Day one: Edmonton to Paris (sort of)
Ok, so it turns out that airlines book up if you wait too long…. Book early… Why Europe? My brother, Brady The Scholar, is on loan to the Toulouse University. In fact, Jill and Emma are both there (wife/daughter). Jill is the more scholarly one but don’t tell my Brady (my brother). Actually, I admired his scholastic prowess for years. I went jock, he went with winning free schooling as his grades were pretty darn good.
Anyway, back to the story… Brady went to Toulouse for one year so Heather and I thought it was a good excuse for another excellent adventure in Europe. Our flight was set for 7:45 PM on May 15th. I did not really think about the itinerary until we landed in London…..
So, imagine what an hour and a half delay does to the fun factor and the schedule. When we got close to London, I asked the givers of information (actually, the department of Witholding Information) if we had a problem with connections. They replied “were sorry, Heathrow does not tell us these things until we land”. I figured it was bad news so why push it….
The Star Alliance partner was Lufthansa. They promptly rebooked us on a plane two and half hours later. Gee 2.5 hours in London. Spot on. That put us in Munich at 8:00 PM local time. Noon, the day after we left Edmonton time. Yes, I said Munich. Look at the map and tell me the logic….. We raced from our landing gate and hit the security booth at the same time our plane from Munich was to be boarding. I was “packing” a considerable amount of camera gear. Every time I hit security, they want to sniff my camera gear. I feel so violated…This was no exception. They wiped every component and fed the swab to the machine. I must have been clean. We ran through the Munich airport, which is pretty big, only to find there was a delay. We finally board the plan at 9:00 at which point I thought we’d never see our luggage again. We landed in Paris at 11:00 PM. Six hours later than we were supposed to which meant we lost the evening. I’m not being harsh.
So, it is almost midnight and we are bleary eyed as it has taken almost 24 hours to get to Paris. What a dumb schedule. Heathrow was nice, busy though. Munich was like clockwork. Paris was rather old. Much to our delight, our luggage showed up when it should have. Now we had to get to the hotel. We were jumped by what turns out to be the late night cab crew. 80 Euros to get to the hotel and we had little choice at that hour. We hop in and the cabbie does not speak English. No worries, Heather can speak French but the cabbie has absolutely no clue where the hotel is located. NONE. We walk him through the general location and he speeds off through the rain. We race under an overpass and almost bite it after we plow into a puddle the size of Lake Superior. What a wake we must have left! So, here we are, in Paris, racing through the streets, me with my GPS pressed against the window trying to get a lock and Heather trying to tell him where to go. That was special…. We finally did get to the hotel, alive, and checked in.
There are some things that we should have been told about the room. For example, it seems Europe is very power conscious. The lights came on in the room but would not stay on. It was a long day…. In desperation, I stuck my card in a slot in the wall and the lights stayed on. The deal is, take your room key, stick it in a slot, and remove when you leave the room. The lights turn off!
It is now May 17th and we are in Paris. We promptly get up at 06:00 (1:00 AM Edmonton Time) and head out. Wow, Paris is quiet at that time of the day. We had our run of landmarks until about 10:00 when everything gets rocking. We were at the Eiffel Tower at 08:00 but it opens at 09:00 so we walk around. By the time we get back, the line up is hundreds deep. We forego the Eiffel and head to other sites including the Notre Dame. Way cool! Aside from the whole religious thing, this is an architectural marvel. Flying buttresses and all. We took a one hour boat ride up the Seine and saw lots of nice sites. Paris is VERY clean. We walked a total of 20 KM’s packing 30 pounds of camera junk. We were pretty pooped but went back to the tower at 09:00 PM to get night shots and found a short line so we had to take a ride up to the second level. The top was closed. I never really had given the Eiffel tower much thought but that is a pretty interesting place. We took lots of pic’s and got back to our room at midnight.
Just a note… If you ever want to drive in Paris, forget it. Perhaps, after days of careful observation, you could figure out the chaos. It is an elegant chaos though. There are no lines on the roads (most anyway) and three or four cars will perform a choreographed dance down a two or three lane road. No signals. Just drive where somebody isn’t.
Another note…. There are crooks in Paris. Friendly scam artists. One lady was walking towards us and bent over shouting “I found a gold ring”. She explained in French that her upbringing was such that she was a good Christian lady so she wanted us to have the ring. We smelled a rat but what the hell, let’s see what the game is all about. She gave us the ring and walked away. As soon as we turned to leave, she said, oh, could you spare some money in exchange for the ring? Nice try I thought and to show I was just as good as she was, I offered her the ring. She gave us a stern look and grabbed the ring and stormed off. Later we passed a suspicious young lad and 10 feet in front of us, I saw another lady drop a ring and give us the same line. I said “nice try” and she walked off with her spotter. The other odd thing is the number of people selling little Eiffel key chains. Turns out the police just tolerate them but they are not really legal if you know what I mean. All we heard, hundreds of times, was “one Euro, one Euro, one Euro”.
On May 18th, we were kind of sore, well, friggin sore. We walked a bit and then booked a tour of the Palace de Versailles. Simply amazing! Our guide was none other than Inspector Clouseau. Not really but he wore the same trench coat. He was a wealth of information and knew his French history. We walked through the complex with 13000 other tourists (this was the tail end of the low season too). 300 pictures later, we packed up, ate supper and got ready to set out for Strasbourg the next day.
Here are a few images of day one and two.
Ok, so it turns out that airlines book up if you wait too long…. Book early… Why Europe? My brother, Brady The Scholar, is on loan to the Toulouse University. In fact, Jill and Emma are both there (wife/daughter). Jill is the more scholarly one but don’t tell my Brady (my brother). Actually, I admired his scholastic prowess for years. I went jock, he went with winning free schooling as his grades were pretty darn good.
Anyway, back to the story… Brady went to Toulouse for one year so Heather and I thought it was a good excuse for another excellent adventure in Europe. Our flight was set for 7:45 PM on May 15th. I did not really think about the itinerary until we landed in London…..
So, imagine what an hour and a half delay does to the fun factor and the schedule. When we got close to London, I asked the givers of information (actually, the department of Witholding Information) if we had a problem with connections. They replied “were sorry, Heathrow does not tell us these things until we land”. I figured it was bad news so why push it….
The Star Alliance partner was Lufthansa. They promptly rebooked us on a plane two and half hours later. Gee 2.5 hours in London. Spot on. That put us in Munich at 8:00 PM local time. Noon, the day after we left Edmonton time. Yes, I said Munich. Look at the map and tell me the logic….. We raced from our landing gate and hit the security booth at the same time our plane from Munich was to be boarding. I was “packing” a considerable amount of camera gear. Every time I hit security, they want to sniff my camera gear. I feel so violated…This was no exception. They wiped every component and fed the swab to the machine. I must have been clean. We ran through the Munich airport, which is pretty big, only to find there was a delay. We finally board the plan at 9:00 at which point I thought we’d never see our luggage again. We landed in Paris at 11:00 PM. Six hours later than we were supposed to which meant we lost the evening. I’m not being harsh.
So, it is almost midnight and we are bleary eyed as it has taken almost 24 hours to get to Paris. What a dumb schedule. Heathrow was nice, busy though. Munich was like clockwork. Paris was rather old. Much to our delight, our luggage showed up when it should have. Now we had to get to the hotel. We were jumped by what turns out to be the late night cab crew. 80 Euros to get to the hotel and we had little choice at that hour. We hop in and the cabbie does not speak English. No worries, Heather can speak French but the cabbie has absolutely no clue where the hotel is located. NONE. We walk him through the general location and he speeds off through the rain. We race under an overpass and almost bite it after we plow into a puddle the size of Lake Superior. What a wake we must have left! So, here we are, in Paris, racing through the streets, me with my GPS pressed against the window trying to get a lock and Heather trying to tell him where to go. That was special…. We finally did get to the hotel, alive, and checked in.
There are some things that we should have been told about the room. For example, it seems Europe is very power conscious. The lights came on in the room but would not stay on. It was a long day…. In desperation, I stuck my card in a slot in the wall and the lights stayed on. The deal is, take your room key, stick it in a slot, and remove when you leave the room. The lights turn off!
It is now May 17th and we are in Paris. We promptly get up at 06:00 (1:00 AM Edmonton Time) and head out. Wow, Paris is quiet at that time of the day. We had our run of landmarks until about 10:00 when everything gets rocking. We were at the Eiffel Tower at 08:00 but it opens at 09:00 so we walk around. By the time we get back, the line up is hundreds deep. We forego the Eiffel and head to other sites including the Notre Dame. Way cool! Aside from the whole religious thing, this is an architectural marvel. Flying buttresses and all. We took a one hour boat ride up the Seine and saw lots of nice sites. Paris is VERY clean. We walked a total of 20 KM’s packing 30 pounds of camera junk. We were pretty pooped but went back to the tower at 09:00 PM to get night shots and found a short line so we had to take a ride up to the second level. The top was closed. I never really had given the Eiffel tower much thought but that is a pretty interesting place. We took lots of pic’s and got back to our room at midnight.
Just a note… If you ever want to drive in Paris, forget it. Perhaps, after days of careful observation, you could figure out the chaos. It is an elegant chaos though. There are no lines on the roads (most anyway) and three or four cars will perform a choreographed dance down a two or three lane road. No signals. Just drive where somebody isn’t.
Another note…. There are crooks in Paris. Friendly scam artists. One lady was walking towards us and bent over shouting “I found a gold ring”. She explained in French that her upbringing was such that she was a good Christian lady so she wanted us to have the ring. We smelled a rat but what the hell, let’s see what the game is all about. She gave us the ring and walked away. As soon as we turned to leave, she said, oh, could you spare some money in exchange for the ring? Nice try I thought and to show I was just as good as she was, I offered her the ring. She gave us a stern look and grabbed the ring and stormed off. Later we passed a suspicious young lad and 10 feet in front of us, I saw another lady drop a ring and give us the same line. I said “nice try” and she walked off with her spotter. The other odd thing is the number of people selling little Eiffel key chains. Turns out the police just tolerate them but they are not really legal if you know what I mean. All we heard, hundreds of times, was “one Euro, one Euro, one Euro”.
On May 18th, we were kind of sore, well, friggin sore. We walked a bit and then booked a tour of the Palace de Versailles. Simply amazing! Our guide was none other than Inspector Clouseau. Not really but he wore the same trench coat. He was a wealth of information and knew his French history. We walked through the complex with 13000 other tourists (this was the tail end of the low season too). 300 pictures later, we packed up, ate supper and got ready to set out for Strasbourg the next day.
Here are a few images of day one and two.
1 comments:
I bought a dozen key chains - for 6 euros. and we also ran into the ring scam. I held off on buying an Yves St. Laurent purse though:)
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