Paris

This was probably our nicest visit to Paris ever, well...except for our departure, which was insane. More about that later. What made this visit better? Perhaps, that we were sleeping in actual beds this time (at an Ibis), and not on someone's floor; and that we had recommendations on where to eat really well from our friends James and Laurie who had previously lived in the 11th district.

Paris is an incredibly cyclable city, flat and lots of bike lanes that take you everywhere, although sometimes you have to share the lane with maniacal taxi drivers and not-so-maniacal bus drivers; still, it's a tad disconcerting to be riding along and notice that there's a huge bus just behind you trying to squeeze by. On the first day we took a fabulous bike tour (FatTireBikeTours.com). Our British guide, Alex, was funny, knowledgable about politics and history; he gave us gory details about the French Revolution, and the heads that were cut off in Harmony Square (Place de la Concorde). He also taught us tricks to get comfortable riding in Paris traffic, including "total lane domination" where all 20 of us took up an entire lane of traffic, to the honks and insults of the drivers behind us.

On the second day, we rented bikes on our own and made our way across town. The city has over 50,000 bikes that you can rent for 1.70 Euro a day, with automated pick-up and drop-off racks placed conveniently all over. It was lucky that at the very time we were picking up our bikes there was a bicycle maintenance guy right there who showed us how to return the bikes properly (sometimes they don't click in place so easily), to avoid being erroneously charged 150 Euro for failing to return a bike. Let's hope we got it right!

Across Paris, on different days, there are always open air markets that include fruit and vegetable stands, baked goods, and clothing. Outside our hotel, there was an open air market where we picked up lunch for the day, including a whole roasted chicken (which we ate with our fingers outside Notre Dame; very barbaric, but very yummy). On the way to Notre Dame, we got a bit disoriented, and at one point, asked a local where it was. He laughed, told us to look way up, and he pointed right at it, chuckling about "Americans" (it was a bit embarrassing). Later we ended up at the Musée D'Orsay, where we took an English tour of the impressionist painters et al. We could make fun of the guide here, a bit, but we won't.

Our departure from Paris: Seriously messed up! It started out well. We arrived at the train station an hour and a half before our scheduled departure, reserved tickets in hand. We ate lunch, talked, and waited for them to indicate the track number that our train was leaving from. We waited and waited. The departures board clearly stated that track numbers could be posted as late as 15 minutes before departure. And then...15 minutes before departure they announced overhead instead, that this was the final boarding call for our train. We raced around to find out that we had to check-in on the floor above - which was self-evident to everyone else but us. We were repeatedly told, "Vite, vite," by various agents who hustled us through French departures, UK customs and immigration, as well as security. We were scolded by everyone, but particularly by the UK customs and immigration officer who told us, "You're going to another country, you know!" (of note, we've never had to clear customs and immigration in any of the other EU countries we've travelled through). Rob just kept saying to the officers, "Yes Madame, you're right, we're so sorry..." Incredibly, we made it onto the train with about a minute to spare.

We are currently flying across the British country-side on a high speed train. We just emerged from the Chunnel. It took about 20 minutes at a couple hundred klicks an hour. Pretty impressive. Next stop: London.

With love,

RANAD