Hello Paris

Monday, July 15, 2024

We stopped at a rest area again and had lots of fun. There were walls of coffee machines and many people were using them. I was delighted to see that we could have hot chocolate, so we did. There were so many options: with caramel or hazelnut, with grated oreos or corn flakes, and (best) weak, intense, or extra intense. We are middlers, so we went intense. I was even excited to push the button and pull out the stir stick.

No big meat sticks here, but we did have the opportunity to get meat chips. I said YES, but Keith was reasonable about waiting in a long line for something called meat chips. Bye, meat chips – we hardly knew ye.

We bussed around Paris, looking at Notre Dame and the Eiffel tower and the Louvre and lots of bits in between. Many people on the trip have not been to Paris. I was very interested in all the constructing of seating for Olympic sites. I wonder how frantic they are at this point. It could all be going to schedule or it could be SACRE BLEU!

The afternoon’s concert was in Luxembourg Gardens, exactly at the same time as a solid rain was expected. Of course! We arrived early, to wander around and enjoy the flowers and eat lunch. They had from 2-3 to set up and warm up, with the show at 3. It rained a bit – definitely enough to need to seek cover – about 1:00 and I said it was done. Everyone was gloomy, saying the worst was still on its way. I win. Not a drop more rain fell.

The band was ready to start as early as 2:10, but the park people wouldn’t allow us to start any earlier than 2:45. Why? No reason given. We couldn’t think of anything. It is so hard to accept directives that are not explained. If they had said it was because the neighborhood had nap time between 1:30 and 2:45, we would have been on board. Several nee-nerrrr nee-neeerr sirens went by. Maybe it was time to listen to them. I don’t know, but a lot of people gathered while waiting for the band to start. Luckily, most of them stuck it out. We had a really appreciative audience again! French people seem to like brass bands, or perhaps all bands. Many people from the park filtered over and the crowd was pretty big. They wanted more after the encore again. Nice.

We hiked the instruments and stuff back to the truck (not a short walk) then turned around and walked back to have our picture taken with the Paris sign. I mention the Paris sign because you might not know what it says in the POTD since people ARE SITTING IN FRONT OF THE WORD. Why? Why when it was pointed out that you can’t see the letters if they sit in front of them did they say “that’s okay, people will figure it out.” What is the point of that? (crabby me)

Our hotel is right downtown, six minutes’ walk from the Louvre. Our room has a little love seat AND a disappearing/reappearing wall between the shower and the bed.

At dinner, a dog walked under our table. He rubbed along my shins and somehow I immediately knew it was a dog – otherwise I might have screamed. I said a dog had just walked under the table, and Todd said, “It was the second one.” Hahahha! Open to the sidewalk restaurants apparently entice dogs.

After dinner we walked 2.4 miles to the Eiffel Tower with Todd, Angie, Jenny, and Judy. Dan and Stacy and Bruce texted they were on the north side. We walked the way we thought was north and Keith said there they are within 10 seconds. There were A LOT of people there; I do not know how that could have happened. Todd, Angie, Jenny, and Judy had had it with walking and called an Uber to get back to the hotel. There was talk of calling an Uber right away, until Bruce mentioned he would like to see it sparkle at 11pm – in another 40 minutes. He said we should go, he could watch YouTube. I said NO! YOU ARE HERE. WE ARE STAYING AND WATCHING. And so we did. It took more than half an hour to get home because of closed bridges and roads and traffic. Wow.