Part 7: Finé – Paris in the summer…
We arrived in Paris at the Gare de Lyon in the hustle and bustle of a Friday afternoon in a train station. So many people coming and going!
We looked at the metro to get to our hotel and when we realized it was two different changes, we said, all right, one taxi coming up! It was only our second taxi in the whole trip, so we thought we’d earned it.
Across the Seine and up into the Latin Quarter, past so many buildings I recognized and streets I knew. That is my part of Paris, where I feel at home.
I hadn’t been to the hotel in 3 ½ years, but we found it just fine. I’ve been going to this hotel for at least twelve years and it is exactly the same each time, clean, very simple and the best deal in Paris. But certainly not fancy.
But we did have a TV in our room, so were able to watch the end of that day’s stage of the Tour de France, which has been getting more exciting each day, as it is closer and closer to the end. We were pulling for the Australian and it turns out he won! Now that I’m an Aussie, I felt proud.
We walked down the street and found a restaurant that I’d been to before, right near the Pantheon. Chicken, frites, salad and a glass of wine with a very polite waiter—not always the case in Paris! Read More→
One of the advantages of staying with “locals” is discovering jewels that you could never find on your own. That was the case when the next day, our friend drove us up into the hills, on rough and windy roads that required four-wheel-drive, up past fat cows wearing giant cow bells, till we ended up at a tiny chalet and farm, for lunch.
Once in Paris, we followed signs to the metro underground to connect to Gare St Lazare to catch the train to Normandy. My father spent four months during World War II in Normandy, and fifty years after the war, I found a French orphan Gilbert, who Dad tried to adopt and bring home to America in 1944.