Shallow Pockets Brimming with Merm ern Derdd

I apologize for how belated this post is- so many pictures, so little time to resize and organize. To catch up, a few weeks back, something truly wonderful happened. My parents got on a plane and came to Europe. And they let me tag along!

Unfortunately, since I'm being an adult and working in a grown up role, I wasn't able to join them until their second week. But as soon as the weekend started I jetted off to Paris to meet them.

The logistics of getting from point A [Charles de Galle] to point B [our hotel] were complicated to say the least. I seem to have very little luck when navigating. You would think that for as much traveling as I've been doing, I would have remedied this by now and turned bad luck into practice makes perfect. Well folks, sometimes there are just extenuating circumstances. And sometimes the universe just really has a blast fucking with you. I think most of my life has involved the latter.

SO. My parents were flying from Dublin, whereas I came from Manchester, so the plan was to meet one another at the hotel room. I had hours to get there before them, so I was envisioning a quick suitcase drop-off followed by some solo exploring. But Paris had other plans for me.

• Charles de Galle was under construction, and the train that usually takes you within Metro usage wasn't available. After much miscommunication and dead ends, I finally found the bus to take me to another train station. As I walked outside, it started pouring. Optimistically, as I was finally leaving the rainiest country in the world, I neglected to pack a rain coat or umbrella...
• Once we got to the train station they ushered us onto a platform. We missed the train by seconds and got to sit in the rain watching it pull away. The next train was said to be arriving in 20 minutes. Then that train was delayed another 20. When it did finally come it arrived at a different platform so all of us ran to catch it. We smushed onto the train like sardines, standing room only with suitcases mind you. We sat at the platform for another 20 minutes. It was an older model, so there was no air conditioning on the coach. Brilliant.
• Since there was so much body heat inside and so much cold rain outside the windows steamed up on both sides so it was impossible to read any of the station stops and the intercom was impossible to decipher. Luckily a nice Parisian boy started chatting to me and he allowed me to watch the train route via his iPhone. Once we reached what my Parisian friend [let's call him Pierre] deemed an appropriate stop, we got off and kind Pierre walked me through the station to the Metro and pointed me to the line I needed. God bless you, Pierre!
• The Metro was about as packed as the train had been, but at least it was direct and there was no waiting. I got off at the Arc de Triumphe, because I knew our hotel was somewhat nearby, and emerged from underground into the pounding rain. It was dark at this time too, mind you. I desperately tried to spot a cab and found an exit in the massive roundabout that seemed to have waves of cabs pass by, so I stood on a corner and tried to recall all of my high school French.
• I didn't have any Euros on me, and the first cab I hailed didn't take card. So I walked six or so blocks down the Champs Elysee until I found a cash machine, withdrew, and walked back up to my corner. By this time I think it was safe to say that I was pretty damn wet. I managed to hail another taxi, placed my suitcase in the car and read the address to the driver. Do you KNOW what he said to me?? "No, not dressed like that. Sorry. Get out."
  I was utterly gobsmacked. Sincerely. Gob. Smacked.
• So I immediately decide all Parisians are FUCKING ASSHOLES and stubbornly walked my ass back down the Champs Elysee even though I had neither a map nor the faintest idea where our hotel was. After about twenty minutes of walking unprotected through the rain lugging a suitcase I realized how truly silly that was and found the first hotel I could to ask the concierge for directions. Their job is to be friendly, right? And they probably speak English? The first guy told me, miracle of all miracles, that I was in fact on the correct street and my hotel was two block down the road on the left. Yippee!
• Untold blocks later... still no hotel. So I walked back and asked the doorman at the hotel across the street from the first. And this lovely man made me scold myself for the "all Parisians are assholes" cursing I had done previously because this man was a saint. He provided me a map and kind words and brief shelter from the storm. 

And so I made it to our hotel at long last around midnight and collapsed in a heap, first in a bubble bath [YES! BATH!] and then under the down comforter of my little bed. And there I slept my sick, cold, wet body until the dawn.

My parents and I had a lovely reunion and, as you are probably sick of so much text and reading, I will simply illustrate the first few hours of our day in gay Paris with pictures of our tour of the Arc de Triumphe.

Mama and Daddy and the Arc!

So last March when I saw the Arc for the first time, I didn't realize you could go under it to reach it. See, the Arc is surrounded by the most mammoth traffic circle I have ever, ever seen and, when I saw people walking around underneath the structure I assumed they were all jay walkers with a death wish. Well apparently there's a tunnel... Found it!

 

Check out this cool guy posing casually in front of what he likes to refer to as the "champs Elyse" [pronounced with the clearest American phonetics, of course].

We bought tickets [well actually, I was free! Thank you EU residency] to travel to the tippy top of the Arc. See those windy tubes that resemble DNA on either leg of the Arc? Those are stairs. And lots of them. Mama and her heels had to take a break partway up, so my dad and I pointed and laughed, as you do to someone you love. <3

You can kind of make out the Eiffel Tower just over Daddy's shoulder. It truly was a phenomenal view.