World Quest

NOTE: I think I have come up with a work-around to the photo issue that will hopefully allow me to upload photos throughout the remainder of the trip. Plus there are some in the gallery from earlier in the trip.

When Cindy and I travel to new places we have found it helpful to avail ourselves of whatever city tours there might be in order to familiarize ourselves with the layout of the city and its landmarks and/or tourist attractions. I can read maps without difficulty, but there is a difference in what is shown on a 2 dimensional map and what is in the real world. These kinds of tours fill in the extra dimensions and make getting around later much easier.

Sunday morning dawned with a slightly overcast sky and temperatures in the 50's. After breakfast, we bundled up and headed out to our scheduled 10:30am walking tour of Montmartre. The meeting place was about a block from our apartment at a square in our part of the city where the Metropolitain (Metro) Subway station was located. We were the first ones to arrive (like kids, we couldn't wait to go) but eventually our group numbered about 20 with the majority being Americans and a couple of Canadians, a couple of Germans and one Russian. Our walk was to take us through the historical highlights of Montmartre, culminating at Sacré-Coeur Basilica, located at the summit of the hill that is the highest point in the city. My father-in-law, who was in Paris 17 years ago and visited the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, warned me about the many steps I would have to climb to get to the church. Still, I was surprised, when we finally did arrive, but I'll get to that later.

Our guide, Mary Ellen, walked us through streets and neighborhoods, showing us where van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Renoir and other lesser-known artists lived during the time they spent in this village, regaling us with stories of their lives here. Before we knew it, the almost 2 hour tour was over and we had reached the Sacré-Coeur Basilica. Except Mary Ellen had walked us upward to the hill in a zig-zagging fashion through the city until we arrived at the side entrance to the church. We never had to walk UP the many steep steps, but we did walk DOWN them to return to our apartment.

A little later we went back down to the Metro Station and after some initial confusion got our tickets to ride into Paris. We planned to walk the Jardin des Tuilleries, then catch a 90 minute bus tour around the city followed by a 60 minute boat tour up and down the Seine (pronounced "Sin" by the French). By the way, the bus tour picked up in front of the Louvre and gave us our first little taste of that marvelous museum, at least from the outside.

Both of these tours gave us an excellent idea of the layout of the city and landmarks we wished to visit, as well as providing us with interesting historical information and well...just being very beautiful to look at. Paris is a gorgeous city. It seems like everywhere you go you're surrounded by architecture that was designed with the aesthetic enjoyment of man's senses in mind.

I should mention that Sunday was election day here in France. In returning to the Metro Station (Concorde) that we needed to get to in order to return to our apartment, we found that the police (gendarme) had cordoned off Concorde Square because of threats of riots in the square and we had to walk across the river to the station at Assemblee Nationale. While doing that we saw 2 young men running down the street holding the French flag between them and shouting something, but the police quickly stopped them. I was amazed at how many police there were as they were literally filling up the sides of streets leading into the center of Paris. We later read that thousands had been brought in from surrounding areas to quell any signs of violence after the election results were announced.

By the time we returned to our home away from home in Montmartre, we were three very tired tourists.

We chose to stay in Montmartre during the Paris portion of our visit to France, rather than the capital city, for a couple of reasons.

First, it is a lot cheaper, both to stay and to eat, than Paris. Everything in Paris is priced much higher, as is typical of any large city.

Second, and almost as important, is the history and atmosphere of Montmartre. The hill that Montmartre sits upon is 130 meters above the city of Paris, looking down on the City of Lights from the north. Formerly a Druidic holy place (because of its height) the hill later became the site of a church when, in typical and traditional fashion, pagan locations (and celebrations) were absorbed by the Catholic church to make their demands for worship more palatable to those living a simple life of love and respect for nature. Saint Denis, who was the Bishop of Paris as well as the Patron Saint of France, was decapitated on the hill in 250 AD, giving the butte its modern-day name which means "Mountain of the martyr".

When Napoleon set out to make Paris the most beautiful city in all of Europe during the 19th century, one of his first acts was to grant large portions of land near the center of the city to financial supporters, thus driving residents out of Paris proper to outlying villages. Montmartre was one such village. After that, two things combined to make Montmartre a popular area. First, since the village was outside the Paris city limits, it was also outside the area of taxation by the city. All food, materials, and services that came through the walls into Paris were taxed, making them more expensive. Those outside the city avoided the extra cost of these taxes being levied. Second, in the church on Montmartre, local nuns made wine to sell to support their house of worship. The wine was not that good ("Drink one glass, piss four" was a common refrain in the area) but it was cheap. Subsequently, the area developed into a center of free-wheeling and decadent entertainment at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, personified by the famous Moulin Rouge.

Because Montmartre was an inexpensive place to live with inexpensive wine, food, living quarters and supplies, and because of its Bohemian atmosphere, artists of the day began to gather here in the mid-1800's. Some of the more well known include Picasso, Degas, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir. The area became a haven for artists off all types, genres and disciplines. Painters, illustrators, and musicians made Montmartre one of the artistic centers of Paris. That atmosphere, though not as strong as it was, remains today.

So, we reserved an apartment in Montmartre for our stay. It is in an old building with original wood floors, modern plumbing grafted onto old pipes, and all lighting is by way of lamps (with electrical wiring added under newer sheetrock, because no light fixtures were installed in the original. There is no elevator and our apartment is on the third floor. The only way up is by circular stairs, and let me assure you that hauling three 50 pound suitcases up those stairs is NO fun whatsoever.

All of our windows (the old style that open inward from the middle) face out onto a tree covered courtyard with a statue that streams pure underground water. Until the mid-1950's when health concerns dictated their removal, the statue had hooks with metal chains attached to tin cups and anyone could grab themselves a cup of delicious cold water in the courtyard.

Right across the courtyard from our building, so close that I could toss a baseball (not throw) to it is the building formerly known as Le Bateau-Lavoir, a commune of impoverished painters that included Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani from 1904-1909. Even after leaving, Picasso maintained a room there and would return to spend time with new and or unknown artists of the day.

So, that is a little of the reasons why we chose to stay in Montmartre during the Paris portion of our visit to France.

After arriving at our apartment building, I left Cindy and her mom outside with our luggage while I walked up to the landlord's fourth floor home to get our key. If my legs were sore from being squashed up in the airplane for 7 hours, they were going to be in even more agony after walking those small, winding circular stairs with our luggage (see above).

After getting all the baggage upstairs (and feeling like I had gone 2 out of 3 falls with Hulk Hogan) I got into the shower (almost as small as my airline seat) and got cleaned up while Cindy and her mom went back out to pick up some food for the kitchen and some items from the bakery that is right across the street from us. After that we all decided to take a nap and recharge (especially me, since I didn't sleep on the airplane ride the night before), so around noon we laid down and napped until about 3:30 (local time, which is 6 hours later if you're on the East Coast of the US). Then we went out for a walk to familiarize ourselves with the area and see what was where. It doesn't get dark here until about 9:30pm, so we had lots of time to stroll. Although tempted to enjoy one of the multitude of cafes and restaurants near us, we ultimately decided we were so tired it would be best to return to the apartment and have some soup for dinner, accented by fresh croissants from our friendly neighborhood bakery. Then we finally went to bed around 10pm, to get enough sleep to be well-rested for our next day's events.

Next post: more of Montmartre and our first foray into Paris

NOTE: Problems continue to abound. For some unknown reason my laptop keeps shutting down every time I try to access any photo file, thus making it impossible for me to share with you some of the beautiful pictures I've taken. I'm assuming the problem is a corrupt file somewhere and am not sure I can correct it, but will keep trying.

Our flight arrived in Paris at 7:25am Saturday morning. After I unfolded my legs and straightened them out, we headed down to Passport Control. Unlike Scotland and London last year, the agent (her uniform actually identified her as "Police") did not ask me if my visit was for business or pleasure. I had planned to have my answer be "I'm in the business of pleasure", but she ruined that plan.

After being allowed entry into their country, we were sent down to baggage claim. My bag and Cindy's bag came shooting out of the tube almost immediately. Cindy's mom's bag took about another 20 minutes to find its way to us, finally arriving just as were about to report to US Airways that her bag had gone AWOL. Interestingly, we assumed that our next stop would be Customs, but there was nothing that channeled us to Customs, so we just went on to the pickup point for our transportation to Montmartre.

And the adventure begins...

The directions given to us by the transportation company instructed us to go to Gate 16 for pickup. I should point out that "gate" here in France means "door", but we did not know that then. After meandering around for a few minutes looking for a gate, we stopped at the "Information Booth". But the lovely French girl there did not know anything about the company when I showed her the name on the paper we printed out from the website and could only offer that Gate 16 was down the terminal to her right by use of a sign language known as pointing. So, off to the right we walked. And walked. And walked. We finally came upon Gate 24 and saw that it was a door leading out of the terminal. Then we came to Gates 22, 20, 18 and 14.

No Gate 16.

There was, however, a lot of construction going on at the approximate spot where Gate 16 might be if it existed. I was beginning to think that perhaps this was the French version of Platform 9 3/4 to Hogwarts.

So, since lugging the baggage around the Charles de Gaulle Airport was beginning to lose its appeal, I had Cindy and her mom wait while I walked back to where I had seen a US Airways information counter. The gentleman behind the counter was very nice (their bad/good points are beginning to even out, but I still won't fly them if I have any kind of sane choice) and called the transportation company for me and let me speak to them. Turned out Gate 16 was closed for, of all things, construction, and we were to be picked up at Gate 20, which was about an eighth of a mile away. Merci, merci to all involved and off I go to round up Cindy and her mom and get to Gate 20 where our scheduled 9:00am pickup was only 3 minutes away.

We arrived at Gate 20 with a minute to spare. A couple who were also looking for their shuttle van (same company) that was supposed to have picked them up at 7:45am at Gate 16 saw us holding the printout and recognized the van's logo. They asked us if we knew where the pickup point was because THEY couldn't find Gate 16 either. We told them our story and they joined us at Gate 20.

We waited.

And waited.

Finally, around 9:20 we saw a van with the logo of our company pull up...over where Gate 16 was supposed to be but wasn't. We grabbed our luggage and tried to run with it around the construction to where the van, that was now backing out like it was about to leave. I hurdled a couple of taxi cabs and barely escaped being run over by a shuttle van from a different company before throwing myself in front of our driver's windshield. He had no orders for the other couple, but he had our name and that of 6 ladies from Charlotte, North Carolina, who we had to wait on while he looked for them. Hmmm, he didn't come looking for us! Finally, around 10am we were on our way.

I tried to watch, somewhat, and see how the roads leaving and approaching the airport looked so that when we pick up our rental car on Friday I will know how to get out and on our way to Giverny, but the driver was a maniac, lol. Five of the ladies from Charlotte, who were sitting in front of us, were saying to the 6th one "He drives like you", which caused all but the driver to chuckle. But, around 10:30am we made it safely to our destination in Montmartre, which is just outside of Paris on a hill overlooking the city.

More about Montmartre and the rest of our Saturday in the next post.

NOTE: If you've been looking us here, thanks. The Wi-Fi signal where we're at went on the fritz and just came back up. Hopefully, we're good to go now for the remainder of the trip.

I forgot to mention my digital media player. LOL

It's not my intention to turn this into a US Airways bashing site, but they really just keep on demonstrating how poorly they operate.

At the ticketing desk in Orlando, the agent told us that when we arrived in Philadelphia we would have to go to a different US Airways terminal to catch our connecting flight. That seemed kind of odd, so at the gate I asked the agent if we would have to go through security again since the ticket agent had told us we had to go to a different terminal. The gate agent said we actually only had to go one gate over from our arriving gate, so I felt some better, though still not trusting the fact that I was getting differing stories.

Our flight from Orlando to Philadelphia was scheduled to leave at 2:35 pm, but we didn't go wheels up until 3:00 pm. We were already on a short turn-around for catching our connecting flight from Philadelphia to Paris, and this delay cut further into that time. I was really hoping that the gate agent, and not the ticket agent, had the right story.

When we finally arrived in Philadelphia and disembarked from the flight, it turned out the gate agent was correct. We were so late arriving that we literally walked off our flight and into the line that was already loading for the next flight. We had just enough time for me to stand in line while Cindy and her mom went to the ladies room and then for me to go to the men's restroom while they held out place, before we were herded onto the A303.

And this harkened back to an earlier problem we had with US Airways. We booked our flight in January, purchasing our 3 tickets at the same time and receiving our seat assignments, 3 seats together. In March, when Cindy called to do a check on our seats, we were told first that we weren't even booked (though we had the e-mail confirmation) and then we were told that there had been an "equipment change" (meaning a different airplane was going to be used) and that the new seating configuration had us spread out around the plane.

Uh, no.

We got that straightened out, only to have the SAME thing happen again when we checked again in April (Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me). I was truly beginning to think these people were monkeys with keyboards. I finally demanded and received a confirmation in writing from a supervisor regarding our seating assignments a week before we left.

So, we load onto the bigger plane that was substituted for the previous one. You would hope that "bigger" would translate into "more comfortable", but instead it simply means "add more seats, make more money". Trust me when I tell you that coach seats are not made for a 6' 4" 270 pound passenger. My knees were jammed up against the back of the seat in front of me and my upper body extended so far over the top of my seat that if I tried to lay my head back I simply ended up staring at the ceiling, lol. That's not a complaint against US Airways per se, because all the airlines try to cram as many paying customers into the plane as is possible, But it was an uncomfortable 7 hour flight. It was impossible for me to sleep so I read, listened to my digital media player and did some work on my laptop, though that too was a convoluted ballet consisting of me placing pillows under the seatback tray to raise the level up to my chest level and then angling the laptop into a "V" with the front edge resting on my chest so I could see the screen.

Kudos to the pilot who performed the smoothest take off I have ever experienced, and for doing his best to minimize the effect of the turbulence we ran into over the middle of the north Atlantic Ocean. And he got us into Paris 20 minutes early!

Next up, our first day in France.

Thanks for reading