Entered on 29 July 2002 at 8:55 a.m..

Paris

Whew, a whirlwind tour through Paris. We flew in on Thursday afternoon to Charles De Gaulle airport and headed towards our hotel. For those of you who have not been to paris, they use the term hotel very liberally. It was just one step up from a hostel, and the shower was growing! But for �25 per head, it was worth it for the location. That afternoon we headed down the Seine and wondered from the western tip of the City islands to the Eiffel Tower (4 mi.) taking in a lot of the sights along the way. We went up the tower and spent some time looking around the city. Unfortunately we didn't go at a particularly good time of day. It would have been better to go at night with all the city in lights. We had dinner on the Trocadero Circle and headed home about 11pm. It is amazing how time files.

Friday was spent at Eurocontrol. We had a great meeting, I got to meet some very cool people. It is nice to put faces to names on papers. We got back to the hotel around 6pm. Brian and I had just enough time to head up to the Bascilica before heading to dinner.

Saturday was a whirlwind tour of Paris highlights with Dr. Pritchett serving as our tour guide. We went up the towers of Notre Dame, through the Chapel of Louis IX which is almost entirely stained glass. We did a quick 2 hour trip through the Louvre and covered early greek through to the impressionists. Saw the Mona Lisa, Venus De Milo, etc. Then we went over to the Musee de 'Orsee, which has all of the impressionists. We stayed their about 2 hours until they forced us out. Then it was off for dinner again. After dinner Brian and I just had time to sprint off to the Arc de Triumph and get a good view of the city at night. We made it back to our hotel by about midnight.

The next morning we got up at 4:30 to catch our 7:30am flight. We managed to get to the train station find a nice man to buy tickets for us with his card and get cash from us. We then went down to wait for the train, wich never came. Eventually an anouncement came over the P.A. What it said neither Brian nor I caught, but all of a sudden there was a mass exodus from the platform running towards a different platform. So groggy as we were Brian and I joined in the run to the train on a different platform. We were just lucky that the train went to Charles De Gaulle, because we were just following the people with suitcases. At the airport we were again stopped when we tried to exit through the turnstiles. They weren't working, so here wer 100 people trying to get through 8 stuck turnstiles. Finally the lady in the ticket counter told us that she was sorry, but we'd have to crawl under. The way people jumped the turnstiles, you'd have thought we were all experts at it.

We arrived in plenty of time to check in to our flight and even got an OJ. Then it happened. About a half hour after we were supposed to take off they announced that an engineer had left the batteries on last night and that they were trying to locate a set of spare charged batteries. For safety purposes you need two fully charged batteries to operate systems in the case of emergency. They couldn't find them anywhere in Paris and had to charter a flight from the UK to fly the battery down. We finally took off at about 12. Since then Brian have pretty much slept.

previous - next