Dreaming of France -- Arriving in Paris

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A week ago Friday, we made our way from Southwestern France to Paris. We wanted to end our trip with a few days in the magical city.
When I'm buying plane tickets, I usually include a hotel room in Paris either as we are arriving or leaving. I find that the hotel room doesn't really increase the price of the plane tickets, so it's like getting a hotel room for free. So our flights from Ohio to Paris with two nights in a hotel in Paris were about $800 each.
This time we stayed in Trianon Rive Gauche, which was in the 5th arrondisement. The rooms are always small in Paris, so don't expect anything like an American hotel room, but the bed was firm and the bathroom remodeled, plus we didn't spend that much time in the room.
Since we took the train to Paris, we arrived at the Gare de Lyon in the 12th arrondisement. I had checked ahead of time and walking from the train station to our hotel was about 2 miles. Even though we were wheeling suitcases along, I wanted to walk and enjoy the city.
When we first got off the train, the sky looked like this!

How glorious!
So we started walking, following some vague directions I had downloaded from Google maps.
Soon the sky ahead looked like this.

We kept walking as the wind picked up, wheeling our suitcases behind us. And then the rain began to fall and suddenly in front of us, a bistro appeared with a broad red awning. I pulled my suitcase next to an empty terrace table and Earl joined me.

We had shared a sandwich on the train, but after walking for a while, we were definitely ready to eat again. Paris is used to tourists who eat at all hours of the day, so they didn't look askance when we ordered a charcuterie and cheese planche (board) along with a Kir au vin blanc, which is kir mixed with white wine. 

This is the huge board that arrived with ham, salami, three kinds of cheese, butter, pickles and bread. We sat there watching the rain for quite a bit, until it had passed and we were definitely sated.
After checking our directions again, we moved on to arrive at our hotel with slightly damp suitcases.
Two nights in Paris is never enough, but I know that we'll be back to explore more.
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