Joanne and Alisma in Europe: Too many bags

Getting to Paris (Sept 22)

It has been a crazy couple of days. First, yestereday, I woke up at 7. Rob had agreed to take us to the airport and we were supposed to pick up Alisma at 7:15. Gave Rob's door a pound, jumped in the shower, and then grabbed my bags, which I had never culled, and headed out the door. my bag was (is) way too heavy but there was no time to take anything out. We got to Alisma's at 7:30 and still made it to the airport just a bit after 8 for our 10am flight. I wish I had taken a few minutes to make some 'this is superfluous' decisions. Anyway, I didn't and now some stuff is going to get abandoned in Paris. Like my new Value Village bag. Good size, holds lots of stuff, too bulky, it's gotta go.

The day was one disaster averted after another. First one at the Victoria airport. I was sitting there drinking my coffee and eating my Spinnackers yogurt parfait cup (after spilling granola everywhere) when this woman comes up to me and points out my wallet under my seat. I never would have noticed it. My wallet with my passport, half my money and my bank card. Thank you stranger, you may have saved my trip. (Chris has recently lost a wallet but instead of some nice person pointing it out to her, some not nice person picked it up and said nothing)

Victoria Airport Selfie

Montreal Airport Selfie

The flights were pretty uneventful. I watched Keanu (Key and Peele) on the Vancouver to Montreal. Amusing but I now have multiple Wham songs stuck in my head. And Destruction (Jake Gyllenhal) from Montreal to Paris. Both were fine. Neither one of us got any sleep on the overnight flight. There is a 9 hour time difference. So, when they were flicking on the 'morning' lights on the plan, it was only 10pm our time but 7am in Paris. We vowed we would stay awake until 8pm Paris time to try to get onto a proper sleep cycle.

Day 1 in Paris (Sept 23)

First task, get out of the airport. CDG airport is big. My bag was heavy. We found (just to save time, whenever I say 'we found' just assume it was all Alisma) the huuuuuge ticket line for the train that goes into Paris. Once we got to the front of the line, we had to figure out the ticket machine. Alisma got us sorted, mostly because, in my wisdom, I decided to divide my debit card from my visa card and put them in two different wallets. I was carrying too much to quickly access card # 2 and we couldn't quickly figure out how to pay with cash so Alisma paid and put it on my tab.

The line up to buy train tickets in the Paris Airport

(note: I started this post at 6pm last night and this was as far as I got, now it is 4am. We did not make it to 8pm)

Alisma had already mapped out our route from the airport to our AirBNB. Train to metro (pink line) to Tolbiac station, she knew which exit from the station and exactly which way to turn and how many blocks to walk. Watching Alisma's pre-planning unfold is like watching a master at work. We were at the front door of #43 Rue de something or other without one missed turn or time spent on corners looking up at street signs. Amazing.

Then almost disaster # 2. Alisma had emailed Nadia, our AirBNB host from the airport to say we would be there by noon. But then she had no wifi after the free airport wifi so we couldn't check if Nadia responded. We got here, no Nadia. We were standing in a narrow lane with our big bags and no idea even which buzzer number to push. No free wifi. Nadia had never sent a phone number. Eventually, a nice woman came out of the building and let us in. She corralled some clinician from the orthopedics, orthodontists, orthosomething office on the ground floor to use his phone. But we didn't have a number. Then all four of us stood around for a few minutes, two of us starting to feel a bit panicked. After some back and forth, reading of emails and investigation of mail boxes, our nice lady and man figured out which apartment we were supposed to be in (2nd floor right which is actually the third floor on the tiniest staircase). After that we just stood on the tiny 2nd floor landing looking pathetic and discussing how we were sure it was all going to be ok until Nadia arrived after 1pm.

The tiny stair case to our Paris AirBNB

She let us in, gave us the tour of the cutest, weeist apartment in the world. We had agreed to pay our balance in cash. then I promptly dropped 40 Euros behind a bookcase screwed to the wall. Nadia was very determined to get those two twenties our of there. She used a metal stick and took out a lot of paint but she got them. Once we paid, and the tour given, she was gone, it all took less than 10 minutes (and that included her vacuuming up the paint chips).

The place only has one bed and a cot. I am in the cot because it is only a bit longer than five feet. Alisma is a lot longer than five feet. (currently, I am sitting in my cot in the dark in the kitchen). The shower is in one room and the toilet is in another, if you can call it a room. I now understand the phrase 'water closet'. I can barely close the door while I am sitting in there, I don't know how Alisma is managing. I could stand a bit more storage to sort out my stuff but on the whole it is good. As advertised, clean and close to a metro station.

This was when we had almost disaster #3. I blame this one on lack of sleep and a plethora of bags. As I was trying to figure out what to get rid of, I realized I hadn't seen my second wallet while going through my bags. I knew I had put it somewhere in my carry on bag but not in my purse. It was nowhere to be found. Had I forgotten it? Has some very very nimble fingered thief stolen it? I checked my bank account online and my visa hadn't been used so I figured I had forgotten it. It had half of my Euros (did I mention that between a very generous Christmas gift from Mom and Bill and a birthday gift of cash from Chris, I had almost 800 euros, divided between my two wallets). Ok, no biggie. I still had my bank card so I could just take out more cash and live without my Visa card. No ideal but not the end of the trip. But then I remembered that my driver's licence was in the missing wallet. We need that for our car rentals. No car rentals means a very different trip than we had planned.

Ok, who to call at 5am Victoria time to make them find my wallet and FedEx it to us in Lyon by Tuesday. Where would we be staying in Lyon? Is there a FedEx office there? I was googling as Alisma was searching for our bundle of bookings. Which were in a pouch which also had my second wallet in it. I was tired, it is my only excuse. In retrospect, with 10 hours of sleep in me, this is barely a story but yesterday it was THE story.

So, wallet found, now what? We were so tired but we spent some time dehydrating and convincing ourselves that we were not going to spend our first day in Paris sleeping. Plus, we were hungry and there is only ketchup and mustard in the fridge (and strangely, one beer under the sink). We had to go out. Unsurprisingly, Alisma had a plan. She had heard the best thing to do was take a boat tour of the Seine on the first day as it gave an overview of the city and was low-energy and low-concentration.

We walked to the next Metro station which is in a more commercial area, Circle d'Italia (if you are googling at home, I am going from memory so I am probably getting names wrong, I am definitely mixing French and English to make up the names). There were some restaurants. We chose the Cafe d' France (?).

Cafe de France in the Circle de Italie

It was a true 'French' experience, at least if you believe every tourist who has ever told a story about eating in Paris. We sat at a tiny cafe table on the patio. Our waiter came by and impatiently stared at us as we tried to order in French. As he left, Alisma said 'he hates us'. I loved it, he was so stereotypical, I actually wondered if it was like dinner theatre put on for the tourists. He even stood right behind Alisma and smoked a cigarette. Entertainment Gold!

Our salads

We ordered red wine and two salads and everything was on the table in minutes. Alisma had one with an egg omelette and a fried egg. I had one with goose steak and goose pate. I thought I should start my epicureal French experience with something extra-french. It was so rich. Not only did it have the goose and pate, it came with a little pot of something that I couldn't tell if it was cheese or mayonnaise or flavoured butter. Whatever it was, it was heavy and creamy and tasty. Really, I was asking a lot of my system. I ate most of everything due to guilt for the mistreated goose but I paid for it later.

Then back on Metro line 7 (the pink line) to Pont Neuf which took us to the Seine River and our first distance view of the Eiffel Tower . We headed down to the 'bank' where a tour boat was tied up and got on. We got a couple of the last seats up top and were headed up the river very soon after. Honestly, I don't remember much. I may have nodded off a couple of times. I took lots of pictures so I will put those on before I post (hopefully). There were lots of bridges, each with its own story of which king built it to commemorate which war. One was built with the stones of the ruins of the Bastille after the revolution. Lots of statues and gold plating. We saw the back of the Louvre. And some other historical stuff. I can't wait to try to match my fuzzy pictures with my fuzzy memory. I know I took a million photos of the Eiffel Tower when we passed it. I will remember what that looks like for when I finally add pictures. Everything else will be 'this might be...' or 'here is an old building with statues'.

After the boat tour, we came back here and lasted no minutes before we went to bed at 6pm. I tried to write a bit but didn't get far (see above, which I added to so it was even less last night). And now it is almost morning. Maybe try to sleep a bit more until Alisma wakes up.