who has gleefully embraced the NYC walk. And here, slow people do not get out of your way. But the pace is also part of the beauty. Nobody seems to work too hard. They take it easy. Take this cafe, they serve food, but the waitress doesn't blink an eye when I only ordered a 1.20 coffee. In fact, she smiled when she brought it, which was likely a mix between the way I ordered it because it was something I'd never had, and my hideous attempts at French.
Argh! I just saw a Velib go by. It is this amazing Paris bike share program. It is next to free, and there are stations everywhere. However, I am excluded because they are racist against my American debit card without the fancy pants microchip. The first thing I did after finding my way out of the maze of the Les Halles Metro station was to spend 10 min wrestling with the atrociously designed Velib terminal, only to find I was shit out of luck.
After this disappointment I wandered over to where I was going to meet an American CSer to buy a phone. I sat around a couple of different fountains, one of which is in front of the ridiculous Centre Pompidou, which is the Paris MoMA. It looks like a huge ship with pipes everywhere, and I regret taking a picture of the monstrosity. After waiting around and withdrawing some euros, I met up with Sarah and had lunch a good, but unremarkable organo veggie type place. It was nice though to be able to get a verre vin rouge for only 3.20 that was definitely good. We then went off to find a place to buy a Sim card, but it seems as though all of the phone places are closed until Aug 15th! (wow, this girl just sat down to a nearby table and she has the deepest back I've ever seen. It looks like she doesn't have any organs in there)
After parting with Sarah I started walking around, making my way towards where I'd meet my CS hosts later that evening. I walked past Notre Dame, which was not surprisingly crawling with tourists. This was after passing two other places that my dim memory made me think might be it, since all of these cathedrals are the same type of cool. Yes, I'm pretty ignorant about the location within cities of all of the famous landmarks. Notre Dame is above and beyond cool though. But I cannot handle being around throngs of tourists, so I screwed pretty quickly.
I then walked past the Sorbonne, which sadly did not seem to have much of a campus to walk around, and was more of just a bunch of huge buildings right up to the street. I like to visit famous universities when I travel.
Ugh, the guy at lunch gave me nine euros in fifty cent coins and now I have all this damn metal to dispose of.
After the Sorbonne, I found this nice little park in front of this big, cool building with an unidentifiable purpose. I wanted to be a hotshot and only bring my regular school backpack. You know, travel light and look all cool with how little I was taking for three weeks. Unfortunately I seem to have brought too much stuff to be able to pack in a manner that will allow comfort carriage, hence I have many stops. I kicked off my feet, lay in the grass and konked out for a bit.
This coffee has been my next stop and after I shall head over to my hosts'.