Sabbatical Journal: 8. French Holiday: Dover to Paris

Wednesday, 21 August. Drive from Saffron Walden to Dover.

We leave Saffron Walden at three o'clock in warm weather, the sight and smell of farmers burning their fields punctuating the summer day. The drive to Dover is not bad at all and we arrive at 5:30. We find our B&B, the Tower, without too much effort and dine at the "Beefeater" chain (there is one in Cambridge), close to the entry site of the "Chunnel."

Thursday, 22 August. 8 a.m. Sea Cat ferry, Dover to Calais. Drive to Mercure Hotel, St. Witz.

The Sea Cat

We are up at 5 a.m. and are first in line for the Sea Cat ferry. It is a smooth crossing and an easy drive to St. Witz (not far from Charles deGaulle airport) where we have our first dose of French cooking: a late lunch of steak frites, the best meal we have had in quite sometime. Afterwards, we drive to the nearby town of Fosses and take the train to Gare du Nord, a 30 minute ride south, arriving in Paris around 6:30 in the still very light evening. (

France

, in continental Europe is an hour ahead of Britain, which is on GMT.) We walk past the Opera, Place Vendome, Place Concord and finally to the Champs Elysees, where we stop at the Burger King for dinner. Cathy and I hold out for dinner at the hotel, but, after we return to hotel at 10 p.m., we opt for bed and fall asleep to a summer rain storm.

The Mercure Hotel (a chain) is basically a French Holiday Inn, a business person's hotel. The cultural differences include vastly superior food, including a huge breakfast buffet with plentiful supplies of fruit, bread, yogurt, eggs, cold and hot cereal, meats, juices and, of course, dark French coffee. The language throws us and there are occasional missteps, as when we ask for lemonade at lunch, a standard request in England that brings us lemon lime soda, and receive fresh squeezed lemon juice! We soon learn that Orangina is the local drink of choice. The hotel rooms are smaller, more compact than the American equivalent, but each has a full bathroom, a minibar and a television, and one night we watch "The Lion of the Desert" with Anthony Quinn and Oliver Reed, in English with French subtitles. We are quite pleased with our choice.

Friday, 23 August. St. Witz.

In the morning I paint the headlamps yellow using the AA travel kit supplies. I felt embarrassed the evening before with my bright white headlamps. Even so, it is wonderful to drive on the right again!

Another late start and we are not in Paris until noon. Mara and Robert play games with the automatic turnstile at the Metro and nearly get trapped! We visit Notre Dame, buying some T-shirts from a sidewalk vendor and using the ATM along the way. In the park in front of the church, a quartet plays pleasant chamber music. Next, we take the Metro to Musee D'Orsay for two-hour visit, splitting up into two groups. We rendezvous for a late lunch upstairs and pose for a family picture against the Seine and the Montmarte off in the background. After the museum, we walk to the Eiffel Tower, past the hotel on the Rue St. Dominique, where Cathy and I stayed with Tara and Pasqual ten years before. The boys and I go the top of the Tower; Mara and Cathy stop at the second level. Jeffrey really has to GO, and barely makes it to the toilette as we reach the bottom.

This time when we enter the Metro, there is a fellow explaining that we need only pay half price for the children. He helps sneak them through the gate. We are wary. Does he want a tip? Is he just helpful? We say thank you and continue on. Again we don't make it back to the hotel until 10 or so and miss dinner for the second night.

Friday 23 August. 12:05 p.m. Train to Paris.

The train makes a musical tone to signal its departure, it also makes a sound, starting up, that sounds like bagpipes.

France

made a wonderful first impression: good food (best hamburgers since USA-- no bun) and musical trains. Still, even little things throw us off balance: push the door button hard to open, yellow headlamps at night; language, language, language.

The scene at the Gare du Nord train station yesterday was a nightmare. Gare du Nord is the starting/stopping off point for all points northeast: Britain, Belgium, Germany, Holland, etc. and was packed not only with many French travelers, but hundreds of students, most of whom seemed to have big backpacks. We spent the first 30-40 minutes (it seemed like hours) trying to find out when the last train departs Paris for Fosses. No wall schedule showed Fosses. I was directed to info (droit) and stood in line, but we could not understand each other. Next I stood in line for an English speaking person at INFO. She had no info. Following that failure I went downstairs and queued for a woman whom once again I couldn't understand. All the while my merry band of spouse and four children (one in stroller) followed me in my quest, with Jeffrey, in particular, as my shadow in the crowded station, amidst signs saying watch out for pickpockets. To take Jeffrey's mind off his worries I asked him to spot the pickpockets. With each failure, my irritation level rose, a slowly building sense of panic rose in the children. Cathy insisted that either I or the agents were wrong: someone must be able to tell us! All I wanted was a train schedule! I finally gave up on the information booths (not Cathy, who went to another line) in search (on my own) of a printed schedule. I found one, quite easily, in the newsstand.

Afterwards, we walked everywhere, halfway across Paris (from Gare du Nord to George V Metro station, near the Arc de Triomphe,). Everyone was crashing at the end, though they all did remarkably well with what must have seemed as if it were aimless walking. I did have a direction in mind, and we started because I didn't want to wake up Thomas, asleep in the stroller. Along the way we noted: eye level signals on the streets, Galleries Lafayette, the Opera, Place Vendome and the Ritz, Cartier, the Place Concord, the American Embassy, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. On the way back, after Burger King on the Champs Elysees, as if to say "Enough!", Thomas threw up into the waste bin at the Chatellet train station. Robert likes Paris: so many different people of all races and colors (more Africans than London but fewer Pakistanis and Indians), yet everyone speaks the same language.

I learned how to get rail tickets (about 150FF to go into town, about $25-30) and how to buy ten tickets on Metro (34.50FF, about 65 or 70 cents a ride, at least I think so; I'm converting FF into pounds then into $!).

Parking: yellow = no, blue = permit. Bars into parking lots are 2 meters. The car just fits. We now have yellow headlamps.