A Few Moments

Thursday, August 12, 2010

We have fallen sorely behind in keeping our blog up to date with our travels because we have been doing so much! Of course this means that we will only fall further behind because we are down to our last 5 days in Paris and we are feeling the pressure of the upcoming flight home. We will be sad to leave.

My parents arrived on Monday and so we have been touring around with them. I have to tell you first of all that my parents have been a bad influence on us in their few short days here. Last night we got home at 1:30 AM and the night before that we were out until 12:30 AM. Hopefully I can convince them to let us go to bed a bit earlier tonight!

There were a few special moments that represented our day. First was a moment of lost and then found.

We lost my parents at the Louvre. We had intended to rendez-vouz (meet) at the bottom escalator of the Denon wing. Well with a building as big as the Louvre with as many people as you can possibly imagine and jet lag on my parents’ part (they slept in!), we did not rendez-vouz. Note to self – don’t try to meet at the Louvre on a Wednesday in the summer! Luckily my parents did get to see the Louvre. We got to enjoy the delicious lunch I brought along (baguettes, butter, salami, 2 kinds of cheeses, apples, baguette a la provencal, and of course chocolate) in the gardens of the Palais Royale and then we headed off to see the Francois Mitterand National Library.

We had a quiet moment.

The library is on the outskirts of Pairs in a business district. It is a large 4 part structure around a big sunken forest court yard. We did not go into the library but it is a place I wanted to see. Heather’s comment as we were walking along was, “It’s so quiet. I like being here just because it is quiet.” It was quiet as far as street noise goes and the weather was very pleasant so it was an enjoyable walk and view. After the library, we split up so that I could try to find my parents and Steve and the girls went back to the apartment to rest a bit.

Then came the “found” moment.

After the metro ride and a short walk down the Champs Eleyses the thought occurred that my parents might be in the café right in front of their hotel, and as I approached, voila, there they were. They had just sat down but not yet ordered. We went up to their room and they got to eat the sack lunch that we had left which they very much enjoyed. We rested a bit (on a nice soft bed with carpet on the floor – ahhhh) and then met my family at the Bastille monument. We did a walk through the Marais neighborhood and saw the Place des Vosges, and the narrow streets of what Paris used to look like in the late 1400’s. We walked through the Jewish Quarter and ate a dinner of shwarma, lamb, veggies, hummus, pita and tsazki. We then headed to the Eiffel Tower for our 10:30 PM reservation to go to the top.

We then had an “are you kidding me?” moment.

The metro ride was made more interesting not just because we got seats for almost the whole ride but because someone almost pick pocketed me! It was a woman and a young man about 15 or 16 years old who were working together. We saw the woman as we were walking through the metro to our next train and she was acting a bit “crazy” by yelling and changing directions, etc. We heard her yell, but I did not see them following us at all. Heather had my small orange shoulder bag (it’s in all the pictures with me!) and I took it from her and sort of joked that I didn’t want anyone to take her because she had the money. As we got on to our train, I felt someone pushing up behind me – I thought it was Heather. But when I turned around, it was the young looking at me asking if this was the Chatelet metro stop, then the woman yelled again and they both got off the metro car before the doors closed to leave. I looked down at my orange bag and it was unzipped! He wasn’t able to take anything out however because it was too close to my body and my wallet is too well fitted to the purse. Whew – but are you kidding me?!?

Then we had our classic, romantic Paris moment.

We walked to the Eiffel Tower from the Trocadero metro stop which gives you a glorious view of the Tower from the Chaillot Palace. It was all lit up and truly evokes romantic images of Paris. It is truly beautiful to look at – so glad they didn’t take it down after the exposition it was built for! The lines to go up the Eiffel Tower are long, but with our reservation we took only about 10 minutes to get into the first lift that takes you to the 2^nd level observation deck. We then got in line for the lift to the top.

Paris in the summer moment.

While in line we met a whole group of travelers from Uruguay, someone from New Zealand who commented on the “All Blacks” shirt Steve was wearing, a couple from England, a group of kids from Mexico who sang Las Mananitas (Happy B-Day) at the top to a girl in their group, and I overheard a Russian and German girl who are living and waiting tables here for the summer talking to a Mexican boy about which tourists they like to serve best and least (all this done in OK English). That gives you a picture of what Paris is like in the summer!

A moment at the top.

We got to the top and had to put up with a bit of wind making it chilly but the views were marvelous and everything was lit up to show “The City of Lights.” It was fun to pick out all the landmarks we have visited, see the Seine and its bridges, the dark spot of the Bois de Boulogne, and all the streets radiating from the Etoile of the Arc de Triomphe. It was beautiful moment before the descent and the mad dash to the metro before it closed.

We had our “whew what luck and eeew that’s interesting” moment.

We made it onto the LAST metro train at 1 AM and arrived at our stop as they were closing it up for the night (or morning?). We were the last people out of the Republique Metro station and even got to see the first rat scurrying across the ticket buying area as he and his fellows began their nighttime reign of the metro station. Morgan thinks the rats live in the “moat of disgustingness” which is a small 3 inch wide gutter that runs between the walls and floors throughout the metro. Heather even found a probable entry into the rat kindgdom.

Last night was the first time that even I was dreading the trudge up the five flights of stairs before being able to fall into bed. We made it however and truly enjoyed all the moments of the day!