PARIS. Gaye Pa-ree. Yes, this is about our Paris trip. Oh, how pleasurable its been getting the little snippets of encouragement to write about this adventure. At least I’m happy to recieve the emails from you, letting us know you are out there reading about our adventures.
Anyway, on with the show…
Kathleen organised this trip, going through a travel agent to ensure we didn’t have the same problems we had with our last flights. Kathleen was able to ensure we didn’t have any problems with our baggage weights, and found a nice, cheap hotel for us to stay. The flights were in the early afternoon, and we are happy to say we had no problems what-so-ever going through the airports. Its so nice having British residency and right-of-abode (Not meaning to rub it in, sorry). We didn’t even need any sort of visa, just wave the passports and right on through we go. Of course I go through the usual of stripping off all metallic wears, but I’ve got it down to a fine art now. I can be metal-less in seconds flat, and re-kitted again in no time.
I’m just waiting for the day they get us to strip naked for the flight (not that I’m inclined to public nudity, just the way these security measures are increasing, its only a matter of time).
We arrived at the Charles de Gaul in mid afternoon, and the temperature reminded me of back home. It was a beautiful WARM temperature. We found that we didn’t really pack appropriately for the weather. Being so used to UK weather, overcast and cold, we packed the usual warm stuff. I wished I had put in some shorts and t-shirts, as I was sort of melting under my leather jacket and trousers.
Now, the Charles de Gaul airport is big. You know you are in a big airport, when you have to jump on a bus from the Plane, to get to the terminal.
Once we got to the terminal, it was just a case of showing our passports, pick up our bags, and we just had to jump on the train to get into Paris.
Now according to the travel agent, we just had to get off at the Gard du Nord station, jump in a cab, tell them where the hotel was (or point to the name of the street), and the taxi driver should get us there.
Well, we found a taxis in the ranks, driven by a little elderly lady. Not knowing much french (my brain desperately scraping for any recollection of my high school french classes), and she not knowing any English, we tried the point it out on our travel details. She obviously didn’t know where it was, as she gave me that impression, but proceeded to get out the local street directory. One would have thought, being in this profession, one would have a SATNAV, like every other cab in Paris, but who are we to criticise. After some minutes of her looking up the place, it seems she didn’t have a much better knowledge of where it was, but seemed to have some idea. So off we went.
Driving in Paris, from what I witnessed, very much involved you knowing which way you wanted to go, and basically avoiding other cars along the way. I didn’t see a lot of line markings on the road, and the right-of-way seemed to involve you had the right to go your own way. Of course there was a left side, and right side, traffic lights, etc, but lets just say, I was getting quite nervous after moments of travelling in this cab.
As we got sort of close to a certain area, the Elderly driver started saying something along the lines of she knew it was somewhere around here, and we wound through progressively smaller streets, until we got to a steep inclined, cobbled road, filled with pedestrians. I though she had turned down into a footpath, and was quite embarrassed as we slowly edged through the people, with them looking a little disgruntled with us. We finally stopped at a small plaza, where other taxis seemed to stop, and our driver seemed rather apologetic and annoyed that she didn’t find our stop, but this is the closest she could take us. Accepting this, and got out. We didn’t have much idea where we were either, and tried calling the hotel. It turned out that the driver got rather confused with the name of the hotel, as it was similar to the name of the plaza we were dropped off at. Unfortunately, the hotel wasn’t at this plaza (Place Du Tertre), and it was back down the hill. We tried asking some of the other taxi drivers at the place (as ours had already made her exit), but they were not inclined to take us back down (perhaps too difficult, and not a big enough fare), but at least one tried to help us get an idea of where it was. By this time, certain female members of our two person party was getting tired and irate, causing the other half of the party to slowly follow suit, we climbed down the stairs near Sacre-Coeur, till we got lower on the hill. I enquired at one or two cafes along the way, and eventually, we found our hotel.
Absolutely beat, we didn’t go out anywhere that night, other than to get some food from one of the local stores, planned out our next couple days, enjoyed watching The Simpsons in french (what a laugh), and went to bed.
I apologise there isn’t more pictures with this day, our main aim was to get to the hotel, which you can see, was a bit of a feat at the time. I wish I had looked into it more beforehand, as I usually look up where we are staying on a map.
Oh well.
Stay tuned for day two in Paris.
Love,
Kathleen and Keith
The Legendary Concorde, forever grounded at the Charles de Gaul airport
The sign over the security entry
No, you will not have to strip at the airport, they now have a device called a “T” ray which works near the infrared band and can see through your cloaths. You will walk into a thing like the old phone bax which has T ray beams and sensors along the walls and someone somewhere will be examining your basic statistics on a monitor. Any guns or nasty stuff is there to see. Fear of privacy invasion law suits is all thats holding it up. Next big scare and you will see them at all the airports. They showed it on one of those “Beyond Tomorrow” shows and they had to fuzzy out certain areas of the lady demonstrating. According to the new scientist if the person raises their arm you can count the hairs under their arms. No comment on other anatomical areas.
Are you sure you are not describing the Tardis. On second thought, no, it would probably get you there faster! We can’t have that.
Sandra