Paris

Since I live in Pennsylvania, USA I of course will be flying from the East Coast. A nonstop flight from the East coast to Paris takes 7 ½ to 8 ½ hours depending on what city you leave from as well as the flight path but that time frame will be fairly close for the most part. Many people say that you should fly overnight and sleep on the plane so as to arrive in the morning hours and then just spend all day and go to sleep that night and it will take care of any jet lag you may experience. That may work for some but keep in mind that when you go get into Paris at perhaps 9AM, there is a 6 hour time difference from the east coast so while it will be daylight and you will be good to go having just woken up, you will probably need to end up in your room fairly early that first evening. 9AM Paris time is good but as far as your body is concerned it will be 3AM.

I personally do not sleep well on planes. I love to fly but for some reason I rarely do anything but nap occasionally. What works for me is to try and arrive in the mid-evening, get dinner and spend the evening looking at whatever happens to be open. I then go to bed, a bit late perhaps, but when I get up the next morning my lag is pretty much gone. That may not work for everyone but it does for me.

So in my case I would be arriving in Paris at night so here we have a night landing in Paris from the cockpit so you see what the pilots see as they land from http://www.youtube.com

At the very beginning you will see a flashing lite before the camera pans to the right and that is the light on the top of the Eiffel Tower.

From the Airport of course you would need to get to your hotel. I would probably take the train unless you have arranged to rent a car and have the appropriate international driver's license. According to http://europeforvisitors.com you can get to within 500 meters of any hotel in Paris using the train from the airport and making a connection to another train once you get into the city. Research this first so you know what trains you need to take. You can of course also take a bus or taxi but where is the adventure in that?

Figure 1 CDG Airport Metro (A Google Street View picture from http://www.panoramio.com )

I will leave you here for now since in most cases you will want to at least rest a bit after a pretty long trip.