Day 4 I wake up at 7:00 to the alarm, which is a first for the trip. After a few days my internal clock has adjusted and I’m finally on local time, more or less. In this case, that means I’m not really ready to wake up. I get up anyway, write my post, get a coffee, remind myself I need to do coffee first then write, then we think about waking the kids up. We decided to make today lowkey, and let the kids sleep in a little bit because the last 3 days have been pretty hectic.
As the Paris part of the trip starts to wind down, I start to think about being not here, which is something you do when you start to think more about the place you are which you won’t be shortly. I’ll think more about this later on the train, but it sort of means taking stock of the things you’ve started to take for granted in the small window when we lived here. In hindsight, I would have considered staying a week but I’m not sure I would agree with myself if the kids had to stay in this same spot for so long – especially with the heat being what it has been. I think part of what keeps them engaged is shaking things up constantly. The kids are too young to just sit on a couch drinking coffee and enjoying the morning breeze. I, however, am perfectly content doing such.
These are the things that go through my head as D and I sit on the couch outside while the kids get just a bit more rest.
At 11:00 we’re all packed up and out the door, having eaten our last (Parisian) chocolate croissant of the trip and making our way to the last (Parisian) subway ride. We take the 13 to the 6 and stop at Gare du Nord, which means North Train Station. We walk to the front door and take stock of where we need to be then we head out in search of coffee and escargot, which is the one thing we haven’t done yet, which Julia has specifically requested.
Off we go to find the S Car Go (huh?).
It wasn’t hard to find. We end up across the street at the Cafe du Nord, and we check off a bunch of final food boxes here. I get my last cafe creme of the trip, plus foie gras. D gets a meat and cheese platter. Simon and Zac get crepes, and Julia lands a dozen escargot. In all this is a great final meal in Paris, and is well worth the stop. I’m glad we tied the Paris side up on this food note.
We then hit the train station and the kids get some souvenirs, and we go through the French border police, UK border police, as well as UK customs. This is a longer process than I suspected and it’s good we had plenty of time to spare. This will save us time on the other side, as we’ll be able to get off the train and be done with all the nonsense of entering the country. Once in the waiting area, the boys find a foosball table and D finds a charger for all of us to juice up the phones.
Reflections on Paris
We then board the train and speed through the French countryside on the high-speed rail, which is cool visually but doesn’t represent where we’ve been for the last 3+ days. Someday I imagine we’ll come back and do more of the non-Paris things, but I can also imagine coming back to spend time in the city again, just the 2 of us. In my dreams of our future selves, where we’re spending extended time in various places around the world, Paris most certainly would be one of them – in fact it would be in the top 5 I think. I can imagine getting a place for a month in Paris, and just living there. Hell, I can even see 2 months in the city just working remotely and living life.
This trip was overly hot, and not really indicative of what Paris is typically like, or at least I’m led to understand this is the case. Having said that, it didn’t rain, and in the end we’ll barely remember how hot it was, instead we will recall the things we did, and we did a good amount. I’d like to come back and just be here, sort of a “be here now” approach to the city. I think there are plenty of things we didn’t see, and I’m sure we would go see many of them, as well as seeing some of the same things again, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. But I can also see just spending days in the park taking in what the city has to offer, a la the Luxembourg Gardens.
I admit that since watching Patriot I am somewhat enamored with Luxembourg City, for no good reason whatsoever.
I enjoyed Paris in the end. I find it hard to “live up to expectations” as the saying goes, because I think expectations are totally unrealistic & conflicting. The neighborhood we lived in seemed to be more in-line with TV-Reality, for what that’s worth. The ethnic diversity was impressive, and I think that’s a great thing. Of course, the further you get from the city center, the less white the populace gets. This represents that sort of culture clash you see amplified on the news and TV shows. In reality, people are doing their thing, which is trying to traverse the day, from waking up to going to bed, on a daily basis. I enjoyed this neighborhood.
On the other end of the spectrum is the sort of “Jackie O Was Here/haute couture” existence.. I don’t know where this is, or if it really exists at all (I’m sure it does), but this is the other reality that TV paints of “Gay Paree” and in reality, this doesn’t seem to exist either, at least not in any reality I observed. This is all well and good, because this isn’t why I would come to Paris and isn’t a cultural fabric we live in. I like escargot as much as the next guy, but I’m also down with a loaf of bread and a wheel of cheese on the side of the road. I also scratch my ass in public. The practical Paris seems to exists squarely in the middle of these 2 television portrayals, and that’s a good thing. I enjoy that Paris.
I would come back in a heartbeat if circumstances allowed. The city is rich in culture, diverse, accessible, and the food is both remarkably good and relatively cheap. I’m sure one day we’ll be back. Next time, I want to take more time to be, to sit, to relax, and to write about what I’m seeing. Also, I need to get a tour guide for the Louvre as most of this is simply over my head.
The Eurostar to London is smooth, and fast, and the countryside is pretty awesome, especially since it is littered with windmills, which I love. Julia and Simon stare at their phones most of the trip, which is fine, as they both seem tired from the first 3 days. Zac sporadically talks to his mom while she reads the Europe book about London. I stare at windmills in between writing the first part of this post.
The train rolls on through the French countryside then gives way to a dark spell which I can only assume is the Chunnel, then we’re on the other side, having crossed from France to England, from one time zone to another, from one wind direction to another, from a language I can barely ask for a cup of coffee to one I can navigate natively – at least mostly.
We plan the London leg of the trip on & off in the second half of the 2.5 hour train ride, and in between go to the bar to buy some Oyster Cards, which is what they use in London for mass transit. The train doesn’t apply any upcharge to the sale, so it’s a push in terms of cost, and being able to do this during train downtime is a bonus. The attendant needs to go to the other car (13, we’re currently in 6) to look for his cards and he gives me a free espresso and D gets a free tea.
We come into the London station and the train unloads and dumps us into the sea of London post-work rush hour, which is strikingly different in terms of humanity, as the cultural diversity now seems more like a US/NYC mix of culture than what we saw in Paris. We walk to the underground which is just different in feel from the Paris Metro. It’s effectively the same thing but it’s also not. New York, DC, Taipei, Toronto, Paris, London – they all effectively have subways but they’re all different in some ways.
As we get out on the street the temperature difference is striking. We left the hot, steamy sauna of Paris and are greeted here by a moderate, you could almost call it cool, weather system. Apparently the heat will follow us on Saturday but for now, this is nothing short of splendid. We’re all refreshed by the moderate temperatures.
We walk to the hotel-hostel and get our room, which is in the basement of the building which sounds more dungeon-like than it is. The building appears to once have been a really nice place, and has been subdivided into silos that are owned by different companies. Ours is being used as a room-based hostel, which really means we get a room with a bathroom, but it’s not remotely a hotel and is certainly not as clean. For those who are expecting the Marriott, this place is not for you. Otherwise, it’s a room with 5 beds which is all we need.
The kids immediately dive into their electronics which speaks of how much we ran them into the ground the past 3 days, and we use this as a cue to let it run its course. We take the opportunity to leave them in the room and go around the corner to the cafe to get an espresso and a tea. The espresso is so bad I get a cappuccino, which is almost as bad but the milk moderates the awful. Regardless, the company is nice as this is the only chance D and I have to sit together the whole trip thus far.
We walk back to the room around the block the long way and find a place for dinner, the Warisan Cafe. I get a spicy fish, which is really spicy, but also really good. I don’t know to expect much on this leg of the tour in terms of food, but this meal was really good. The general food philosophy on this leg will likely be Asian-based, as that’s more than likely the best & most affordable option.
We stop in at the apartment to quickly grab a few light jackets then take a walk to Hyde Park to get some energy out, which the boys seem to need. Our target is Marble Arch, which we walk past, take a picture, then continue on through the park back to the room. It’s a nice, pleasant night and the walk was good just to get out of the room for an hour.
And so we arrive in London and begin the second phase of our 2019 European summer journey.
Traveling Normandy 