Weekend in Paris

The weekend in Paris was wonderful, so glad I decided to go even though it meant disembarking early from the cruise. So much love — from friends on the cruise waiting for us at the “usual spot” for one more goodbye to the greeting hugs shared with friends (some of whom I hadn’t seen since 2017) to the goodbye hugs at the end of the weekend. That said, part of what happened in Paris needs to stay in Paris so I can’t talk about everything. 

Don and I took a taxi from the Le Havre cruise port to the train station. The driver was very frustrated by the impressive amount of driving idiocy exhibited by many drivers, but we made it. Then we bought train tickets to Paris, validating the wisdom of not booking in advance as our original arrival time was a few hours later so we would never have been able to take the train we did. While waiting to buy tickets we had a lovely conversation, in Franglish, with a nice woman from Le Havre who goes to Paris about once a month to visit with friends. After my previous experience of not being able to speak French in Paris, it was refreshing to speak some French…and good for my ego to be complimented on it. 

The train ride was pleasantly uneventful, then we took the Metro (after a ticket-buying debacle) to our lodging and checked in. The nice woman who checked us in observed that we were from a long way away so she “upgraded” us to a room with a “small view”. To say the room was tiny would be generous, it was so small that one would need to leave the room to change one’s mind. Note to self: don’t stay at a Budget Ibis in the future. 

We wandered out for lunch and ended up at a brasserie that was very smoky and a bit loud but had fine food. Then we decided that Don needed to find a cache in France so we headed out for the ~100 meter walk to the cache. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that the crowd of people in the general area where the cache was was indeed a group of cachers, more specifically “our” group. We joined people from HQ, UK, Netherlands and perhaps elsewhere for that cache and a few more. 

Eventually the festivities began on Friday afternoon, and by lunch on Saturday the “work” was complete. So much camaraderie, so much fun, so many laughs and hugs. There were some very touching moments with Helena, Suzanne, Yvonne, Simon, Paul, Eileen, Lars, Roy, Andreas, Urs, Manuela and others (it’s always a risk to mention some people because one risks omitting someone important which is not the intention)….and fun to see familiar faces and meet new “cousins” for the first time. 

Saturday afternoon ten of us — from Canada, Croatia, UK and US — took the Metro over to “le tour” (ie, the Eiffel Tower) where we walked around (cached, though I’d already found most of them). Then 8 of us walked to the Arc de Triomph, with a stop at the McDonalds(!) on the Champs-Élysées for a much needed cool beverage. There was a bit of a comedy of errors leaving the Arc, but eventually all of us ended up in the same place. After a quick spot back at our lodging, we went to the group dinner where some of us stayed long enough for dinner to arrive and some of us did not. 

Don and I took a taxi to the Sunday morning event, luggage in tow, with a character for a driver. Our 76-year old driver with rheumatism was enamored with 1950s Americana and seemed quite pleased to be driving some Americans and impressed that I spoke some French. Interestingly, while the bill was just over 20 Euros and Don offered him 25, he only took the 20 and returned the 5 to us. We weren’t at the event very long, but did get to try chocolate and other treats from Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands and several other places. We then left, took another (much more boring) taxi ride to the train station and said “Au revoir” to Paris. 

There’s lots I didn’t see in and near Paris, but that just means I have more reasons to return one day, hopefully with David.