And Then There Was Paris...

August 26, 2010 to September 18, 2010

The Photos

*I don’t know if I’m going to keep up the daily journal.  Gregory wants me to (as well as some blog readers), but it will completely depend on if I can make it a consistent habit, like before bed or something.*

August 26 ~ Three Ducks ... worst hostel EVER!  Crap room, next to patio.  Loud voices until after 2:30.  My bed is basically fine (I’ve slept on better AND worse!), but poor Gregory had two low spots.  We still find it odd that the French don’t seem to believe in breakfast, only coffee and a croissant, and it makes me wonder how they get anything accomplished.  Of note Gregory wants me to lead using the GPS more.  I’m afraid that I wear out too easily but we agree to try to find a second bike cradle for the GPS so that either bike can lead at any time.  Quick run by Jordan’s to fix my handlebars, I think if I can just STOP dropping my bike I will have less problems.  Using a Google maps to GPX import tool I found online, we create a trail to a very busy campground.  Once we get there we are unable to check in for at least an hour and a half and the line waiting is incredibly long.  However, once we check in, we get a great spot in the back corner near the spillway which produces a wonderfully lulling white noise.  We easily nap the afternoon away.

NOT Actual Size

Upon, awaking we decide to have dinner at the camp restaurant rather than bike ‘into town’.  We end up have a weird, over priced Salmon Pizza (don’t ask me, I was happy with the idea of a Margherita pizza, which in France is just an American cheese pizza).  Anyway, we’ve about decided on showers and more sleep, despite the lack of sleepiness at the moment, when the fellow sitting next to Gregory comments on the Tome he is reading.  The official title The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Philosophy is more than interesting enough to catch Michele’s eye.  This starts a long wonderful conversation with him and his friend Marco, both from Parma, Italy.  We talk about our trip so far and their recently finished walk about of the Normandy Coast, our non specific plans of Paris exploration and their completed and planned Parisian attractions, our more solid plan to visit Italy and their warning about Italian drivers and bicycles.  An energizing conversation that eventually ends as we decide on showers and they head to bed as they have their last day of exploring tomorrow.  We find out they are camped in the same area as us and I hope to talk with them again before they leave.

August 27 ~ Waste almost all day napping, but then it might not be a waste as we seem to have really needed it.  Bike to Jordan and Annie’s for Veggie Taco Dinner and our first macaroons.  Gregory and Jordan have so much catching up to do and it is very late by the time we head back home directly through ‘les bois de bordel' *not their official title.  Paris has two pleasant woods (not big enough to be called forests) on either side of the city centre.  They are called the lungs of Paris and they are filled with paths and trails good for walking and biking.  They are also filled with prostitutes.  I don’t seem to appreciate their presence nearly as much as Gregory does so once he adds his two cents, you’ll possibly gain the same sense of awe (or derision) we felt as we happened upon their territory, despite Jordan’s low-down on their probable presence.

August 28 ~ Late to bed means late to rise.  We finally crawl out of our tent around 10.  Michele and Marco have left already and I wish I’d had the chance to say good-bye.  Wander up to the cafe for weak coffee and watery hot chocolate.  We talk to a group of girls from Dublin who are here for a 3 day music festival.     It sounds cool, but for some reason we can’t fathom what would make that trip worth it.  Maybe we are getting old.  This festival is the reason for there being so many people filling this Parisian campground.  Head back to the tent for planning out the rest of the day and find a beautiful note from Michele.  A tickle fight and a movie cap the afternoon.  Gregory goes to call Jordan about a possible movie tonight while I write out the last couple of the days.  Hard to documentate when you’re sleeping!  Movie is a no go and we are without plan for the remainder of our day.  Go on a completely directionless bike ride which ends up at the Eiffel Tower.

August 29 ~ Today we get our apartment.  Twenty days of luxury after twenty-five days of roughing it … er, I mean camping.  Tear down camp and pack up.  Arrive an hour and a half early to check out the neighborhood.  A half naked French woman notices us from her balcony and spends the next several minutes singing and generally letting us know that she is loony tunes.  In our haste (and lack of internet for the last couple of days) I have neglected to get the numeric code that lets us into the building.  Once our 3:00 appointment time comes and then goes, I trudge off to find internet and the code, so that we are at least waiting in the right spot rather than looking homeless on the street.  I come back and enter the four digits, just as Gregory and our landlady are disappearing from the foyer.  Our initial impression of the space is that it is SMALL, but on second opinion it is pretty amazing.  It is essentially one room with a tiny kitchen and decent sized bathroom, but it has a lofted bed area over the bathroom and kitchen which leaves mom the downstairs room once she arrives.

I get a great haircut...
promptly re-dye it purple!
I’m back to being the
 Purple French Mushroom...
in Paris even.

September 5 ~ No writing for SEVEN days.  I’d like to say we were exploring the city ... but we haven’t really.  Blazing fast internet at the apartment makes us think that either Paris is the centre of the intertubes or Parisians just don’t spend their time online.  In the time not written about we have had dinner with Jordan and Annie again.  They came to see our ‘janitor’s quarters’ as Jordan pronounces it and we have a tasty Lebanese dinner at a place nearby.

Now, sitting in a cafe near the Louvre there is too much noise to write or think so more later (I hope!)

I have to look at photos to attempt to remember even a portion of the last couple of days.  We have dinner with Thomas, a CouchSurfer we met in Dallas through Boarhead, a year prior.  Thomas was in the States working on his American People Project.  We find out that while he was an inspiration to our attempts at better fire spinning photos, we were part of the inspiration for his current art style, Photo Composites.  Wonderful moment of realized inspiration surrounded by great conversations about life and art.

Oh, and as you can tell from some of the photos, my mother has arrived.  This is momentous and beyond my imaginings.  Initially I thought she was arriving on the second, but silly me that’s when she was leaving Dallas.  She landed in Paris on the third at about 9 in the morning.  It takes her just enough time getting to the apartment that I’ve started to worry, but she shows up just fine.  We get her settled in and then wander out for some small explorations and some lunch.  We decide to share two Plat de Jour’s, one starter and meal and one meal and desert.  Despite our utter lack of French (well mom and I had some in college, but that was longer ago than either of us likes to think about) mom knows just enough to suss out that the entrée is rabbit.  It was remarkable tasty and absolute proof positive that mom is NOT in Texas anymore.  We buy groceries for some of my favorite ‘home cooked’ meals and decide on Hamburger Mushroom Gravy over Potatoes.  It was delicious although not exactly the same as at home.

*Gregory distinctly remembers a moment that reminds him that neither me or my mother has traveled out of the United States before when after looking at a menu my mom says “Now I understand how hard it must be for foreigners to come to America."

We wake up super early for our scheduled tourist activity, the City Segway Tour.  Brisk walk to the Eiffel Tower where we wait for our tour guide and fellow tourists.  Seth arrives on Segway and is a great mix of my brother’s humor and all the geeky boys I miss from back home.  His humorous take on French history and his witty repartee make the day speed by.  Gregory and I are initially worried about mom being able to handle the new technology of Segwaying, but she masters it tout suite.  I, however, learn the hard and painful way that Segways and dirt paths are not BFF.  In fact, they seem to be more the hair pulling, shirt shredding, scratching, biting, slapping enemies that we all remember from cat fights in High School.  Put into simpler terms, the mechanism of the Segway works great on concrete and other hard surfaces, but the same mechanism that makes it work is completely counter intuitive on dirt … wait a minute that wasn’t any simpler.  What I’m trying to say is that when the Segway feels like it’s not getting the traction it needs, it automatically speeds up the wheels, which is a lot like spinning out in loose gravel with your car.

*Now let me state for the record, that Gregory feels I was fooling around inappropriately on said device which led to my eventual literal downfall.  However, in my defense I say that I was merely monkey see, monkey doing what he was doing.

Right or wrong, I fell … hard.  Gregory stops, helps me up, dusts me off, rinses my hands and we are about to try to catch up with the group when here comes the cavalry!  Eight Segways come charging back, led by Seth and my mother.  One of the girls had seen me fall and rode ahead to tell them I was down.  Scraped palms and bruised ego aside, the tour was marvelous and Segways are great fun.

Once back at headquarters, we get food recommendations, including a Pho restaurant to fill in mom’s Cold Noodle Bowl card.  Hobble walk to a nearby cafe for coffee and eclairs before heading home to rest, change clothes and re-bandage my hand.  The fabric bandages that mom brought, because she’s Mom, immediately became ‘handy.’  After resting, we take a substantial walk, back to the Eiffel Tower, over the Pont d’Léna, through the Jardins du Trocadéro and over to the Palais de Chaillot.  Despite all the signage and mom’s shuttle driver pointing it out repeatedly on her ride that morning, we were never really sure what we were looking for in our search for the Trocadéro.  We decide on dinner in China Town and take our first Metro ride over to find mom’s Cold Noodle Bowl.  The place we were directed to had at least a 30 minute line out the door and we were all hungry more than 30 minutes ago.  Along the way, mom had perused several menus to see if she could find the elusive CNB.  Fortunately, she knew the Vietnamese word for what she wanted (Bun Thit, if you are curious) so we doubled back to a restaurant with immediate seating.  Mom and I got Bun Thit and Gregory got random Ginger Chicken with rice (on the server’s recommendation).

After dinner, we Metro home for sleep and a lazy morning.  The first Sunday of the month is Free Museum Entry day and despite being warned off by Seth from the Segway Tour, we decided to give it a shot.  Using the Metro entrance, saved us a ton of wait time and we got in nearly straight away.  Although Gregory is the main one that wanted to see the Louvre, we really only saw the things my mother was interested in, such as the Napoleanic Apartments and the Flemish, German and Dutch painters.  Gregory may go back to see other stuff, but I think he would prefer finding a modern art museum.

Suddenly the writing stopped.  The day to day activities took precedence over blogging.  The touristic whirlwind caught us in its might and dropped us at random points around the city.  We dragged my poor mother up to the highest reachable point of the Eiffel Tower, it was nerve wracking for her but she did it!  We also dragged her to the lowest depths of the Catacombs, she found it outré.  We watched her explore a cemetery.  We day tripped to Versailles, where we were all stunned by the overwhelming, over the top opulence. We saw Notre Dame but found more enjoyment watching a man feed the pigeons nearby.  I know we walked and walked and walked all over the town, sometimes with a purpose, but most times without.

Then saddest of days,
my mother flew back home.