First things first - I needed to get another metro pass. I tried to get the guy in the kiosk to help me but he just kept pointing to the machines on the left and aping out how I could do it myself. I've been going through that metro station everyday for 6 days now and I know that guy knows English so why he couldn't use his words I do not know. My son Ben has that same problem sometimes and I almost said to the guy in a motherly tone, "use your words, hun", but I thought better of it and figured I'd give the machine a try and the worst that would happen is I'd not be able to figure it out and then have to walk to the next metro to get that person to help me.
It really wasn't that difficult. The silver thing on the bottom of the screen rolls to make selections and English is a selection so I was on a roll after that. The only hard part was gathering all my bravery to put 60 euros in the machine and hope it didn't malfunction. All was well and I received my pass, receipt and correct change. I was off to my first stop.
Most of this trip has been about history going back hundreds of years. My house is 120 years old but that's nothing compared to most buildings in Paris - I will appreciate my house all more when I get back to it, that's for sure. Today's first stop had to do with recent history mixed with some old.
People a generation or so older than me will always remember where they were when President Kennedy was killed. One icon I will remember dying is Lady Diana. I watched her wedding and I followed her marriage and divorce. I admired her as a person. The night she passed away one of the kids was having a sleepover so I was awake well into the night making sure all went well with the boys. To keep myself awake I was watching tv and saw it all on the news that night. My cousin Stephen called me and we cried together for a while.
The car accident that led to her death took place in the tunnel beneath the Liberty Flame on Pont De L'Alma. People have taken to using the flame as a sort of memorial to the Lady. I visited to pay my respects.
Across the bridge is the tour for Les Egouts - the sewers. Why do people take a tour of a sewer? I don't know, but I can tell you that I wanted to do it plus I thought the idea of my being in the bowels of the city just before climbing to the top of the city in the same day was somewhat poetic. Gross, but poetic. The tour is in French but I've walked past the waste water treatment plant at home and toured the electric generating plant so I pretty much could figure out what the guy was saying. Plus that tad bit of French I barley passed in high school at least let me know that I needed to continue to laugh and nod in all the right places because the guide threw in a joke about Americans when he was showing us the scene with the rats. I'm sure it was a funny, haha kind of thing to lighten things up so I wasn't about to let people know I'm American and have them all being uncomfortable the rest of the tour. I'm really wanting to make a funny about the onion soup I had for dinner last night and how it evacuated from me and I wonder if I might have seen it again today but I won't do it.
Next I was off to the Eiffel Tower. This was not a happy experience but I'm not going to write up a rant - well, I did, but I deleted it. Let's just concentrate on the beauty of the tower, the nice view from the top and the experience of it all. BUT I will tell you that if you gave me a choice of the thousand steps at the Arc or the 3 lines at an hour each at the Tower for a view I would choose the Arc each and every time.
Off to Versailles tomorrow. Rain is expected but I won't let that stop me. Au revoir, mes amies.
No comments:
Post a Comment