“I Love Paris…

when it’s colder than a well-digger’s ass in the Klondike…”

A day of firsts.

We left the apartments at noon, took a taxi to the Florence airport and then faced bureaucracy in one of its worst incarnations. We stood in a line to check our bags for most of an hour because the airline, Vueling (partners with British Air and Iberia) had only one ticket window open. Check that, there were actually two but one was for “priority” check-in and the woman sat with nothing to do while her colleague in the line beside her was checking in the lengthening queue. (Look at me using a word like “queue” almost like it’s natural!) Finally a supervisor happened by just as the “priority” woman was getting ready to take a break, probably because she was so tired, and almost immediately she was back behind the counter taking anybody who approached, plus they opened a third window. Then we had to go downstairs and through security. No problem, except that they took away my water bottle. My fault, I should have emptied it but hadn’t. We looked at the board and saw that our flight to Paris was leaving from Gate 10, so we went downstairs and found another security/passport check to get into Gate 10. WTF? That line was moving so slowly that after almost half an hour I’d moved about 10 feet.

It was about that time that Dawn came up and said that the board had been changed and we were actually leaving from Gate 7, which was beside the line and didn’t require any further checks. Thanks, Vueling. Turns out the passengers they were checking so closely were going to Tehran. Oh.

[The only worse (or roughly equivalent, come to think of it) airport experience was with Bruce and Jodie Dillman in the Milano airport, Malpensa (which I could swear means “bad thought” in Italian– that would be SO appropriate). Lines were endless there, nobody was moving, our flight was leaving soon and we were only part-way through the lines– finally Jodie went to the front and told them we had to catch our flight in a couple of minutes and we got checked in and then did an O.J. Simpson impression (the running-through-the-airport thing, not the knife thing) while they were literally calling our names out over the loudspeakers. We reached the plane, got on and before we could sit down we felt the bump as the plane started moving.]

Finally on the plane and almost immediately I fell asleep. I can never sleep on a plane,but I did. There was no point in staying awake anyway, because even water costs money on these flights. “Oh, did you want a napkin with that? 4 Euros, please.”

When I woke we were flying over what looked like an endless glacier of clouds, white as far as the eye could see, and relatively flat, like a frozen sea back in the days when seas froze. Far off in the distance there were higher clouds, probably the tops of cumulonimbus from a thunderstorm. Then we were banking and we dipped into and through the clouds and emerged beneath them and there was Paris spread out beneath us– or at least the outskirts and suburbs of Paris. We could see the lights of cars headed away from the city, and everywhere the gloom of the early evening, even though just a few thousand feet above it was still sunny.

Then we were on the ground and I had my first new experience: I left Orly Airport. I’d landed there a couple of times but only to make a connection, so this was the first time I was actually going to stay there.

Then new experience two: We took the train from the airport into town, transferred to the Metro (new experience three) and then got out at the Port Royal stop and emerged into the Paris night (number four).

As referenced in the title of this note, it is COLD in Paris. It was raining and windy in Florence, but it was also about 65 degrees F. In Paris it was just above zero celsius, about 35 F., and I was immediately wishing that I had brought my down vest or at least my polar fleece jacket.

We relied on Google Maps to lead us to the hotel, so naturally we crossed a street we didn’t need to cross and headed off in the wrong direction, but eventually we got it straightened out and found the hotel only about a block from the Metro stop.

It’s 8:30 pm and we aren’t even going out to find something to eat. Part of that is because it’s cold, part because we’re tired, but mostly because ain’t none of us speak French. It would probably be one of those point-at-the-menu- and-hope things. Or maybe we could find a McDonalds and let a character from “Pulp Fiction” help us with the menu…”I’ll have a Royale with cheese. Merci.”

Tomorrow we go to Bayeux by train– another new adventure– and spend the night, then early the next morning take a guided tour of the American Cemetery in Bayeux and get a look at what was called “Omaha Beach” on that fateful morning. This is for my uncle in an attempt to assuage his disappointment in Spain when he didn’t get to go on the Navy base where he was stationed; and his disappointment in Italy when we didn’t get as far south as Naples, where he wanted to see an old hangout from when he was a sailor. Maybe also add the disappointment we all felt in Gibraltar. Have I mentioned that Gibraltar should be avoided unless you’re absolutely committed to checking it off the bucket list?

I don’t know the WiFi situation in Bayeux, so can’t promise anything from there, but we come back to Paris on the 9th, spend the night and then take the Chunnel to London. It would be cheaper to fly, but we figured, “What the hell? Let’s keep up the list of firsts.”

In London the family is going off to an apartment near Piccadilly Circus, but I’m leaving them behind and going to Cambridge to visit my friend Becky and her inamorato Pedro and their little boy and get the “resident’s tour” of Cambridge, Oxford, Stratford-Upon-Avon (The Mother Ship for English majors) and other assorted local specialties.

Ciao! Or I should say, “bonsoir.”