Le Voyage a Paris Sans Bebes

So we got back from our Paris trip with Laws and Viegas-Haws yesterday - WOW, was that fun!!! Rather than give a straight-up travel log, I think I'll employ a different tactic to try and make it more interesting. Here we go, in no particular order:

1. Solid friendships never die - they just hibernate periodically. I was reminded of this as we (Smiths & Laws) stepped off the Metro to meet VH's in Paris Thursday morning. I was the first one off the train, and I hear this squeal of delight, turn around, and there's Julienna running to meet us. Good thing I had my feet set because otherwise her hug would have taken me down

:-) Following a very manly hug with Tony, we started off for the apartment - and it was like they'd been gone 6 days instead of 6 months. No awkwardness, no "let's get re-acquainted" - just "Hey, great to see you" and then on to inside jokes and the like. Bears hibernate, but when they wake up, they're still bears and still do bear things. Our friends have been away awhile, but things picked up just like nothing at all had happened.

2. I'll never get tired of the challenges presented by international travel. I took 2 pairs of shoes to Paris - and the soles of one pair separated from the uppers on the flight over (both shoes!). Clearly, I was going to need to buy a new pair of shoes. So I ventured to Les Halles, the Paris super-mall by myself looking for shoes while Julienna and Whitney scoured H&M for all kinds of stuff. About 3 minutes into this little expedition, the stark reality was that a) I speak little to no French, b) the high school girls working at the mall speak little to no English, and c) I have NO IDEA what my European shoe size is. Long story short, after finding the shoes I liked, I needed to communicate to the shop girls what size...this was accomplished by showing the shoes I liked and communicating the size I thought I wanted by saying "4, 3" in French (I know a few numbers in French) rather than "forty-three". They caught on and came back shaking their heads - no such luck. They did have a "4, 4" and a "4, 1" though (that took awhile to come across). A few minutes later, I was buying the 44's and a merry "Au revoir!" was passed back and forth between me and the store girls! I never get this kind of challenge going to Academy or Foot Locker!

3. Type A personalities gravitate towards Type A personalities. We had no kids with us on this trip, so what did we do? We put in 12-16 hour days cruising all over everywhere, seeing all kinds of stuff, doing all kinds of stuff, trying all kinds of food, and basically collapsing each night when we got home. Type A's relax by running themselves ragged in a NEW way rather than the usual way, I guess. Another example - on Sunday, Laws and Smiths rented a car and drove to Normandy to see the D-Day beaches and Mont St. Michel, a large castle on the coast (VH's flew back to Zurich late Saturday). We arrived at Mont St. Michel at 5:30 - the castle closed at 6, the village at 8. Solution? RUN from the parking lot ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP. Good thing we all run regularly - the run was a mile or so from the car to the top, with a steep incline (half of it was running up stairs, the other half was running up a path that should have been stairs), winding path, with tourists all over. Never say die - we made it just before they closed up!

Stairs part of the way up at Mont St. Michel:



4. I have the best travel companion - ever. I love travelling with Whitney - she's fun, she's energetic, she loves to learn and observe, and she's managed to keep her child-like enthusiasm. When we went to Notre Dame, they were having some kind of artisan bakery thing, with artisanal breads, cheeses, butters, etc. Whit was like a kid in a candy store - smile from ear to ear, bouncing with excitement, slathering all kinds of cheese on her bread, telling me to go get my own raspberry butter because she wasn't sharing, etc. Of course I was teasing her mercilessly (her dad made me promise to take on this important duty before we could get married), but this is one of the things I miss the most when I'm travelling for work and she's not there. One of the advantages of not having the kids with us was that I could get a hug while we watched some people play bocce ball in Luxembourg Gardens - that doesn't happen with three boys going 100 mph. I feel like we got to re-connect in ways we haven't been able to since Noah and his brothers came along.

5. The world is full of cool stuff to see, and I haven't seen that much of it. It's one thing to read about something in a book - it's another to see and experience it yourself. Cathedrals are WAY more impressive in person than in picture books. The miracle of anyone surviving D-Day is tough to believe in when you see how wide open Omaha Beach is and how far up and in they had to go just to start the fighting. The French countryside is beautiful - and we didn't see all that much of it. Thanks to our in-car GPS guide "Marie", we were directed to drive down the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe on our way back from Normandy on Sunday night. While this was a little nerve-racking (we took the SIXTH exit of a 7 some-odd lane roundabout - and we weren't even halfway around the roundabout!), it was pretty cool to see all this stuff in this world-class city at night up close and from a different vantage point. I love travelling for all the cool stuff you can see and experience, and how it allows you to broaden your perspective on life in general.

Notre Dame (twin towers) and Mont. St. Michel from a few miles away.

Can't wait for the next trip, whenever that is!