Les Trois Mousquetaires go to France, Italy and maybe a few other places #2

Day 1: Thursday, June 1

We leave for Paris today. The girls are getting really excited. I would be, too, except that I have to work until almost the minute I leave. We get to the airport to learn that the flight is overbooked and that several volunteers are needed to give up their seats. At $1,000 a person voucher for future travel, plus a night at the hotel and food until the next day, the children and I decide to volunteer. After all, we will be over there for over 7 weeks; one day won’t make a difference.

As it turns out, however, we are called back and we can get on the plane after all. Well, we tried, but we are happy to be on our way. The flight is indeed very crowded and I find, to my dismay, that this plane hasn’t been retrofitted yet to allow for less seats and therefore more leg room. The 9 hour flight seems to go by fast, with two movies, two meals, one TV series and one 60 Minutes.

Kimberley tries to play Houdini to find a “sleeping” position… no such luck. Nobody gets any sleep and Kimberley gets an air build up behind her left ear that leaves her in atrocious pain for the last hour of the flight. No fun, that happened to me before, too, and you can’t wait for your ears to “pop”.

Day 1 continued: Friday, June 2

I don’t know if it is the time elapsed since I last was at Charles de Gaulle Airport (about 23 years), or if the airport was so new then (it was), or if I was too young or too blind to see defects in that wonderful city (I probably was), but I find the airport very dirty. Litter everywhere and floors that haven’t seen a mop in quite a while. It makes me wonder how they do it at DFW Airport, which is always spotless, clean and shiny no matter what time of the day or night you happen to go through!

There is only ONE passport officer greeting the plane, so it takes a while to go through that first step. A nice surprise awaits us at the Budget Rent A Car, however. We had booked our plane tickets and airfares through a travel agency called Cafla Tours from Van Nuys, California since they happen to advertise in a newsletter I help write every month for the French community in Dallas Fort Worth. I don’t know how they do it, but I got a car much better than the one bargained for in our prepaid contract.

From a “regular” 4 door Renault, we are upgraded to an Espace, a nice and roomy minivan from Renault also. The girls had looked at all the other cars at the airport kind of funny, they are really happy to see we wouldn’t have to drive a really “little” car!

Of course, this is a shift gear car and although I have driven many of them in the past, I can’t find the reverse!! After ranting, laughing and getting frustrated for half an hour, I finally decide it’s time to look totally stupid (as in, here goes another stupid American!) and ask for help. A nice lady shows me the little lever that has to be pulled up, and off we finally go.

I forgot all my maps on the dining room table so I try to swing it and get to Paris on my own. After getting kind of lost (i.e., I don’t exactly know where we are) I decide to stop at a service station and buy maps. By then the girls are hungry and cranky, and so am I! We have tried to stop by local cafés but how do you park in this city? I hate to confess that I am incapable to parallel park, a definite handicap in this city where locals seem to be able to get in and out of a postage stamp space without even trying!

We also hit a couple of “rond-points” (the most famous one, of course, being La Place de l’Etoile at the Arc de Triomphe), these circles where various streets converge, and I get hopelessly stuck in the middle of two before remembering what to do…. Parisian drivers are notoriously impatient on the road and I can see them swear at me.

I can’t handle driving like this under the influence of jet lag so I decide to go back towards Charles de Gaulle where I saw an Ibis Hotel. People in the plane had told me that because of the French Open, the strong dollar (well, no so strong as of today, more on that later), several markets, etc… all the hotels are booked in downtown. With two kids in tow I decide it’s time to book something for tonight at least.

Getting lost helps sometimes, because we find another Ibis Hotel on our way back towards the airport and we are lucky enough to get the very last room! For $47/night we have a really nicely appointed room, not very big, but extremely well designed, and the girls love the very high tech bathroom. It looks like it is made of a single piece including the toilet, a large walk in shower with double doors and a basin, really neat declare the kids.

I just heard on the French 24H news channel that the dollar is weakening against the French Franc and Euro, hence the rate is now 6.59 (for $1.00) while it was 7.25 just 12 days ago. I feel lucky to have changed some money at 7.01 a week ago!

Getting ready to visit the Ile de la Cité and Ile St-Denis, the sky is overcast, it should be wonderful to walk around all day…