Sunday, September 19, 2010

honeymoon 2005

TRAVEL ADVENTURES




HONEYMOON IN PARIS, MARCH 2005


I have had so many adventures in my life but I think the one that is most like a dream come true is going to Paris on my honeymoon. Indeed as a small town girl dreamt of traveling somewhere exotic and romantic. Little did I know that these dreams would come true, certainly not the way I expected them to but life can, and often does, surprise us.


FROM NEW YORK TO PARIS

We couldn’t go to Paris without spending time in New York first to see some of the sights; The Statue of Liberty, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, and a fun tour of the famous Macy’s department store which is a culture unto itself. We also went to an opera; Die Rosenkavalier and when we left the opera around midnight were delighted to see the snow falling. I felt like I was in a movie. We stayed in a motel just off Central Park West


One thing I have learned about traveling is to expect the unexpected and sure enough, our flight to Paris was delayed. Everything was going smoothly at first. Going through security and boarding the plane was no problem, but then as we were sitting on the plane we were told there would be a delay because of a mechanical problem which is not unusual. So there we sat, at the mercy of the powers that be. It must have been close to an hour before we were told that the problem was fixed and we would be on our way but suddenly some poor woman from the back of the plane had a medical emergency and had to be evacuated to the hospital. This was unfortunate and certainly I had compassion on her.


Then came The Wait on the Plane. It is a regulation that when an emergency like this happens the luggage of the person involved has to be taken off the plane. After all, we can’t have the luggage traveling around France without the person, now can we? Keep in mind that the plane is huge and it took literally hours to find this person’s luggage, largely because they had to unload everyone’s luggage to find this one person’s luggage, and then reload it. By now we were offered us free drinks (who cares if it was before noon, we were jet lagged anyway and it didn’t matter what time it was). At last we are in the air and flying across the Atlantic.


I was overwhelmed by the number of people at the airport when we landed. Not to mention being out of my element, to put it mildly, but that is what travel is for, to expand your mind. We already had an honeymoon apartment to stay in, a gift from a friend of Robert's sister, Debbie.


Debbie had advised us to take a cab from the airport but Robert, who was so excited to be in Paris, artist that he is wanted to experience everything to the fullest thought it would be fun to get there by the subway (which began a years long, off and on discussion between us about the pros and cons of public transportation, subways in particular). His basic knowledge of French and his natural sense of direction kept us from getting lost. Although exhausted by this point I was game. After all this was our honeymoon.


I want to point out here that I am not fond of subways. Most of the ones I have been on are hot, noisy and crowded and I don’t find it enjoyable, especially when I am dealing with luggage. My husband has a slightly different sense of adventure and he was actually enjoying himself. At one point as we were walking he looked back at me to say, “Honey, isn’t this fun?” and then saw the look on my face, and noticed that I was close to tears from fatigue.


To make a long story short we eventually got to the apartment, which by the way was on the third floor (no elevator) so that mean schlepping our luggage up three flights of stairs. It was charming and I loved our stay there but if we ever visit Paris again we are taking a cab. To say that I was happy to have arrived is a huge understatement.






To Be Continued