Touchdown France. We made it. Dave and I are here in Paris and everything is great. After a few close calls and a long flight across the pond, we arrived in France in a jetlagged haze - and had a wonderful first day here, thanks to our good friend Anne and her family.
We got to the airport with no problem on Friday (thank you for the ride Kipp!). In fact, we got there three hours early and there was no line at the ticket counter. We rolled right up with our luggage and giant bike boxes and got checked in with no problems. In fact, they only charged us $100 to fly our bikes (which was less than expecetd...thank you, Air Canada!).
We then had two hours to kill at the airport, so we found a bar and took over a table. Dave kicked off the vacation with a few beers and we both made final check in calls with friends and family to say goodbye.
And just when we thought everything was going smoothly, our plane to Montreal was delayed. First by a few minutes, and ultimately by at hour. This did not bode well for our hour and 20 min connection time in Montreal for our plane to Paris. There went all of our early vacation buzz. We both sat on that hour-long plane ride completely stressed out about making our connecting flight. And as the plane hovered above Montreal for an extra 20 mins, we saw our chances of catching our flight slipping away.
When we landed, we had 20 mins until our flight was supposed to leave - which was all eaten up by the plane on the tarmac. There were about six of us on the plane trying to make the connection. They let us off the plane first and so began our sprint across the Montreal airport.
We took off running! First we found customs (yes, we had to go through customs for the five minutes we planned on staying in Canada). The six of us became fast friends. And after a long haul across the airport, out of breath and shaking, we made it to our gate where the plane for Paris (which was 40 mins delayed) was just starting to board. PHEW! Annoyance averted!
So then we started the next leg of our journey wide awake, heart racing and adreneline pumping. But luckily the flight to Paris felt very empty. Dave and I had a row to ourselves. We spread out, settled in and had a very nice, uneventful 7 hour flight across the ocean.
When we arrived in Paris the next morning, we were in the typical European flight sleep-deprived haze. The airport was very efficient - customs took all of five minutes and we found our luggage and bikes in another five mins. We rolled out of there and found our friend Anne who was picking us up with her family van.
And let me tell you...what a nice feeling it is to arrive in another country and have a friendly, familiar face there to pick you up. It felt like coming home to see Anne there to pick us up. We were tired, but very happy - and got our luggage in her car and headed out of the airport to see Anne's family home.
Anne grew up in Louveciennes, a western suburb of Paris. It's a very typical French town with narrow streets, a quaint downtown and nice neighborhoods. We drove by Anne's elementary school and to her very nice house with a red roof.
Her mom, dad and brother were there to give us a warm welcome. We felt badly because we were so jetlagged, but we still had a lovely visit with her family. Her mom made us a wonderful lunch. We sat outside in her garden and had tomatoes with mozerella, melon with ham slices, fresh bread, cheeses, wine and a homemade nectarine, apricot tart for dessert. Perfect.
After a nice visit, Anne drove us in to Paris to find our hotel. We arrived at Hotel Luxenbourg Parc around 5 in the afternoon and checked in. The hotel is lovely, just off the northern edge of Luxenbourg Parc. We have a great corner room with windows looking down into the quaint side alley and across the street to the park. We got here just in time to watch the end of Stage 7 of the tour on TV (watching it live on Eurosport was great!) and had a small, dangerous nap, that made us realize just how tired we were!
Anne got us to rally and took us out into Paris around 6. We walked to the nearest metro and took it up to Rue de Rivoli (a main shopping drag in Paris) and began our first walk to take in the sights of the city. We walked down to the Hotel de Ville (my favorite buidling in the city) and walked across a bridge over the Seine. And then we wandered through some neighborhoods behind the Hotel de Ville and looked at wonderful streets filled with shops and cafes. Then we headed to one of Anne's favorite cafes in Paris - where we just happened upon a table outside with a prime people-watching vantage point.
We had a wonderful dinner. I had a tomato tart follwed by a salad with ham, duck, goatcheese and other goodies. Anne had an avocado salad with the same salad that I had. Dave ordered onion soup (NOT called French onion soup here) and a tomato mozerella sandwich on a baguette. We were fading very fast and had no energy for coffee or dessert. Anne said she could see our eyes starting to close from across the table. She needed to get us home. So we paid our bill, walked back to the metro to take the train back to our hotel. Then, as far as I can remember now, we trudged back to our hotel, hugged our dear friend goodbye, stumbled up to our room and literally fell into bed.
Either it was all a dream - or we've actually arrived in France. But given the sun shining through our balcony windows this morning and the smells of fresh crepes from the alley below wafting up - I think we're actually here! Time to go explore!
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