Meeting Paris
I don’t know why I feared the French. Mon dieu, they’re lovely. They may not be sweet-tea-syrupy, y’all-come-back-now-y’hear Southerners, but neither do they sniff with distaste when Americans walk near. As we walk into shops, exhibits, or restaurants, we hand each other a bonjour and a smile. We sprinkle merci and au revoir liberally, fall into English for the rest, and have received kindness and grace at nearly every turn. Laura and Tina are already looking at real estate here.
With one more word — bonsoir (good evening) — we’ve navigated every conversation. The most important word we’ve learned, however, is sortie, which we rhyme with “forty.” It means “exit,” and has guided us through museums and subways better than Google Maps. “There’s a sortie!” we call to each other, as we race from subway to surface. We don’t even need the iconized green man anymore to point the way — the sortie suffices.
Speaking of the subway . . . my father told me a story about his European travels that involved a confusing subway station transfer in Paris. As he and his traveling companions pored over maps, a local approached and said, “Come with me.” He walked them up some stairs, through a hallway, down an escalator from a platform here to a platform there, and delivered them to the right place for their next train. Grateful, my father pulled out his wallet, said, “Thank you, that was very helpful,” and handed his Samaritan a 10€ bill. The man, said, “No, the price is 20€.”
We have been on the lookout for such scams, so when a man approached us in the subway, saying, “Can I help you?” we said no and kept walking. He followed us, saying, “I’m just trying to help. Why won’t you accept my help? Because you are Americans and already know everything. You should go f**k yourselves.” I’m sure the initial approach has worked for him at times, but has the followup? He stormed past us, shaking his head cartoonishly at our arrogance. Such treatment has been an anomaly, however.
We arrived in Paris Thursday morning, and haven’t had much down time since. Our bags that had been force-checked arrived with us in Paris, as proved by Apple AirTags (thanks, Tina!), but then they meandered. Most of us, on one trip or another, has felt the sickening moment of watching the last bag tumble onto the conveyer belt without ever seeing our own. We tracked down an Air France official, who clattered away on a keyboard for awhile, then declared both bags in the airport but lost in a jumble of other bags. She sent someone on a spelunking trip, and he returned with my wife’s bag. They promised to send mine to the hotel when they found it, and indeed it arrived during the day Friday.
The taxi ride from the airport felt just like one you’d get in New York City, with the addition of lane-splitting motorcycles howling like banshees. You marvel that a butterfly’s wings couldn’t fit through the gaps sometimes, yet somehow no one hits each other. We drove by the foot of the Eiffel Tower, and then we knew we were definitely in Paris.
“Quaint” is the word you use to describe hotel rooms that are charming but small, and these really are small. We have Jenga towers of toiletries in the bathroom and we’ve covered the few flat surfaces with things. Everything is clean and cozy, though, and we are right by Rue Cler. A couple outdoor cafes sit right outside our hotel, with another down the street. Fresh flower shops, bakeries, chocolatiers, grocers, cheese shops — they’re all right here along cobblestone streets. The weather has smiled on us, as well, staying cool enough to actually eat outdoors. As Floridians, we can’t help but feel suspicious of outdoor tables.
On our first day, we ate lunch at an outdoor cafe across from our hotel. The waiter recommended the Limoncello Spritz:
We walked the Rue Cler:
We learned how to use the subway:
We picked up our Paris Museum Passes. By then, after a night of little-to-no airplane sleep and a six-hour time change, we were dragging. We had three rules for mitigating jetlag, however, that we’d been given by my longtime coworker, boss, and friend. He’s from France, and has made this trip often. Here are his rules:
- Do not eat on the plane.
- Eat a big breakfast when you arrive.
- Do not go to sleep until 8:00 PM.
We fudged somewhat on #2, as an hour on the tarmac, an hour searching for bags, an hour in customs, and an hour for the taxi ride turned our 7:30 AM landing into a noon hotel arrival. But we’d skipped the plane food and eaten a big lunch. Now, we had to hang on until 8:00 PM before sleeping. We went to the other outdoor cafe by our hotel and ordered a charcuterie board:
Ordering cheese in France is always a wise decision. These cheese were sharp, soft, tangy, salty, sweet. Laura said, “I feel like this is the icing of the cheese.” They were that good. The cheese carried us until 8:00 PM.
I have so much more to say! Not sure when I’ll catch up. We have been leaving the hotel before the Sun awakens each morning and returning long after it sets, and that’s not only because we don’t comfortably fit in the rooms. We’re out the door for a river cruise on the Seine, though, so I’ll write more of our adventures later. Here’s a tease:
