Trois Jours en Paris

.  :We have been here two days and one day in the air, and it has taken me this long to get enough time to write a blog page, so this will just be about some impressions of Paris and trip whining.
We went to the airport at 3 a.m. in SF, not knowing they didn’t even open the desk before 4 a.m., then we flew from SF to NY, had a three-hour layover and then flew to Paris. We arrived at about 8 am and spent the day being up, and by evening I was so tired I fell asleep during the welcome meeting.
It was a long trip. I slept about an hour from SF to NY, and didn't manage to sleep at all from NY to Paris. Zoe had a wheelchair meet us in NY because she doesn’t have the stamina to walk all over the airport. And because of that, she also carried my carryone, which was wonderful. The person who was getting Zoe from Terminal 1 to terminal 2 in NYC was on her first day on the job and didn't know how to get there. We had a Cook's Tour of the terminal while she asked everyone she saw which way to go. It ended more or less with Zoe being wheeled down a ramp that taxis were driving up. The assistant was a nice girl, though. There was a lot of aggravation about going back through security, etc., but I did find out that you get to bump way ahead in the security line with a wheelchair. Once we got aboard Air France, it turned out that nobody was sitting next to either one of us, so we could spread out. I hope it's that way on the way back, because the food here is likely to cause even more spreading out.

Anyway, we're here. Zoe walked a little the first afternoon and then was too exhausted and foot hurt too much to go back out. I walked around the neighborhood, which is within a mile of the Eiffel Tower, I could have walked there from here, but it might have been too confusing to figure out how to get back. Zoe forgot her inhaler, so I went out and bought her a new one, then I went to various other stores and practiced my disgusting French on unsuspecting shop women. I had fun, and ended up with some yummy macarons in the process. Macarons, for those not trendy enough to know this, are not macaroons.
  They are essentially little meringues, shaped like buns which form the outside of a sandwich and are then filled with yummy fillings of every flavor imaginable. They are made in colors and flavors suitable for Easter baskets.

As I continued to walk around I stopped at various shops, tried on some shoes, but the store didn't even sell things big enough for my feet -- which was rather an embarrassment I also stopped and looked at menus (they all looked delicious) checked out a couple of tiny dress shops – nothing I’d be remotely comfortable wearing, and finally forced myself to walk back. They told us twice that day that they would give us internet access on the boat, but they were always putting it off for another time. So I also spent quite a bit of walking time lurking around cafes looking for a free wi-fi signal. I’ve been in places with a list of 30 signals and none of them were free. Once I walked past someplace and the iPod beeped at me and downloaded five messages, but the rest of the time it was totally quiet. Of course that may also be because no one ever writes to me.
I'm having trouble getting my PT done, as we spend hours a day eating. For one thing, I suspect they expect to sell our livers at the end of the trip and are just amusing themselves fattening us up. Breakfast and lunch seem to take an hour apiece and dinner is usually about an hour and a half to two hours. So eating takes up a large portion of any given day. Not that I’m complaining, the food is wonderful.
Yesterday the offered trip was a morning city tour on a bus and an afternoon extra paid tour to the Louvre. They at least had the common decency to tell people that if they’d ever been to a museum before, this wasn’t the trip they wanted to take to the Louvre, since I assume it was the equivalent to handing you roller skates when you arrived and show you the three biggies in an hour – Mona Lisa, Venus di Milo, and Winged Victory. And all this for a mere $85.
Zoe and I took the tour bus downtown and then took the Metro out to St. Denis.
St. Denis is the oldest church in Paris. It was once on the far outskirts of town, and is still one stop from the end of the subway line. An interesting feature of Paris subways, and I am making an assumption from a sampling of 2, so it must be right, is that the farther the train goes, the more people of color there are on the train. So by the time we got to St. Denis Basilica, our stop, we were pretty much the only white people in the car.
But when we got out of the subway, we expected to be in this largely empty place (as you’d expect a suburb anywhere to be) and instead we were practically in the middle of this great flea market. It was mostly cheap goods, with about 10 vegetable sellers and the rest of the people hawking clothes, shoes, household goods, ladies’ underware, and tools. This market was in the square in front of the church, so it was kind of a modern day version of a medieval marketplace. I bought a really cute Fedora there.

The church has a lot of really beautiful stained glass. It was originally a basilica, and is the church where the Abbott Abelard once presided, before his downfall for loving a nun.

Today the church’s main attraction, besides its construction and the stained glass, is that it has the remains of French kings from Dagobert to Louis the VXI and Marie Antoinette. Or maybe it doesn’t have Louis and Marie but only has statuary representing them. It also has some Charles and his wife Catherine DiMedeci, who Zoe said he certainly didn’t marry for her looks.

After dinner tonight we had a little cruise around Paris, up around Notre Dame and then back to the Eiffel Tower to see the special lights. It’s always lit up at night, but on the hours there is a special five-or ten-minute light show which is a lot of fun to watch. We left around 8 p.m. or so, because some woman on the tour got lost in the Louvre (which is the largest museum in the world) and either got arrested or somehow ended up at the police station. We were supposed to leave port at 6:30. Grand Circle did, however, pick her up at the police station.

As we slowly moved along the river, it was interesting to see all the young people having picnics along the wall.

A couple of funny things in that included the people who were down at the end of the ramp closest to the water, who had a wave wash over their picnic and wash a good portion of it into the water.



  The other group has a picture I’m posting which more or less speaks for itself.    It's a bit blurry, but you get the idea. 

Finally at 9 pm we got to the money shot, the Eiffel Tower with the sparkley lights.

As a side issue about the police: Every time I’ve ever been to Paris there have always been a number of police standing around talking and not visibly doing anything. Same thing this year, except that instead of their yellow slickers, they’re standing around in their black uniforms and helmets and shields.

I asked one of them what they were expecting, in my impeccable French, or why they were wearing le riot gear, notice how good my French is – as in, who were they were expecting to riot, and they said, "you." I about fell out laughing, and then asked them to direct me to the bank.
Friday morning our group had an optional tour to Versailles, which we didn’t take. We took the bus to the Place de la Concorde and went looking for the Tuilleries, because we wanted to go to the Orangerie (which is a museum). We eventually found it, and it was right across the street from where we got off the bus, but we certainly didn't get there by a direct route. The exhibition we saw included a number of lesser known Impressionists, and included a number of set designs for ballets that were danced to music by Debussy, plus a number of other paintings that a curator deemed relevant to Debussy. In those rooms Debussy’s music was playing, so it made for a very enjoyable semi-multi-media experience.
I’m in love with a painter named Maurice Denis. His work looks a lot like Henry Matthews – in fact, the first one I saw in this museum I thought was a Matthews. The other great thing this museum has is/are 8 walls covered with giant Monet waterlily paintings.
Our trip home from the museum on the RER was mostly drama free until we arrived at our station. On the subway, you use the ticket once, when you go through the turnstyle. On the RER you have to use the ticket a second time when you go OUT through the turnstyle. For reasons too complicated to explain, Zoe used up her ticket and couldn’t get out. There was a woman sitting in the cashiers desk in this largely empty station about 10 feet away who couldn’t be bothered to help us. There is a turnstyle and a door. When you put your ticket in, it allows the turnstyle to turn and allows you to push open the door, really hard. (unlike NY, where the door opens easily). She didn’t push the door hard enough and the ticket timed out. After this local Frenchwoman helped us, I went through the turnstyle and then held the door open, while Zoe had to climb under the turnstyle. Then the woman in the cashier’s cage was all over telling us (I suppose) that we couldn’t do that, and the Frenchwoman told her in French that we were Americans and didn’t understand the instructions. Sorry I was unable to get a picture of that one.
Two of our group leaders are named John, so they are called John Pierre (our leader) and John Ives (Jean Yves) (Their first and middle names) I told him my husband's name was also John Ives (it's all pronounced the same way.) I suspect half the men in Paris are Jean Yves something or other.
We are currently docked in Conflans, and tomorrow will take an excursion to Auvers to see the various places there that Van Gogh painted. I’ve been there before, but am actually kind of looking forward to someone who knows more than I do explaining some of the things. And being sure we’ve found them all.
　
　

THE SHOULDER SEASON

In the travel world, the shoulder season is when trips are supposed to be a little cheaper because not so many people travel during those times, and hotel rooms and whatnot tend to be less than full. 

In my world, this is my shoulder season.   In January, I was taking Christmas lights down and fell off my house.  (Note the hyperbole here -- falling off the house sort of implies I fell off the roof instead of off the porch.)  But falling off the porch just sounds lame and like, get over it.

Only I can't, because as it turns out, I tore my rotator cuff.  Before this happened, I thought a rotator cuff would be a pretty exotic piece of jewelry, maybe a bracelet that would spin around, emitting lightning bolts like Wonder Woman's, or something.  Now I know that a rotator cuff does a whole lot of things I never appreciated before, like putting on your coat, or hooking up a bra, or reaching up over your head.   

So, I go to Physical therapy twice a week, and do self torture at home twice a day, and because it's so comfy warm here, I also sit with an icepack on my shoulder for a half hour or so twice a day.  I love my physical therapist, Wendy, and her drill sergeant assistant, Katie.  We have lots of fun.  I get to pull my arm up and down on a pulley over and over again, in a motion reminiscent of when I worked the pie line at Campbell's Soup one summer during college.  I get to have people massaging the sorest parts of me -- definitely not the pleasant kind of massage, and then I get to lift huge weights (some as heavy as three whole pounds!) I get to push my arm to the point of pain with a giant stick, and I get to climb stair steps with my fingers. 

My amusement has been to figure out ways to do these exercises at home with different materials.  The stair step one seemed the easiest.  In this exercise, there is a sort of a stairway to heaven made for your fingers to walk up until you get your arm straightened out over your head.  Then you kind of slide your hand back down and climb up again.  I think this appliance is called the Sisyphus, but I could be wrong. 

I decided I could do the same thing on a palm tree, which has lots of little "stairs" to climb on.  I didn't really reckon with the fact that the Sisyphus staircase is relatively smooth, and you get to rest while letting your hand slide back down.  Not so much on the palm tree. 

Wanting, as always, to multitask, I would stop and caress every no parking pole in the neighborhood on my walk (for the exercise where you loosen up by pushing a towel up the wall).  Too many of the neighbors were horrified by what apparently looked to them like an elderly woman practicing a pole dance, so I kind of gave up on that, and now use that exercise to wash windows.  I only have to do ten at a time, and if the windows aren't clean by then, too bad. 

I then got an exercise to use with stretch cords, which I actually happened to have one of at home, but because our doorknobs are quite high it wasn't at the right place, so I attached it to the bed.  Now if you walk into our bedroom, you gotta kinda wonder where the fuzzy handcuffs and the whips and chains are.  Since I do a couple of my exercises on the bed, I'm also considering putting some mirrors on the ceiling so I can monitor my progress.  Now all I need is an excuse to put flocked red wallpaper on the walls.

Last week I finally got an MRI and since I go to a doctor who just asks what I want to do and gives very little direction, I get the impression I should have surgery.  However, from my own extensive medical training (Google) I get the idea that only a fool would have surgery before they did PT for about six months. 

In the meantime, I continue to shuffle past my harp, sit down and play for a minute or two and then get angry all over for trying to be one of the flying Wallendas.