C'est la Vie

I made it to Paris… minus a train ticket, a scarf, my dinner, and two and a half precious hours. I suppose US Airways values all of the money AREVA puts into their company, so they gave me a personal phone call Saturday afternoon to let me know my flight was delayed two hours. Ehh, I have never had any luck when I am flying, so it was to be expected. I met Meghan in the Philadelphia airport (my arch nemesis... Philly, not Meghan :), had a couple beers, and was off to France. I had my window seat that I always request and my flying mate was a French girl who looked to be about 8, but spoke as though she was 15. The first thing she told her father across the aisle was, “She is not French.” I said, “No dear, not even close.” I tried offering her gum and striking a conversation, but all I got was a finger waved in my face… “no, no, no”. After an hour she was asleep, lying on my shoulder, and for some reason it really touched me.

About two hours into the flight, at approximately 1 am EST I thought I was going to lose my cookies. I started sweating and my saliva became extremely thick. I had to wake the poor child up in order to make it to the lavatory, only to have my legs feel like jello and fall to the ground. I sat in the lavatory for about 30 minutes before someone asked me to come out. It happened once more on the flight before I fell asleep until about 6 am EST. I have no idea what came over me… motion sickness? Something I ate? Ehhh….

While in the Charles de Gaulle airport I realized my train ticket for the next morning to Lyon and Le Creusot was on my refrigerator in Lynchburg, VA. I am a pure bred genius. I called the travel agency and they said there was nothing they could do until my local office opened at 8am EST on Monday… 2pm in France and six hours after my train was scheduled to leave. Ugh.

I didn’t let it stop me from hopping into a taxi and taking Paris by storm in the eight hours I had. Let’s see, it went a little something like this…

Arrive
Taxi
Espresso
Hotel Check in
Espresso
Notre Dame
Crepe
Espresso
Louvre
Espresso
Metro
Eiffel
Metro
Sacre-Coeur
Metro
Espresso
Escargot
Wine
Metro
Hotel
Internet
Sleep for 4.5 hours
Espresso
Breakfast (fabulous for continental)
Gare de Lyon
Scarf stolen
Can’t communicate with the billets office to explain I left my ticket… have to buy a new one.
Spend thirty minutes trying to determine which train is mine out of the thirty in front of me.
Get on FIRST CLASS. So nice.

Before I left we had a family weekend with Mags and Josh at the Bobcats game and setting off our rocket we got Josh...