The Trip....Day VII

Day VII

Saturday. Another travel day. Light rain. Baguettes and sandwich purchases before heading to the train. I got some pastry with chocolate in it. Very sweet. I have become addicted to the Herald Tribune and to a lesser extent The Guardian. They put our St. Louis Post Dispatch to shame. Seriously. great reporting and covering of issues in about 15 pages of print. If our economy was not heading into the tank I would subscribe. We rode the train to Dijon (no mom I did not get any mustard). Then headed to Paris. I was struck again by how awesome quality rail service is. Handling your own bags, and spreading out on a train is such a great way to travel. Figuring it out is stressful but once again it just seems so much more sustainable then our current batch of airlines going broke. I read in the Herald Tribune that falling fuel prices may allow airlines (other then Southwest) to post a profit. I will hold my breath.

My wife has been generally unimpressed by my contributions to planning this trip. I basically sat it out. This is for several reasons:

1. She is much smarter then me and much more detail oriented.

2. She likes things done in a way that she understands.

3. She always takes my feelings and preferences into account.

This leads to a certain disengagement. So she was pressing me for what I wanted to do. We hit town in the early afternoon after a short cab ride to our hotel on the Ile St. Louis. I thinkl the hotel was called Lettuce’. The female Consiere was cute and we checked into the first room on the whole trip that my wife was “disappointed” by. She seemed to feel that for 180 Euros a night we should be entitled to charm. I agreed but... what the hell. We were in Paris and right off the Latin Quarter.

So in order to make things right we went on a 10 mile Blitzkrieg of Paris. We hit the Louvre (two hours), walked the Champs De Lyse and then walked up to the top of the Arc De Triumphe. (284 steps after a several mile walk) I had no idea that it was so tall, or that people went to the top of it and used it as a lookout. It was very impressive with the longest spiral stairway of my experience. No one died though a Parisian working there screamed at us for not understanding the cue system (there was not one).

On the walk up we noticed some big aeronautics show and at the Arc, when we came down they were flying two large flags and had about 400 military people all tricked out in full regalia. I am sure it was charming but brought to mind every banal joke ever told regarding the French military prowess. From there we took an elongated hike to the Eifel Tower (I thought it was black but it is rather a muddy brown) during which time my feet began to blister and my wife acceeded to my demands that we not go up in the tower, and that we take the Metro back to near our hotel rather then walk the final two miles.

The Metro is cool and scary like all big city mass transit and it remains in my mind the defining difference between big cities like Atlanta, L.A. and Miami and real major cities like NYC, Philly, Chicago, Paris, London. Just my opinion, but what a great way to gt around. Though they do constantly warn you of pickpockets and i could see how at night it could get....sketchy. But still, there is nothing like the feeling of mastering the system and getting yourself around th city without a cab.

Sandy had read about about a great inexpensive place to eat called Polenis and it was both. I cramped place with communal tables out front and in back, but in back seemed to be for people in the know. We sat our front with two other couples sharing bread and water and just people watching. The two main servers looked like they were 50-60 years old and sisters. They bustled and the place was packed and the food was good and fairly cheap for Paris. I had a little rumpsteak with pepper sauce and Sandy had some chicken thing. Naturally we killed a bottle of wine. They did not take credit cards and I nearly had to leave Sandy there. I think that would have been....awkward.

We walked home through the latin District at night and it was seedy, tacky and fun with barkers out front of a lot of places trying to pull you in. there was a lot going on there on a Saturday night and we decided we would return tomorrow to check it out.