Mother/Daughter Vacation: traveling and Day 1 in Paris.
Sorry, no pictures today. We haven't done much.
Traveling is always exhausting. Flying, for me, is hyper exhausting with a slathering of airplane anxiety. But we made it: FWA to DFW and DFW to CDG airports.
I've found the better the airplane, the easier it is on my motion sickness. Of course, it could be argued that my scopolamine patch had kicked in for several hours...and that may be. Who knows?
I do know I was a lot calmer while waiting on the Dallas plane to bring me here than I was waiting for FWA to take me to Dallas. Je n'sais pas.
I do know that I have been exhausted ever since waking up yesterday morning before starting out on this voyage. And I knew it would only get worse: motion sickness, no complete silence, and trying to sleep in an airplane chair. I haven't even mentioned using French again.
When we arrived at Roissy (Charles de Gaulle airport...what the locals call it anyway), we got through customs and suddenly Mom says, "Oh, I have to get used to seeing and hearing French everywhere now. It totally slipped my mind." I found this a little funny, so I had to share it with y'all.
And our shuttle driver was late picking us up, which made us nervous. I tried calling their customer support, but the teleprompter was super fast French. We ended up going to the American Airlines section of the terminal and asking a very nice lady if she could make the call for us. All's well that ends well. Shout out to Natasha for being a good sport and a very wonderful person.
Then we had to wait on our shuttle to take us to our hotel here in Paris. And for some reason, our shuttle driver had us going to a totally different hotel. We parked outside of it and I'm looking at the address, thinking "This isn't the right place. Thankfully, it looked like it had been shut down, so the driver was confused too. I had to show him the address that I recieved from my travel agent. Car ride number 2 and another 30 minutes later, we made it.
Alex, my younger brother, texted me a few minutes ago and asked if we
had gone to the Eiffel Tower yet. No, but we saw it on our excursion
around Paris as the shuttle driver tried taking us to the wrong hotel.
Only to wait again. We arrived at 12:30, but check in isn't until 15:00. So, we sat in the lobby and got on wifi and contacted a few people back home: yes, we're alive and we made it to our first destination. And then we kind of cat-napped for a while. I was so ready to go to the room, wash the oil that accumulated on my face after traveling all day yesterday and most of today, and just collapse. We had these grand plans of walking around the west side of Paris this afternoon, but I couldn't even keep my eyes open for more than 15 minutes straight.
I'm trying to speak as much French as I can, but sometimes I freeze up. And other times, I just really wanted Mom to understand what they are saying too in case I forget everything. And...a big part of it is that I was (and still am) tired. Thankfully, the hotel staff here is SUPER genial (nice/kind in French). They let me switch to English whenever I just can't go anymore in their native language.
I was able to order a shower mat just a few minutes ago on the phone only in French. I count that as a win today. Of course, the words for "shower mat" were written on the back of a card in our room, but still: I was able to figure out what I needed to say.
Backing up a little in the timeline of this story: once we rested a bit, we went downstairs to have dinner in the hotel's restaurant. At first, Mom was complaining about the prices, but then I reminded her that it's Paris (of course it's expensive) and, most importantly, restaurant workers in France actually get paid a decent wage. There is no tipping in France (well, there is if the service was outstanding and you want to leave a few cents), so the bill is going to be bigger because you are paying the cook, the waitstaff, and for your food. As it should be (in my humble opinion. It's not like I have any experience watching US waitresses get underpaid by cheap customers. Not at all.)
Then I spotted a tour guide with the same company we will be using starting Sunday. I went to ask here about all the Covid crap we have to go through, because Mom was "bucking against it all" (her words, not mine.) According to the tour guide, we don't have to have this extra pass I found. I hope and pray that is still true. But she would know: she's the guide taking a group of people and they are a week ahead of us. My only hesitation is that she could be thinking of just her group of people when they are with her. What about Mom & me as we go off to Amiens tomorrow by ourselves? Suffice to say, we've decided to take a chance and believe the tour guide: we'll just bring our CDC vaccine cards to the train station tomorrow and hope they let us ride it there and back. No extra covid test required. I hope. Pray that I'm just being paranoid.
After that comforting conversation, we took a really short walk outside to find our bus stop to take us to the train station tomorrow. It's funny: Mom is worried about us getting to Amiens, while I'm worried about getting to the places she wants to go in Amiens. Together we are doing well. How are you?
Back to the hotel room to just chill for the rest of the evening. Sorry no photos today. Will get some tomorrow.
A plus tard mes amis!
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