*Very Long* Sapphire's Vacation in Paris (finally...)

[Sapphire]

Well, I've been back from my vacation for 2 weeks now, and I'm finally
getting around to posting. I came back to a new job, and have been a
bit short of time...

A bit of background - this trip to Paris was my (late, late)
graduation present from my mom. She asked what I wanted, and I told
her I wanted a vacation with just her and me. She chose Paris because
she'd wanted to go there for the past 50 years or so, and never quite
made it.

We left Friday May 15th, I came home on Sunday the 24th, and Mom
stayed for another week, and came home June 1.

Here's what we did...

Friday, May 15: Got up, finished packing (about half of my packing
actually got done before the day I left, but the other half got done
in the morning...). I did a quick e-mail check, and Sophie LaPlante
had e-mailed me her phone number so I could call her while I was in
Paris. My mom and step-dad showed up around 10:30 am and we loaded my
stuff into the car and headed for the airport.
Our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:25, and we were supposed to get
there 2 hours ahead of time. We got there and went to the Northwest
counter (yes, we flew Northwest, more details later - I'm not there
yet...) and were told that our flight number no longer left from
Minneapolis, and we would have to stop and change planes in Detroit.
So they booked us on one of the many, many flights to Detroit that
would get us there in time to catch our international flight. Our
flight left on schedule, and we got to Detroit in time to be informed
that our international flight (scheduled to leave at 5:25 (Detroit
time)) was delayed until 6:30. They gave us a coupon good at any of
the airport restaurants, so that we could get something to eat since
it was a dinner flight. The coupon was for $5 - and the only place
with food for $5 or less was Burger King. Oh well... So we went to
Booger Fling, got burgers and went back to our gate - where we were
notified that the plane had been delayed another hour, and was now
coming to a different gate. So we moved down the hall to the new gate.
The plane came in around 7:15, and they told us that they had to do
some "routine maintenance checks", so we wouldn't be boarding until
about 8. They apologized for the inconvenience. Around 8 they informed
us that they had to repair the hydraulic line (or something like
that), and that we'd be delayed "about an hour". They apologized
profusely, and gave us vouchers for 10,000 WorldPerks miles, or $200
off our next Northwest flight. Eventually (9:30) we did get on the
plane and leave. The plane food was horrid. It was supposed to be
chicken kiev, but it was very dry, and tasted like it had been
reheated too many times. The rice was tasteless, and the peas looked
too gross to even contemplate eating. The roll was dried out, and the
carrot cake was ok, but too sweet. And all they had were Pepsi
products - they didn't even have any sort of root beer. I slept for
most of the plane ride.

Saturday, May 16: The breakfast on the plane was pretty bad too.
Tasteless yogurt and a raspberry muffin. Yuck. The muffin wasn't too
bad, but again, was too sweet. Blueberries are about the only fruit I
like in muffins. We landed in Paris at around 1pm Paris time. Our
luggage had made it safe and sound, and it wasn't even the last stuff
on the carousel. We got on a train that went within a few blocks of
our hotel, and walked the last few blocks. Mom said that next time
we'd take a cab. I don't know why she was complaining. *Her* bag was
on wheels. :)
We checked into our hotel - Hotel Michelet Odeon. (I don't know how to
do accent marks on my computer). Then we walked around for a while. We
were a few blocks from the Seine river - around Pont Neuf (Across the
river from the Louvre and Notre Dame). We bought sandwiches from one
of the many street vendors. They were wonderful. The bread was so good
that I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the sandwich. We made
ourselves stay up until 9:30 so we'd have some vague chance of
sleeping normal hours instead of being awake all night and then tired
during the day.

Sunday, May 17: We got up fairly early and walked across the river and
down to this tour place. We got tickets, got some crepes from a little
place on the corner, and then got on a bus out to Giverny (Monet's
house and gardens). We wandered the gardens (I took a lot of
pictures), and went through the house. We had planned to try to meet
up with my mom's next-door neighbor, who just happened to be on
vacation to London - but was planning a trip to Giverny that same day.
We *did* find her, but our bus had just arrived, and hers was about to
leave, so we said hello and good bye and that was about it. Eventually
our bus took us back to Paris, and we went back to our hotel and
called the aunt of a friend of my mom's. She lives about a block away
from the hotel we were staying at (she had made the reservations for
us). She walked us through the neighborhood and showed us her
favourite cafes and stores. We had sort of a mid-afternoon lunch at a
little cafe, and I was introduced to Croques Madame (which I will now
be making at home). It was a sandwich - sort of. It was two slices of
bread, with a bit of meat and cheese in the middle, toasted with
cheese on top, and then a fried egg on top of that. Yummm.. We
wandered around for a while longer, and then went to bed fairly early
(again).

Monday, May 18: We got on the metro, and went to the Eiffel Tower. We
went up to the top (I took lots of pictures), and then stopped on all
the different floors (all 3 of them) on the way down and went through
all the little shops. I got a sandwich in one of the little
restaurants and ate it while I was waiting for the elevator-thingy. We
left the Eiffel tower and walked over to the Arc de Triomphe. We went
up to the top of that too (lots of stairs - no elevator there - we
took frequent rests on the way up). When we'd seen all we wanted to
see there, we walked down the Champs Elysees, through the Tuilleries
Garden, past the Louvre and back to our hotel. We stopped for dinner
at a little restaurant in the Tuilleries Garden. I forget what I ate,
but it was a chicken dish with rice. It was very good, whatever it
was.

Tuesday, May 19: Following Sophie's advice, we went over to the Rodin
museum and gardens. It was beautiful. I took lots of pictures. We had
planned to go to the Louvre afterwards, but on our way there, we
walked past the Musee D'Orsay, and I thought "Wait a minute - isn't
that where the Impressionist stuff is?" So we went there instead. We
had lunch in the less expensive self-serve restaurant. Yes, I had
another sandwich. I ate mostly sandwiches of various sorts while I was
in Paris. By the time we'd finished going through the Musee D'Orsay,
it was too late to get to the Louvre and spend any respectable amount
of time there, so we wandered around our hotel and went in and out of
various stores and souvenir shops.

Wednesday, May 20: We walked over to Notre Dame, and walked around
(taking pictures). They're cleaning it up, so the front of the
cathedral was covered in scaffolding, and wasn't much to look at. The
rest of the place more than made up for it, though. I loved it. We
went from there over to the Louvre and went through the Greek & Roman
stuff, the Egyptian stuff, and did a fly-by of the Mona Lisa. I took a
picture of the Venus de Milo's backside, because nobody ever gets to
look at her from that angle. All the textbooks show the front view.
Ok, so I'm a little weird...
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering and doind souvenir
shopping. I found the perfect tie for my fiance for his "bad tie day"
at work. It's this deep blue tie, with the eiffel tower in bright
yellow, rising from the bottom of the tie to about an inch below where
the knot ends up.
That evening we went out to eat with my mom's friend's aunt. I had a
veal dish, but the sauce they'd put on it was so strong that I
couldn't taste the meat - which was kind of a bummer, since I'd never
eaten veal before, and wanted to know what it tasted like. The noodles
were ok, but everything had that sauce on it, and I really couldn't
taste anything else.

Thursday, May 21: We spent most of the day wandering again. We decided
that we didn't want to go through any more museums, so we walked up
and down the river for a while, and followed Sophie's instructions on
how to get to "the best ice cream in Paris". She was right. It was
incredibly good ice cream. Eventually, when Sophie got to leave work,
she met us not too far from our hotel, and we went back for more ice
cream, and then walked around until it was late enough to eat dinner
(nobody eats dinner until 8 or 9 pm - which fits right in with my
eating habits, but was a little strange for mom who usually eats
around 6). We went to a restaurant whose name I've forgotten already,
and I had the best meal I ate all week. It was duck with this
wonderful brown gravy, and potatoes au gratin - but not the way
they're made here, these had just a hint of cheese, and went
wonderfully with the gravy from the duck. I'd never eaten duck before,
and decided that it tasted wonderful. We sat around and chatted
(actually, Sophie and my mom chatted, and I sat there, pleasantly
full, and struggling to stay awake).

Friday, May 22: We got up early, and took a cab over to Gare du Nord -
one of the train stations. There we boarded the EuroStar, and took the
train to London. People keep asking me if it was cool, or scary, or
what-have-you. It was a train. The chunnel tunnel itself was 20
miinutes out of a 3 hour train ride, and I never saw the ocean. I was
just going through the french countryside, in a tunnel, and then going
through the english countryside. It wasn't all that exciting, and I
was sleeping for most of it anyway. We got to London, and took a cab
to our hotel. We stayed at a little place called the Euro Hotel. It
was on a little half-circle street with a half-dozen other little
hotels overlooking a little park. We did "all the sights of London in
3 hrs and 15 min" - actually, it wasn't all the sights, but that's
what we dubbed it anyway. We walked from our hotel to Westminster,
over to Buckingham Palace, through a few parks and back to our hotel.
We ate dinner at a little place about 2 blocks from our hotel called
the Goose and Granite. I had fish & chips, and it was really good. I
ate almost the whole thing. I left about 2 bites worth of fish, and a
half a dozen chips on my plate, and just couldn't eat any more. I've
decided that fries (chips) taste pretty good dipped in tartar sauce.
We were supposed to meet up with one of my mom's high-school buddies
whose husband is currently teaching in Glasgow. They didn't show up
until around 11, though, and I was too tired to care - though mom got
up and went and chatted with them for a while.

Saturday, May 23: We got up for an "English Breakfast" at our hotel -
a bit of sausage, some bacon, an egg, a chunk of tomato, some toast,
and some baked beans. The beans & tomato seemed a bit strange to me as
breakfast, but I ate 'em anyway. We walked around, and went to a
street market. We looked at a bunch of stuff, but didn't buy anything.
Then we walked around through Hyde Park for a while and ate lunch at a
nice restaurant (whose name I've also forgotten - I'm really bad with
names). We walked around for a while more (Mom's friend's husband was
looking for a particular store so he could get his chosen brand of
cologne). Eventually we had tea in a little place near the hotel. I
don't like tea, so I drank Coke while I ate the little pastries and
things we got with tea. We walked from there over to the British
Museum. Mom and I weren't really excited about going through a whole
museum, but I really wanted to see the Rosetta Stone, so we went in,
looked at the stone, and a few other nearby things, and then left
again. Then Mom and I went back to the train station and got on the
train back to Paris. Originally we were going to go to a play
(Chicago) with mom's friends, but my plane home was scheduled to leave
at 10:40 the next morning, and there was no other train that would get
me there in time. So we got on the train, and got back to Paris around
midnight. We got to our hotel (next to the airport) around 12:45, and
discovered that they didn't have our reservation. They found us a room
anyway, and we finally crawled into bed around 1:30 am. Only to
discover that neither of us could sleep. So we chatted for a while,
and finally drifted off to sleep around 2:30.

Sunday, May 24th: Mom woke up at 6. I have no idea how, since we'd
only fallen asleep a few hours prior. So we got up, and got ready to
go, and repacked everything (I had to reorganize my bags into
"on-the-plane stuff" and "under-the-plane stuff"). We got to the
airport around 8 (a little more than the recommended 2 hours ahead of
time) and were told that the flight had been delayed and was now
scheduled to leave at 4 in the afternoon. My first thought was "you
mean I could've slept in?" My second thought was "What am I going to
do in an airport for the next 8 hours?" As an apology for the delay,
Northwest gave us free lunch at one of the airport restaurants. I'd
been expecting a little sandwich type place, but it was a several
course lunch at a fancy restaurant. The table was set with a salmon
pate with very good bread, and a bottle of wine and a bottle of water.
When we were done with the pate, we were given a bit of a salad, then
Chicken and potatoes with a nice gravy. Eventually there was coffee
flavored ice cream for dessert. Mom had been planning to see me off
and then catch a train to Bordeaux, where she was to meet up with
another relative of a friend (this time a friend's mom). Instead, she
left just before ice cream was served (she got to eat at the
restaurant, but they took my boarding pass away, and told me they'd
give it back when we'd paid for mom's meal). So I ate my ice cream by
myself, until one of the people at the table behind me asked if I was
planning to drink the wine which we hadn't opened. I gave it to them,
and chatted with them for a while.
Eventually the plane got there, we boarded, and left. Obviously, I
wasn't going to make my connecting flight, so they booked me onto a
different flight from Detroit to Mpls (there are flights about every
10 minutes, so it wasn't hard to find one). In the 7 hour flight, the
guy sitting next to my must've had about 5 of the little bottles of
wine they give out on the flight. The food was much better on the
flight back than it had been on the way there.
Eventually we touched down in Detroit (about 5:45 Detroit time). My
next flight was scheduled to leave at 6:40, so I rushed to get to the
front of the line for customs stuff. My bag was about the 3rd off the
carousel, so I got lucky. The customs guy opened my bag, and we
discovered that somewhere along the lines, my shampoo had leaked all
over. Yuck. I put my bag back on the conveyor, and rushed off to catch
the shuttle bus to the other terminals. I got on the bus, and it went
to one terminal (out of 3) and told me I'd have to get off and catch a
different bus to my terminal. At this point it was 6:20, and I was a
bit worried about catching my flight. I didn't want to deal with the
hassle of getting a boarding pass for a different flight, I just
wanted to go home. Fortunately the next bus came along quickly, and
got me to my terminal. I got off the bus at a run, and got to my gate
right as they were shutting the doors. They let me on, but if I'd been
10 seconds later it would've been too late. I went to my seat, and
there was already someone there - our boarding passes had the same
seat on them. So the stewardess found me another seat, and we took
off. I got back to Mpls around 8:30, but by 9:15 my luggage hadn't
made it. I'd tried the carousel for my flight, and then the 2 after
it, and finally gave up. I left my address and phone number at the
desk, and they drove my bag out to me the next morning.

Overall it was a lot of fun. The people in Paris were very nice, even
though our attempts at French were not the greatest. I got the
impression that they were happy that we tried, and if we couldn't
quite get it right, they were more than happy to show off their
English speaking skills. I had only one isolated case of rudeness, and
that was in the airport when I was trying to figure out where the gate
was for my plane, and I didn't know any of the french words I needed.
The guy I asked said "You're in France. Speak French. I don't speak
English." I have a feeling if I'd attempted to ask in French first
he'd have been a lot more polite, even if I'd mangled it hopelessly.

The weather was perfect the whole time we were there. I have a slight
tan from spending so many days outside, but I'm so incredibly
fair-skinned that tan on me is still lighter than pale on most people.

I had a great time, ate some great food, and managed to spend a whole
week with my mom without once wanting to disown her.

-Sapphire.