As you may have read… Patti and I were in London, and decided to hop a train and go to Paris for a few days, as opposed to just flying home on a Wednesday. It was a fun couple of days, but i did learn that my wife, in spite of being Canadian, doesn’t speak any French. Oh well, mine sucks, but at least I know some survival phrases. A few months in Zaire and what not…
We started off in the train station Kings Cross/St Pancras station in London. Something we found out when we got there though, was that if you hadn’t had at least one dose of the mRNA vaccine, the EU didn’t consider you fully vaccinated. So, we had to run off an get Covid tests real quick. (We actually had J&J vaccines in the states so that we could travel to Canada. I digress.) Thank God all that Covid nonsense is pretty much over with now. Yeah, there are still some folks walking around with masks on, but for the most part, Paris was wide open, with no mask mandates at this point. The food was awesome on the train ride. Obviously provided by the French side of the trip. Masks were still required on the train, but they weren’t nearly as enforced as the mask mandates on the flights.
Off we go!
We arrived…
We arrived at the Gare du Nord train station in Paris. As we walked out to the front, we were accosted by a bunch of muslim women in full burka’s. I have no idea why they were begging for signatures on a petition, but one thing I actively try to avoid, is signing anything in a foreign country that may be interpreted as political.
Make sure you have a few 1 Euro coins for when you arrive. Especially if you have to use the Lieu. (They aren’t free here.) Patti embarrassingly, put a 1 Euro charge on her credit card. I’m sure someone got a good laugh out of that at some point.
We found that getting a cabby who spoke English, was an issue. We gave him the address, he quoted us a price, and then, he dumped us off, nowhere near where we were going. I recommend using Uber or Lyft. It’s less expensive, and you enter the address manually when you request the ride. No language issues. There is literally, nothing more terrifying than being dumped in a foreign city, in a questionable neighborhood, with 4 pieces of luggage, looking like a future victim.
As you can see, this guy was out to make some money. 100 euros for a 20 minute ride to nowhere. After 2 minutes of thinking, I ordered an Uber, and got us back on our way to the hotel.
Hotels in Paris, aren’t like hotels here. This photo, is shot by me, standing in the lift. There is a 2 1/2 foot hallways distance between the lift and our door. I’m amazed this wasn’t more of a noise problem, but it honestly wasn’t. The one thing that did happen, while we were there. There was a 2am fire drill. Someone decided to vape in their room. This literally set off the fire alarm. We were on the 4th floor. That was a long suckish walk down the circular stair case. That also, was next to the lift.
Our first day in pictures…
The Harley dealer was right around the corner from our hotel, as was this amazing bakery. Patti tells me, we need to go back, if for no other reason, to try these eclairs. We were also only about 4 blocks from the Arc de Triumph. Patti being a total fan of seafood (Not!) was a good sport about dinner this night. I guess we didn’t really think a place called Crab Martieu, would only serve crab…
Day 2
Day two, was a bit more interesting, the brasserie up the street from us, was awesome. Here’s a travel tip. Don’t go outside at 3am. We were still smoking at that point, so we uhm, went downstairs to have one, and well… We were locked out for about 2 hours.
Later that morning, We decided to go see the Eiffel Tower and tried to get into the Louvre. (That failed miserably. It was a holiday weekend and had been sold out for weeks.) It was also surprising, that you could rent a supercar for a few hours, to tool around in Paris. If you look real close, there is a photo in here, of the Statue of Liberty that exists in France. It looks exactly like the one in New York.
Motorcycles
One thing I saw tons of, were all the motorcycles and scooters. There were also tons of dealerships in the area we were staying, but it was fascinating to see how many folks had adopted 2 wheel transportation over 4. I will admit, some of the bikes were awesome.
That’s it. Time to go home…
As with all good trips, we did eventually have to go home.. We will probably go back to Paris at some point. I love the food, and Patti loves the scenery. We should probably learn a bit more French first. One of the meals we had, involved sitting at a sidewalk cafe, and meeting a lovely German family. Complete with their 4 kids. All who spoke perfect English.
