Want to Come for Christmas?: Chapter 1 and 2: What Time Is It Anyway?

December 14 and 15, 2013

We have been planning a trip for an awfully long time: it is a trip overseas, to see something that we have never seen before. However, the place was not yet determined until Grace, our younger daughter, decided to move to the outskirts of Madrid, Spain for a WHOLE year! One of her "wishes" was that we'd "come for Christmas." And being good parents: we did.

We spent three months planning our vacation in December: one night, we find a place to stay in Barcelona. The next: we'd make sure our flights were coming in when we wanted them. The next week, we'd book our train travel between the 4 places we planned to stay. The nextweek, we'd be making sure our LLBean and Zappo's orders were in...but all of a sudden, it was December 14, and we were actually travelling!

After a quick flight into a snowy Chicago, we were met at the gate by an apparition: my brother, Eric! We had uninterrupted conversation, while we looked out at the awful runway, with that terrible snow, both thinking "If we get off this runway and headed toward home/Paris, we'll be lucky!" He ushered us off with a beer and a great hour+ conversation, and there we were - taking off into a black sky - filled with little blinking lights. These blinking lights were not stars, but air traffic trying to get into and out of O'Hare. On the plane, we had a lovely dinner and then, we were told by many, that we needed to sleep. So we did.

The next morning, at around 6:30, I put on the headphones in order to wake up a little. It was kind of a surrealistic circumstance: I found myself listening to "The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies" and looking out the window to see the sun rise. It nearly brought tears to my eyes...thinking of being on holiday on the other side of the ocean. After a while, I looked at Andy's watch, just to see if it was close to the time I thought it was. I was wrong.

It was 2:30.

Of course, that really meant that it was 8:30, Paris time. And it WAS time to eat, so forget the lovely dinner I had just 5 hours ago, and eat! And we did, and then it was time to start walking.

Chapter Two: Can We Go To The Top?

We must have looked like some hicks just come to town. Every escalator we got to, we stopped, looked around, looked at signs, looked at "Sortie" written all over, and tried to decide what to do next. After an hour (remember, we were each hauling around a big suitcase and an overnight carrier) we got to 83 Ru De Clichy, at a beautiful wooden door with a doctors office sign on it. Great. (AirBnB has already screwed us over! This is no apartment! It's a doctor's office!) After a bit more discussion, we realized that there were several things we had to do to "pass go": however, there we were, in the same pictured place that we had seen and fallen in love with back home. Aurelie's home was waiting for us. It had a cozy soft bed, a small kitchen with everything we needed, a corner bathtub (with a Grohe shower, just like Mom and Dad's) and a table (with a red checked tablecloth) facing out to a small garden patio. Was I in a dream, or was this really Paris?

But, we basically put down our bags, ran out the door, and got on the Metro for a trip downtown. Oh wait, we WERE downtown. The first thing I learned about the Metro is that it involves a lot of stairs. More stairs than elevators! But somehow, we found ourselves at the Champs Élysées and right in the middle of Paris! The sun was at about what I would have thought was 5:00, but was probably 2:00. I was still in major "Don't ask me the time" stage. We went over a bridge with marvelous gold statues announcing that we were in Paris, and then FINALLY, (looking straight into the sun) a glimpse of le Tour Eiffel! We strolled past the Grand Palais and it's counterpart across the street, (both adorned I gold, with huge "lace like" doors), over that beautiful bridge, down streets with bistros and everyone sitting out in the streets, then down the grandest street of all, the Champs Élysées, again. Every big name store was represented on the Champs...and at the end, was the Arch du Triomphe! (I would like to stop using these exclamation points! But I can't!! It's so exciting!)

We needed a chocolate crepe, so we stopped across the street from the Arc, and sat wondering how the people that we saw all over the the huge monument got over there, through all that unorganized traffic. We decided they must go under the street. And we were right. So when we got there, we decided to buy a ticket and go see this site. We got in line, and all of a sudden, we found ourselves going up a circular staircase. We went up at least as high as 2 Cape Hatteras Lighthouses. And then we were on the very top of the Arc du Triomphe, triumphant as we were about not being dead after coming all the way up with only 4 hours sleep, and more personally, me not being lame. (And by the way, some props for Donna, Patty and Kelly, my great PT team for getting me on my new brace - which works like a charm.) We looked out over the City of Lights - and sighed. We were here.