18. The Homestretch: Returning the Van; Paris

Saturday 20 June.  Tottenham Hale.  1840.  Lovely sunny day, warm but cool breeze.

Dropped the car off at Ramsgate today.  We hope to meet up with it again in New York in July.  Took the train back to Victoria, walked to Russell Hotel for the antiquarian book show.

Cathy and I had a discussion the other night which began somehow with Tara's remark that a woman shouldn't expect to be raped for wearing a mini skirt.  I said that sex is used to sell everything and dressing the part tunes into all those messages.  You can't just turn off all that programming we get!  Then, remembering the article Cathy gave me on marriage that said, once lost trust is the hardest thing to get back, I thought how we all have lost trust in each other.

Wednesday 24 June.  Robert, Mara and I are up at 5:15 to get our taxi which we arranged the night before for 6 a.m.  The weather is fine and the day well under way when we rise.  The taxi never shows.  I call and call, ringing two companies that can't help, and finally arranging for a pick up at 7.  Not an auspicious beginning for our trip to Paris.  I recall lately how often I find myself awake at 4:19, and how light it is.

We take the 7:17, a crowded commuter train, to Liverpool Street Station, then hop on the Circle Line to Victoria, where we pick up train tickets and are off on the 9:15 train to Dover (nonstop).  It is a somewhat cloudy day.  We eat rolls (pain du chocolat, Robert is proud to order).  I read and drink coffee.  The train, I now remember, is bumpy.

We arrive at the port shortly before 11 and though we are booked on the 1300 Sealink sailing, we are directed to the ship, a small ferry, leaving at 1100 from the eastern docks.  (I do not know how we would have made it to the western docks, passport control and the other services are geared to putting all the train passengers on the eastern ship!)  The ferry is French, but the food is only OK.  I buy a bottle of St. Emillion grand cru.  The crossing is smooth, and this time when we arrive in Calais, we can still see Dover.

We are in Calais at 1:50 (an hour later than BST).  The 1418 train is right there!  (How come this didn't happen when we went to Venice?)  The train ride to Paris is smooth.  I read.  The train is empty.  Mara and Robert play cards a bit; I teach Robert how to play gin.

4:55 p.m. SCNF Train to Paris from Calais with Mara and Robert.  Thinking yesterday that I had discovered my problem, my "sin":  I want it all: to be rich, to be poor, to be married and a father, to be a monk, to live in the country and the city.  Having said that, I realize I said it all before in my book.  Don't I ever learn anything?

We arrive at 1725 and join an incredibly long taxi queue at the Gare du Nord, though it moves fairly quickly, and takes us about ten minutes to get our taxi.  Most of us are interested in the woman (whom I recognize from our compartment on the train, where I remember she looked overburdened with luggage) who marches to the front of the queue and waives a green card with a clear plastic case at the taxi drivers.  Most people seem disgusted with her queue jumping.  What is the meaning of the green card, government employee?  She is not dressed handsomely, just ordinary, somewhat drab, perhaps a politician?  Not quite old enough, but perhaps OAP?  I am happy to see several taxi drivers ignore her as they handle people in the queue.  Finally, more than a little frustrated, she manages to get a driver.

The other interesting person in the queue is a smartly dressed Englishman, who speaks rather loudly (more like an American I should imagine) and wears a perpetual look of glee on his mustachioed face, telling travel stories.

Our taxi takes 15 minutes to get to the Hotel Forest Hill at La Villette, a park area with technology, design and industry museums.  The back of the hotel looks out across a plaza to a large museum building where hundreds of school children are gathered.  Red mechanical looking buildings are scattered around the park: across the canal, a kid's video studio looks like a lot of fun; one building has water cascading down three storeys of tin steps; another building has a big red water wheel.  All of the water designs and functions are incorporated into the buildings themselves.

Behind the museum next to our hotel (outside our fourth storey window) is a big mirrored dome.  Robert and Mara argue over its size in relation to the dome at Epcot.  (I think the dome at Epcot is larger, but it is hard to tell, because you look at this one at eye level, not up to it as in Epcot.)  Next to the dome is a submarine.  The museum opens in the back, out on the park, to several levels of walkways, with ponds well below the street entrance.  At the far end of the park is a big "grand palace" type of building, with a lot of ornamental iron and glass and much open space inside.  Some kind of jazz exhibition or program is going on.  Next to this (farther south?) is a music school, and across the street is our destination: the Renault tax free sales building (Porte de Pantin Metro Stop), where we will pick up a new station wagon, which we have rented for the month.

There are other attractions in the park: playgrounds, big slides, a young children's play area.  There is a long canal, running lengthwise, and a bridge.  At our end is the La Villette Metro stop off a line parallel to the Porte de Pantin line (they meet at Gare D'L'Est).

Our hotel is modern and pleasant.  We have two rooms: a bedroom with a double bed and a sitting room with a fold out.  We have TV, shower/tub, closet and WC.  Our windows open to a balcony looking out across La Villette to skyscrapers (of sorts).  I suspect we look southeast/east.

Our first evening we walk La Villette, scouting out the Renault office.  There are four to six restaurants across the street from our hotel and we eat at La (French word for sandwich), sitting outside on the sidewalk.  Robert, Mara and I all have snails.  Like the food itself, OK, but nothing great.  I have steak, Robert has fish and Mara has brochette of beef.  In the evening the weather darkens and we have some sprinkles.

Thursday 25 June.  We have breakfast at the hotel, and take the Metro from La Villette to Gare d'L'Est and then to Saint Michel, where we catch the train to Versailles.  There are millions of cigarette butts in the train tracks; smoking is obviously permitted in the station, not in the train, and smokers take a last drag and then throw their lit remainders into the tracks.  This gives lie to my statement to Mara about non-smoking in the subway as I try to calm her fears about underground train riding.  The Paris Metro does not smell anything at all like the London Underground's smell of electric, wet concrete. 

The train to Versailles begins underground and surfaces around the Eiffel Tower.  Two Utah teachers are on board.  We are mistakenly sitting in the first class carriage, but it is of no consequence.  We move, however, to escape the large group of children who also board at St. Michel.

Versailles Palace is a short walk from the train station.  It is raining, not hard, a little more than a sprinkle, but wet.  On the way out of town, I am struck by the crowded buildings in Paris; not much room for anyone.  No wonder they like to get away for a month in August!

We book two tours, the king's private apartments and the chapel/opera.  We lunch before the first tour, underground at the coffee shop.  Pates and ham sandwiches.  Better not eat that here if you buy from the take away counter!  They check up!

Our first guide is the proto-French intellectual: glasses, almost shoulder length black hair.  He takes off his glasses first thing and tells us all how many "bastards" Louis XV had and then how he died in agony from smallpox or something like that.  The room smells strongly, incense, I think; a man says beeswax.  The rooms are lush, the furniture exquisite, everything seems gilded.  Versailles was a hunting lodge and there was even a room for hounds, who ate off of silver plates and slept on velvet.

After our tour of the king's private apartments, we quickly pick our way through a palace jam-packed with children in blue and green SNCF caps (the train system).  The public areas are even more exquisite than the rooms we have just seen.  I am not disappointed at the Hall of Mirrors which I have long wanted to see, but the Queen's bedroom is awesome, with gold glittering everywhere.

Our second guide is a lovely, mature French woman, as elegant and refined as our first guide was avant garde.  She tells us the overall history as well as specific history relating to the private opera and chapel.  We hear many stories of Louis XV at Versailles.  He was succeeded by Louis XVI (his grandson) who married Marie Antoinette (a Hapsburg), and in 1792/93 both lost their heads at Place Concorde.  Louis XV is referred to as the "Sun King."  St Louis was earlier.

By the time we leave the rain has stopped.  We take the train to Javel, from there we walk to the Statue of Liberty, then down an island in the Seine.  We cross the river in front of the Eiffel Tower and walk to Trocadero, past the slalom skateboarders and up a lot of steps.  We stop for a refreshment at a sidewalk cafe in front of Trocadero, then walk to the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs Elysees.  On the way we pass a movie theatre showing "Beethoven."  Robert is desperate to see it, and pleads, all with a full bladder!  So, we stop for dinner and the restrooms at Hotel Castglione (sp.) on Rue Fauborg St. Honore.  After duck, rabbit and steak dinners we walk past the presidential palace to Concorde Metro, where we pick up the train and take it to the stop past FDR on Champs Elysees.  In fact, as we walk back we discover the theatre is right at the FDR stop, and we arrive in time for the 10:50 showing of "Beethoven" in v.o. (original version, i.e., English) at 45FF per person.  Everyone but us seems to have a coupon!

The movie is enjoyable, and we leave at 12:15, catching the metro at FDR.  At Chatelet we transfer; we transfer again at Gare D'L'Est, and finally arrive at La Villette just before one o'clock in the morning.  The hotel receptionist unlocks the back door for us.