Paris during the Perfect Storm

The weekend of October 20th, Kate and I traveled to Paris with our friends Kurt and Carrie. We also met up with our friends, Alex and Emily, who used to live near us in Federal Hill. More on that later. For those of you who don't know, Kate is/has been working on a project in Amsterdam since we moved to Frankfurt... so as luck would have it, her team had a major deadline the same weekend that we planned our trip. So, to save time, Kate actually flew from Amsterdam to Paris on Friday night. (and then from Paris to Amsterdam on Sunday night).

I arrived at the Frankfurt airport about two hours early and apparently the security is not as tight on a Frankfurt to Paris flight as it is on any flight to the US. I was at the gate about an hour and a half before my flight.

What happens when you have the Rugby World Cup in a city that is having a major transit strike.? Oh yeah, almost forgot about the rollerblade marathon that was winding its way through Paris on Friday night. Well, that is the Perfect Storm.

We met Kate at the Charles De Gaulle airport and proceeded to try and find somehow to get from the airport to our hotel in Paris. The train was not operating and the taxi line looked to be at least a two hour wait (and then we would have been stuck in a traffic jam with all of the other people who couldn't ride the train). So we kept walking around the airport until we found a motor coach bus that was taxiing people into Paris (only 13 euro!!).

After a two hour bus ride into the city, we were dropped off at the Arc de Triumph. What a great site at night!

It was late when we got to the Arc so we decided to find a taxi to take us to our hotel. On the way to the hotel, we encountered what we all decided was a "nighttime rollerblade marathon." More power to the rollerbladers but they kept causing traffic jams when they had accidents. I think we were stopped behind them three times while the rollerbladers waited for an ambulance. No matter which way our driver drove, we would undoubtedly get stuck behind these people. We finally arrived at our hotel, checked in, and found a local restaurant for some food. Big day tomorrow.

We woke up early on Saturday so we could visit Notre Dame in the morning before it got crowded. Along the way to the church, we stopped at a local bakery and had lots of freshly baked French goodies. We also stopped and bought a Museum Pass (which is worth it if you see at least four museums. Less museums if you count the fact that the pass allows you to cut to the front of the lines in most museums. )

We climbed to the top of the Notre Dame bell tower and saw some breathtaking views of Paris. We had FANTASTIC weather the entire weekend. After a cafe lunch we went to Sainte-Chapelle (so beautiful). We then visited the Louvre and saw the Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa and Hammurabi's Code.

Saturday night, after a long day of touring Paris, we all met Emily and Alex at the Bastille and walked to an authentic French restaurant - helps to be traveling with a "local." Alex is studying abroad and his wife Emily happened to be visiting him the same week were were in town. The food was awesome and we probably had a three hour dinner in this quaint restaurant. After dinner, Kate and I explored the city a little and saw the Eiffel tower night light show from a distance.

Sunday, we climbed the Arc De Triumph and saw the Eiffel tower (the line was so long and we had done so much climbing that all we really wanted to do was touch the Eiffel tower to say "we had touched the Eiffel tower"). Finally we visited the Musee de Orsay - fabulous museum.

We ate some more... can't really stress enough how much we loved the food in Paris.

So now for the fun part.

When we arrived in Paris, we bought a zone 1,2, and 3 metro pass. Unfortunately, De Gaulle airport is in zone 5. So as law abiding citizens, we attempted to buy the necessary supplemental fare in Paris so that we could get to the airport. Problem. The metro stations in Paris do not sell that supplemental. They told us we would need to ride the train to the last stop in zone 3, get off the train, and buy the supplemental pass. Ok. stupid, but fine.

So we exited the train at the last stop in zone three, walked off the platform, and tried to use the machine to buy tickets. One problem. The machine said it accepted the EC card (we have one of those), Visa (have one of those), or coins (we have only a few of them). The machine did not accept paper bills.

We punched in our ticket information and tried to pay - apparently the machine really did not accept any type of credit card (EC or Visa) and we did not have twenty Euro in change. After some arguing with the metro employee (possibly a maintenance guy who spoke no English), he said to just go back on the train. Alles klar...

...until we get to the airport and have to exit the metro station.

Well, our tickets would not let us out of the turnstiles (go figure) - before I knew it, my three otherwise law abiding friends were hopping the turnstiles like they just robbed a bank and were trying to get to the get away car. (don't worry, we all got away).

Tschuss,
Shaun and Kate

Link to our pics:

Paris_10202007