We'll Always Have Paris!

When I told my sister I planned to meet a friend in Paris, she sighed and said, "That makes you sounds like an international jet setter..." and to be honest it was fun to say. The fact that the friend is a guy, (younger) and former co-worker makes it even more fun, as I spread the rumor that I'd be having a rendezvous with Mike in Paris. Hey -- I'm a romance author, it's good publicity. (And Mike's a great sport!)

So, on Wednesday morning, armed only with all our maps, Sheryl and I set off to have a rendezvous, (which means meeting in French).

The first challenge is finding the Ledru-Rollin market, as we turn in different directions trying to decide where we need to go. Finally, a sign points us to the market. Then we circle the block, because there were many corners... until a man comes running toward us with arms outstretched. It's Mike and we join him and several of his friends for hot chocolate at the cafe.

One of his friends lives in Paris, so we receive the hug with the kiss on each cheek that's traditional in France. Then we shake hands with the other friend. Over our hot chocolate we talked about the flights we took on Iceland Air, their visit to Iceland and our first impressions of Paris.

We tour the market and Sheryl bargains for an antique lighter for her husband and I purchase a silk fan for a co-worker. Finally, we part, but of course we use that famous line from "Casablanca" -- "we'll always have Paris."

On to Notre Dame.

Of course, you've seen it in photos, but being there, next to the Seine, with the spires reaching up to God and the Saints looking down at us is the experience of a lifetime. We wander through the church, I light a candle in memory of my son Garth. We remain quiet and awestruck by the Gothic beauty of this cathedral. There's a peace to Notre Dame, even in the midst of all the visitors. I marvel at the dedication of the builders who loved God enough to sacrifice so much to demonstrate their faith.

After touring the cathedral, we enjoy the view of the boats, the strolling tourists and the lovely houses on each side of the river. It was a "pinch me again, because I don't believe I'm in Paris" moment.

We travel on to the Sainte Chapelle chapel. I'd been told by friends to make time to visit this "jewel box" of a church, and we aren't disappointed. Our only glitch is a wait in line to tour the Police Station, discovering too late it isn't necessary for us to go through the X-ray. Plus, my friend Sheryl had a nail file in her bag and the Police thought it was mine. Since I don't speak enough French to understand and they spoke no English, they decided that two not even five ft. tall Americans probably couldn't do a lot of damage with a nail file.

St. Chapelle is filled with exquisite painted surfaces and incredible stained glass windows. To say it's breathtaking doesn't do the church justice.

We finally discover the elusive Bus #69, and hop on. As we ride past the Musee D'Orsay, the bus backs up to make a tight turn, (despite all the pedestrians who don't seem to realize a bus is bigger than they are) and through the gates of the Louvre with only inches to spare. This driver is the best!

Next stop: The Eiffel Tower. My assistant, who is French, told me that we shouldn't waste the extra money to pay for the elevator to the top, but simply climb to the second level. What she didn't tell me was there would be nearly 800 steps up to that second level. Of course, we've been walking for days, hauling luggage and basically getting in shape for this climb.

We reach the first level and stop to take photos. I'm winded and my cheeks are quite rosy. But, I'm determined to get up to the second level, and I remind myself I can do it -- one step at a time.

And I do. The view is worth the effort, as we wander all around, make some new friends from Israel and Spain, spend some money in the gift shop, (after all -- it's the Eiffel Tower) and enjoy the light show from INSIDE the tower.

As dusk descends, we watch the "city of light" begin to glow and even though we've been busy nearly every minute -- we've had a wonderful day. We search for a place to eat and manage to be the nightly entertainment for one restaurant crew -- as we ask if we can have dinner. They laugh and the owner says, "Americans! We don't open until 8pm". It's around 6:30pm and we are starving. We haven't had anything to eat since our hot chocolate with Mike and his buddies. So we settle on a small pâtisserie on a corner. Although no one speaks English, I manage to use my very rough French enough to order. We enjoy the French version of pizza and have them box up two pastries to take back to our room.

The evening ends with wine and dessert in our room. Our feet hurt, we're exhausted but we've had a lovely first full day in Paris.

Paris!

Guest Blogger - Sheryl

We arrive in Paris via the Eurostar. A very nice journey, the countryside in France is just like a storybook. I would be happy forevermore living in any one of the villages we passed. The sun is out, what could possibly go wrong?

Thankfully, we only had two really bad hours in Paris and they were our first two. We get off the train and are immediately surrounded by Gypsies trying to part the two silly American women from their money. We spend 20 minutes standing in line for a Metro ticket machine that doesn't work, then another 20 at the live person ticket booth. The lovely woman selling us tickets makes sure we get the best deal we can, but with our spotty French, it takes a while.

Then stairs, stairs, stairs! Which wouldn’t be an issue if we weren’t both lugging around about 75 pounds worth of luggage. Se la vi! Our two first words spoken often and profusely in France are “Pardon” and “Merci”

We finally manage to get on a Metro train, but we're kind of freaked out, because everything is in French and we have no idea if we're going in the right direction - so we hop off at the first stop, and Viola! We are right were we need to be.

One thing I must say about the French…they are the nicest, friendliest, most helpful people I have ever met -- with the exception of the first French woman we encounter. Now, you must first envision that everything in Europe is not super-sized, so we are on this teeny tiny escalator with all of our luggage, pretty much blocking it so no one can get by, although it's only about two feet wide. And suddenly this French woman starts loudly complaining about us because she just missed the train. Did I mention a train comes about every 3 minutes? I think that is what the French gentleman yelled back at her. He defended the silly American women and was our lovely hero.
Okay, so we manage to get on the right train, disembark, drag our unwieldy bags up stairs (maybe there was a lift???) and we are standing in the middle of a beautiful Paris intersection. We’re finally in Paris!!!!

But our journey isn’t quite over. We have no idea where we are or how to get to our hotel. Note to self, when carrying luggage, always use a taxi. Seriously, it was at least ½ mile away and the best news was that it's sunny out. Thank goodness. (Note from Deb - Sheryl was seriously freaked out by the neighborhood, but we later realized we had nothing to fear.)

We arrive at our adorable hotel, unpack and now the fun begins. We find what will become our favorite bus #31, (which we ride often to get to the closest Metro station) and head for the Arc de Triomphe which quickly becomes the first and last place we go nearly every day.

Is this place PINK enough or what? Our room was pink, pink, pink. We love it! And it looks down at a small square so we can spy on all the local people below us.

We decide to head to the Eiffel tower to see if we can find the mysterious bus #69 which Rick Steves says is the best bus ride in Paris. We find the Eiffel tower and are breathless. We are really here! However the elusive #69 is nowhere to be found. But there are lots of police, everywhere... and then two cars come speeding by, and that's it.

We think the President of France had some Christmas shopping to do.

We never find the elusive bus #69 but decide we’ve done a lot for our first ½ day and head back to the Champs Elysées.

It's dark now and the place is lit up for the season. So amazing!!! We window shop for a new Mercedes and other high end purchases. Then we see it, the mother ship…Sephora Paris! This store is so big I don’t think we make it much further then the front of the store. I get some nice red lipstain and Deb goes gaga over all the perfumes. When we finally leave, it begins to rain.

We duck into some of the little “malls” in between the big stores. It's a perfect excuse to window shop.

A woman selling the most exquisite shoes you have ever seen “allows” us to enter her shop and take one picture. (Note from Deb: These boots still make me seriously shiver. I just LOVE them. I have boot envy.)

We discover a shop with cool stuff, a funky chair and we make some new friends.

Exhausted, we finally head back to the hotel, grab a bottle of wine at a neighborhood shop and end up eating dinner in an adorable Mediterranean restaurant that has the best hummus I’ve ever tasted.

All in all an amazing first day in Paris.

A Day with Vic, Al and the Wizard

It's Monday, our last day in London. We missed breakfast. Hard to imagine, because it's so delicious but we must have been really exhausted. We did get our lattes, so at the very least that woke us up.

Today is all about Vic and Al! One of the reasons we chose a hotel in Kensington is because of the proximity to the Victoria and Albert Museum. A quick hop on the bus, and we're finally there. For those of us who love the Victorian era, this is the Mother Ship.

We discover the Medieval Wing has just been reopened, so we head there first. We have to walk through a gallery filled with statues. This guy reminds me of something... or is it someone?


We wander through here for a while, but remember our goal - The Medieval Wing. Right...

There is a beautiful collection of hand-carved altars. One thing I learned from this visit, the Catholic priests had stuff -- and it was beautiful. Paintings, vestments, illuminated Bibles and tapestries.

We encountered the expected sort of thing, like a suit of armor, and unexpected like this amazing chandelier from Chihuly -- a Northwest artist I've admired for years. What a wonderful thing to see his work here in the center of the museum.

Of course there's a fashion collection in the Vic and Al -- and of course, we visited it! Like I said before, this is the "Fashion Tour of London and Paris". I took this photo of Victorian men's clothing, because it's hard to find good examples of what the guys wore. (Maybe these belonged to that statue above).

And we found one of Princess Diana's beautiful gowns. Do you remember when she wore this?

Finally, after four hours of the museum, we just didn't think we could look at another beautiful, incredible thing. And we were hungry. So we set off for Piccadilly Circus. We'd heard you could get a bus map there, and we'd been bemoaning the fact that we couldn't use buses more often because we couldn't figure out where they traveled. So we'd used the tube a lot.

It was very efficient, but not as scenic.

Piccadilly Circus reminded me of Times Square, lots of people converging there and a lot of traffic. Of course when I was in NYC in May, the city had closed down Times Square and it was a pedestrian mall. I actually thought that was brilliant.

We did indeed find a bus map, and we decided to have some lunch at a pub. We tried the "pies" specialties, I had shepherd's pie, with hamburger, carrots, peas and gravy all covered over with mashed potatoes. With my dark beer, (we learned early that the ales were kinda weak, so we went for the darker stuff) we had a feast.

Now comes a lesson. After eating we returned to Piccadilly Circus and looked at the map. I pointed out that the West End Theater District was close by, and we should go and get some theater tickets for tonight. It was a grand idea, and then the mist turned into drizzle and that turned into a pounding rain. We got soaked, despite umbrellas, boots, hats, gloves, etc. And "right next to" is relative when you're looking at a map. We finally found the theater district, and purchased tickets for Wicked.

I've actually seen this musical twice before in New York, but Sheryl had never seen it, and since we'd already had a close encounter with OZ -- and we are from the Emerald City -- it just seemed appropriate.

We hurried back to our hotel, dried off, warmed up and changed our clothes. Then it was back out the door to see the show! We had great seats, (no one in front of us, for short girls, that's a miracle!)

I realized that the scenery, background and costumes are all Steampunk! No wonder I love this show!

After the show we returned to hour hotel, had a lovely nightcap and packed our bags. We have a car coming to pick us up tomorrow at 7:30am, because we are on our way to PARIS!