Dear Reader, you are warned. This will be neither short nor pretty. But there are plenty of pictures and comedy (some even intentional).
I begin as some wit as said to -- at the beginning. MY day began poorly. Okay, everyone's in Flat 5 did, as we were all up by 5 AM. J & M growled like two bears awakened from hibernation early before I left before them to get to the station and collect the tickets.
I wanted to take a taxi. There's a main street less than a block from the flat, so I went there and looked. And walked. And looked. I crossed Marylebone Rd, a major, major road (like 4 lanes each way across) and nothing. I ended up all the way to the tube stop & just took the subway. Luckily, a train was only a minute out.
Then there were the Eurostar tickets. It went well; Daniel printed them off and said "there you go." I was about to step away when he said "how many did you say you had?" I said 14. He dealt the card stock and got 12! I counted the out tickets and there were 13. He dug around on the computer and said "there's a file with that name on it that had one ticket in it but for some reason it was emptied on May 15." No, he couldn't tell why. He ended up selling me another ticket for an extravagant amount of money. Yikes!
M & J and the students showed up, a few mintues later than planned, but ok. But M was...well, he said he didn't feel well. We got through Customs and he went and sat down immediately. He was white as a ghost and said "I may throw up." He had his new hat between his legs and I wondered...oh, nevermind what I wondered. We sat 20 mins till boarding and he sat there, head between his legs, then sitting looking, as they say, peaked, and then more between the legs. When they called our platform he got up and I followed him up the moving ramp. He tried ot fall back on me about a third of the way up, but caught himself. "I'm feeling dizzy" he said, fairly needlessly. I guess I should have given him a nitro tablet. :) He got to his designated seat and went fast asleep; when I walked up and said to everyone "welcome to France" after we got through the Chunnel and he claimed he heard but couldn't open his eyes.
Good news was the ghost left after two hours of sleep on the train and he was ready to go once we got to Paris -- after we got coffee.
The next screw up was the hotel. The good news is it's really RIGHT across from the train station; and I walked out of the right train station door right to it. The bad news was when I gave the clerk my name he said I only had one room! Ah oh! I had 8! So, after much back and forth, and me getting on their WiFi with difficulty and bringing up the booking.com number, he pulled out the paperwork for more rooms. One student after another signed in -- turned out they had put the rooms under the students' names. Huh. But we were still a room short. I pulled up booking.com again to the second # -- they would only let me book 7 rooms at a time, the bastards! and he brought it up and it was under J's name! How? IDK. Ah, well. 8 rooms. But then I wanted to switch "my" single for one student's double & was told, no, we could swap keys ourselves. Of course, this meant coordinating when we got back to the hotel, etc (since it was too early then for check-in). Sacre bleu!
Okay, we were on the road to Morocco, which we didn't listen to this morning at 5 AM, which might explain M's ghostliness.
But, check this out!
[pics won't load from laptop, see link below to all from today on picasa]
Yes, they do have Starbucks in Paris. The picture is for our wives, who suffered through "there's a Starbucks here" routine throughout last summer's west coast trip, as the avid Reader may recall. When I sent this to Mrs. S I received a class "barb" (today's BTW) in return: American tourists! I hpe he at least ordered the French Roast. Nope, the Americano, of course. :)
When then hit the road (think Bing & Bob, sans Dorothy) to Rouen. We were pretty much winging it, English-only speakers in a strange land. But we found lunch -- here's M's caesar salad. A light repast.
Then to the Cathedral, the object of our visit, painted often by Monet. Here's the west side he made famous on today, which was overcast.
We went inside, took many pictures, and then moved on. We saw another Gothic steeple and walked to the nearby parish church. Divey little place -- you can see the pictures with the link below.
Then to the Hotel de Ville (City Hall), which happens to be based on an old abbey that's a high spired Gothic structure, too.
Then to the Musee de Beaux Arts.
I will admit that by this time, with somewhere over 10,000 steps on the pedometer, I wasn't sure any of this was a good idea. I won't go into the details (neither my wife nor cardiologist would approve, let alone the ICU nurse who kept saying "YOU HAD A HEART ATTACK." With some gentle movement, we finished there (they had a few nice Impressionists) we slogged UP the hill ( yes, it was a pretty steep incline) and I got to rest for the 70 minute direct train back to Paris.
I now whine. The MFers in the train stations in Paris had TWO escalators on our path shut down AND we had to climb A LOT of other steps to get around. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Right? It's that first part I find a bit troubling and not worth testing too far.
We came back to the hotel (remember it's RIGHT across from the station) & went to dinner, a place Yelp gave high marks .3 mile from the hotel. This is what they brought for the cheese plate. I'm not making this up.
WE finished around 10 Paris time and embarassedly returned to the quite nice hotel room to listen to the police (in French that's gendarme, if you missed it) run their sirens past our window. City life.
Day one of S & H on the road to France. We will play the damned song tomorrow morning (NB -- he hasn't had his daily apple for two days either).
More tomorrow from Paris. Wish us few steps and more good food.
Adieu, Indiana Jones, adieu. #
Photo link: https://picasaweb.google.com/109226699284146086382/RouenDay?authkey=Gv1sRgCKHIuPCB4Lv6Ng
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