Poo Poo - Pompidou

It's been a while since we have seen our Parisian "gurlfriends" so I thought I would plan a little weekend visit to see how they are doing and to make contact again.  We left Copenhagen on a very busy 4th of July afternoon. And it turned out to be a repeat of the same story you have heard me tell many times before.  The work computer shows that the flight is wide open, but when we check-in, they tell us that the flight is full.  I don't know why I am always surprised to hear this but I am.  And then again when we got to the gate, the airline purser tells us that it doesn't look good.  I'm am totally bummed.  We only have a few hours in Paris so waiting for the next and final flight of the day would really eat into our travel time and experience.  But I had to let Patrick and Fabian know that we may be delayed a few hours or maybe not even show up at all.  The flight was full but luckily Jens and I did manage to get 2 seats.  It turned out that several others trying to get to Paris on a stand-by ticket, were out of luck.  I sent a quick text message again to Fabian to say, "We are now on board and ready for take off."

Paris is only 1 hour and 55 minutes away from here so it sounds like a snap to get there - right? Thank goodness for this great website I found that actually shows you how to get from airport to city with pictures.  We've been there a number of times but each time, it has been confusing.  I was so glad that I printed out the instructions from the web and followed the step by step photos.

We arrive at Terminal 1 at CDG airport.  This is the mile long rolling sidewalk with pix on the walls welcoming guest to France.

It's almost like a roller coaster or a fun house.

Then the craziest part is this wild criss-cross escalator extravaganza that makes me feel like a hamster in a giant size cage.

At the end of the line from terminal 1, we end up at this station, among several stops along the way & beyond and buy tickets for the next train.  We get these tiny ticket that makes Jens pout.  awwww...

After a very long walk, and a long train ride from one airport terminal to the other, we are finally on the train to the city.  Lucky for us the next train to pull into the station was the express train which cuts about a quarter of an hour off of the very long ride.

I'm not sure but I think Les Halles must be the largest underground train station in the world. I checked it out on Google Earth to see how to get from Les Halles to our hotel.  It's only 4 or 5 blocks.  But what you can't see on Google Earth is the 4 floors of  underground shopping and the station itself.  There must have been 10,000 arrows pointing the direction to this and to that.  And none of the directions means a thing to you unless you can read French or you know where the heck it is you want to go to.  "This way, Eddie" was not one of the arrow destinations - or at least I didn't see that one.  What I did know however, is that we wanted to go into the direction of the Pompidou Center.  Even so - that was confusing in itself.  But we did it and that little 4 or 5 blocks-away-hotel ended up being several miles away due to all the underground walking.  It's quite amazing really and if I had time, I would love to check it out.  I have to say it is a bit scary being that deep underground and having no idea of where you are or how to get out if something were to happen.

But finally we found our way out and I figured out where we were on the surface level and found our way to the Pompidou Center.  From there we could find the rest of the way with our eyes closed.  We get to our hotel, which was a total dump not long ago as we have been told, but has been recently remodeled throughout.  It was basic but very nice and great service.  We stayed in the totally trendy (read expensive) La Marais area (which means the marsh but I like to say the swamp - you say potata) and one of the most exciting areas in town.  We checked-in, un-packed, laxed and relaxed a bit, sent a text message to our friends and made plan B to meet at the corner café.

While we are waiting for Fabien to come and meet us, you could just feel all the excitement in the air because of tonight's football game - France is gonna kick the pants off of the Germans, Jens and I were crossing our fingers.  Or maybe what we were feeling was the hot and sticky humidity. "Bring a lite jacket", Fabian texted me, "It's supposed to sprinkle a little this weekend."  Sprinkle? in Paris? in the middle of summer? oh common!

We just sat down at this corner café and in the middle of the intersection is a police woman trying to get control of two guys that look like they are about to go at it with each other.  The police woman is in the middle of a building argument, holding back both guys from hitting each other. A policeman in a squad car drives right by it all.  "Hey!", she yells at her workmate but he just keeps on driving by as if he were the only one on the road.  Then just seconds later a man standing on the corner runs up to one of the guys and starts to wail on one of the guys that the policewoman was holding back.  He knees one of the guys in the groin and starts swinging his open palm to the man's head.  But what an idiot; the man being slapped, is wearing a helmet.  Why doesn't the guy with the helmet just knock the guy one, head to head with his helmet?  The policewoman realizes it's useless and radios-in for back-up.  I whip out my camera but it's too late.  The fight ended as quickly as it started. Totally unaware of the big to-do, Fabian steps into the café and greets us with a big Parisian kiss kiss.

The time is around 5-ish and we sit for a while with Fabian.  He invites us later to his apartment at 8 when Patrick gets off of work.  After a very long 2 hour journey from CPH to CDG, a little nap was just perfect for us.  It also enabled us to watch the game.  Sadly for us, it was Germany who kicked France in the pants.  The score was 1-0. 

At 8 o'clock in the evening we pop on over to Patrick and Fabien's home.

We brought a few gifts with us and 2 of them were T-shirts from the 2014 European song contest.  And if you have been paying attention, you know it was the Wurst! contest.

I tried to get into the photo too - that's me, the flasher, in the mirror.

Fabien has his fingers in many things and his latest project is some wonderful perfume/fragrance which he is producing.  He gave us a little bottle of his "LoversKey" and it smells great.  The scent is based on a composition from La Réunion - one of the French island in the Indian Ocean.  If you are interested in learning more about this very unique and delicious scent you can easily go to fb site at facebook.com/loverskey   Spray for love!
 

Fabien is a wonderful and very generous cocktail host.  Taking orders and whipping up something very cold and refreshing in a snap.  When he asked me what I would like to drink, I said, "Surprise me!".  You can see my glass there in the lower left hand corner.  It was so delicious but almost no alcohol.  It went down like candy.  He looked at me like - hummmm.... "Would you like another cocktail, Eddie?"  and I slurred, "tjeah! sure! this stuff is great!" And that was about all I remember from that evening.

I woke up the next day a bit worried and sort of bummed because the whole idea for this visit was to visit Patrick and Fabien and I just barely remember that I bored Fabien with some family story and I don't even remember Patrick and Jens being there at the restaurant. I totally forgot to take pix even though my camera was around my neck the entire evening.  I don't even remember going to the restaurant or leaving.  I do remember Fabien read some of the menu card for me.  Jens says I was whispering secrets to Fabien about Jens.  But Jens could hear everything I was saying.  Please forgive me if I said something about you too.

So let this be a warning: use caution when ordering drinks at Fabien's Fabulous Cocktail Lounge.

Luckily, "This ol' Man" didn't play nik nak patty whack on my head the following day.  We got up, showered, and walked down to the corner café and ordered breakfast.  Here are a few shots taken directly from our table.

Here we are sitting on the sidewalk, under the awning and protected from the wind that was starting to whip up.  It was this little glass partition that kept us comfortable.

Today I was supposed to meet Clarke.  She just happened to be in Paris at the same time as us.  She arrived from California the day before us and was going to be there for 2 weeks.  She is young and ready to go and explore.  I'm an old fart and have seen it before.  I opened my cell phone at 9 in the morning and read, "Well, I guess 8:30 is a little too early for you. But we are leaving now to the Louvre".  We were only able to communicate via Whatsapp when she was connected to Wifi.  Once she left the house, no more messaging.  I told her that I was able to meet her after she was finished at the museum. But of course she didn't get the message until she first came home and plugged into Wifi. 

So I had 3 hours on my own.  Jens napped the afternoon away. Patrick and Fabian had some sudden unexpected issues to deal with so we didn't see them until the evening.  I told Jens that I was going to go out to the tower because we didn't see the it the last 2 times we were there and now I was ready to see it again.  I made my way past the Pompidou Center and back to the 4 level underground station. Even with my glasses on, I really couldn't read the metro map and just took a guess that line 4 to line 10 to line ? would get me there.  It seemed like I was forever underground and getting ready to scream, "GET ME OUTTA HERE!!! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!"  When I had to switch to the last line, I was mouth and eyes wide open to see the sign say " track is closed for renovation." Now what do I do?  And where am I? I knew I was close so I just went to street level and asked the newspaper man.  He pointed the way and said it's just around the corner.  And bam! there it was.  I was at the far end of the grass field - Champ de Mars - which allows for the entire tower to fit into the frame and I was actually happy about that.

I'm not good at doing selfies and this is one of 50 but the only one worth showing.  There was an equestrian show going on as well as a tractor pulling contest and tractor racing.  I'm sure they are the guys that close down the entire city by blocking all the streets when all the union workers go on strike.  Maybe I should have taken a pix of that after all- sorry.  Here is a shot of one of many tents that were selling horse art, horse products and anything and everything to do with horses.

Pony rides and horse n' carriage rides were available.

Whenever I put my Mexican cock into a pile of poo, I always take precaution not to catch a nasty no-nos.

The weather is funky and I actually had my umbrella out a few times.  But even so, it's an amazing place and much more colorful in real life than in these pix.  I'm standing by a flower garden that is very close to the tower.  I snapped the pix because of all the color but it's kind of drab here.  You'll just have to go for yourself to find out.

Now I am too close to the tower so this is good to get detailed shots of the iron.

I promised Jens that I would be back at 5.  Fabien wanted us to be at his place at 6:30.  No way was I going to get back on the underground.  It was now 4:40 in the after noon and I figured that since the tower and the hotel are along the river, I will just walk back to the hotel.

Here is a bust of the guy that gave us Lady Liberty.

I've now passed through the tower and come to the other side.  There is more light on this side and makes for better photos but a blue sky would have been better.  It's now 4:30 and I still have more pix to snap. And how in the world am I gonna get back before 5pm!

The sky is just finally starting to break up a tad and you can see a dash of blue but now I have to get into some sort of transportation and get back ASAP.  Oh but wait! Just one more pix!

If I am going to walk back then I should stay on this side of the river.  But now it's almost 5 and a taxi is too expensive and where is there a metro and where does it go and how do I get there from here?  Oh wait  - let me just cross the river and take a few more pix!  It's eye-candy-land here.

I'm starting to cross the river now.  I really want to walk the length of it but there is just no time.

While trying to get to the tower from our hotel, I kept looking at the map for metro line number 72.  It never came.  It was the most direct line but I just got on the number 4 instead.  Well duh!  72 is a bus line and not a metro line.  When I cross the bridge I see bus number 72 coming towards me and can see that the bus stop is just across the street.  I make a mad dash and hop on the bus.  It follows along the river all the way to just 2 streets away from our hotel.  It was like magic and perfect timing and the walk, which I thought I could do in a half hour, probably would have taken 1½ hours plus the time for all of the stopping for more picture taking.

The police are too busy blabbing with each other to even notice that I ran against the red light to catch the bus.

At exactly 6:30, Jens and I were at the front door of Patrick and Fabien's apartment.  Patrick was out on the sidewalk and says, "Come along with me.  I'm going to the baker to buy some bread."  It was like being in a movie; walking with a French man along a French street in a French town going to a French baker to buy French bread. It was so realistic I think I may even win an Oscar for Best Supporting Tourist in a foreign film.

Dinner was served and delicious but I went eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeasy on my dinner cocktail.  Wonderful salad starter and delicious stake dinner that I am too dumb to remember to take a photo of and then a very tasty fruit salad.  It was enough food for an army.  The guys are excellent cooks and the time we spent with them was soooooooo nice.  We had a lovely evening but sadly, all good things must come to an end and we had to return to our hotel and begin to pack for tomorrows departure.

That evening when Clarke and her school friend returned from her day at the Louver, she plugged into to see that I made the suggestion that she take a good look at a map and decided to meet me at 9 at either Hôtel de Ville or the Pompidou Center.  The choice was hers.  She chose Hôtel de Ville which had a metro stop directly from where she was staying at so it worked out great. She wanted to meet later in the day but I said - no can do, because we have an afternoon train to catch back to the airport so let's meet in the morning for breakfast.  Her worry was if they were going to have the time because they had bought tickets to the Eiffel tower at 12 noon.  I told her we only have an hour or so anyway.  So if we meet at 9, she will have plenty of time to get to the Tower at 12 because the bus departs from Hôtel de Ville (which by the way we got a really nice suite for only €25 per night) and it goes straight to the tower.  So we meet here at Hôtel de Ville - beautiful place.

We had a quick chat and a quick croissant. I was so glad that I got Clarke and her friend to come and meet me in La Marais because it's so cool in this part of town.  But it's a late night party area so basically we were the only people up and out that early in the morning and I had to lead the girls across the street to avoid the huge puddle of party puke.  We ate in-doors to avoid the rain so our view looking out was of a bum sleeping on the sidewalk using his shoe as a pillow. So much for the trendy side of town.  In this case - the swamp is a perfect name. 

I would have loved to hang out the rest of the day with Clarke and her school pal Rylie at the tower but reality was calling and soon it was time to check-out and go back to the airport.

We say good-bye to the graduate girls and spend the last 3 hours with Patrick and Fabien doing a bit of window shopping as most everything was closed on Sunday.  The weather is getting really icky and we all start to take shelter under this giant umbrella.

It's time to say good-bye to the boys and they were sooooooo kind to follow us to the scary underground shopping/train station and put us on the right track.

Au revoir guys.  Merci pour un merveilleux week-end.  Hasta luego!