Oh. my. gawd. If you have gone through this before, please look away so you won't have to roll your eyes at another newbie discovering the horrors of a 9 hour jet lag. This is tired, people. The kind of tired you experience with a newborn baby - except with a newborn, you can sleep when the baby does. With jet lag you have to force your self to stay awake so that you get attuned to the rise and fall of the sun in your new locale.
This kind of tired is pain filled, dry mouth, headache, Frodo and Sam on the side of Mt Doom kind of tired. Face in the soup kind of tired. And you still have to take care of the needs of your babies. Oh and Paris is having a hot spell - it's in the 90s.
We caught a cab from the airport and had a wonderful older French driver guide us to our apartment. He spoke English and told us about Paris traffic and the sales "soldes" that started this week. We saw a horrific accident involving a 7 car pile-up. The glass and parts glittering on the roadway were clues that at least one of the drivers was not going to be making it home that night. As we snaked into the 16eme, Ken and I both had the same unspoken thought, "What the hell were we thinking to rent a car next week? How will we ever manage this?" The drivers are nuts. They honk, thinking that will make the situation better. Pedestrians beware - the sidewalks are not as safe as you think they are.
Once the cab was gone, we began the work of figuring out how to get into our apartment. Tiredness was creeping in and it took several minutes to discover the door needed a push and not a pull. Inside the courtyard we were surrounded by Frenchness. The building is fabulously old and just like every movie you have ever seen about Paris. Windowboxes, tone on tone coloration, tiles. We haul our luggage up six sets of spiral stairs to the 3rd floor. There is a miniscule elevator, that hold a person and a bag, but we skip that. The cabbie told us that to get into this neighborhood, would set a person back about 2 million Euro - I can't wait to see the flat.
We open the heavy wooden door and come face-to-face with an armoire. The apartment is, in real estate terms, cozy and charming. In real terms, it's that and about 40 square meters. The whole apartment is smaller than my master suite at home. It has a bedroom, living room, bathroom and kitchen. It's perfect.
With suitcases staked on on top another, we move to the task of keeping ourselves awake. An unfortunate glance at the laptop reveals that it's approaching 2 - that's great! I feel pretty good for 2. A look at our watch - set to Paris time is a shocker though. It's 10:30AM the time on the computer is Seattle time - 1:30am. I think that gave me a head-spin.
We decide to head outside, as Parisians don't believe in air-conditioning OR fans. So we change into cooler clothes, except for my daughter, who stubbornly decides she's cool with heat stroke. We make our way through the neighborhood, learning to negotiate the traffic - both auto, scooter and pedestrian. We ambled to the local Carrefour market to see what was inside. Parental tempers grew shorter when no one could decide what to take a chance on, so we headed to the "Ethnic Foods" section and - score! A jar of peanut butter for our 8 year old son. We find our favorite Bonnie Maman strawberry jam and move on. We intend to buy our bread at one of the Boulngerie we passed on he way here. Now is when our daughter can help us - at the checkout. However, perhaps due to the heatstroke, she has decided that two years of French has rendered her mute. She can't possibly help us navigate the purchase. All she can do is stand to the side and mumble at how we're doing it wrong. Somehow we get out of the store and back into the afternoon.
Soon we are back in our flat, enjoying our hard-won meal. Our wonderful host has left us with an assortment of goodies from some dark chocolate and macarons, to chevre and a local meat, and some champagne and red wine. Even as we chew, our eyes are drooping and our heads are beginning to list a bit sideways as we begin to slip into semi-consciousness. We need to keep moving.
We were under the impression that we were just 15 minutes to the Eiffel Tower by foot - but really it's 15 by Metro and 45 minutes by foot. We have all day to kill still, so let's do it! Well, the trip served it's purpose, in keeping us busy and awake, but I don't think I'd recommend it to others. It was long, it was sticky hot. As we wandered along past the Seine, there were dead rats - not usually included in Paris postcards. Soon the dead rats were replaced by a pack of vendors trying to sell bottled water out of buckets and miniature Eiffel Towers as souvenirs. It was a little sad to see all of this aggressive panhandling around such a cultural landmark. But then again, I felt a little bit of relief in knowing that this kind of thing is ubiquitous in the world and not just the U.S. I realized that I really, really, do not like tourist spots. My jaw hung as I counted the tour buses lined up and belching out fumes in the late afternoon - there must have been a dozen at least. Yuck - the line for going up in the tower stretched for 100 meters - it must take hours to get up there. No thanks.
I began to feel like I might pass out from tiredness, heat, hunger and thirst. We found a place to sit to think about where to look for a family-friendly bistro. My son and I both passed out. It was uncontrollable. As soon as we stopped moving my body just wanted to shut down. Again we rallied, got the kids some slurpy drink and headed away into the surrounding neighborhood, where we did find a very casual place to reconstitute.
We were going to catch the Metro back, but decided we were refreshed enough to walk back. We cut a long diagonal through the 16eme and got quite a swanky slice of life view of Paris. This arrondissement is very well to do. Beautiful people in beautiful clothes, eating impossibly beautiful food in beautiful bistros. An hour later we made it home to peel off our clothes down to our underwear and collapse wherever we could find a horizontal space.
My body was spent and I had been awake since 6am on the 29th (and had only slept 4 hours that night.) I fell asleep at 8pm June 30th. In Paris.
This kind of tired is pain filled, dry mouth, headache, Frodo and Sam on the side of Mt Doom kind of tired. Face in the soup kind of tired. And you still have to take care of the needs of your babies. Oh and Paris is having a hot spell - it's in the 90s.
We caught a cab from the airport and had a wonderful older French driver guide us to our apartment. He spoke English and told us about Paris traffic and the sales "soldes" that started this week. We saw a horrific accident involving a 7 car pile-up. The glass and parts glittering on the roadway were clues that at least one of the drivers was not going to be making it home that night. As we snaked into the 16eme, Ken and I both had the same unspoken thought, "What the hell were we thinking to rent a car next week? How will we ever manage this?" The drivers are nuts. They honk, thinking that will make the situation better. Pedestrians beware - the sidewalks are not as safe as you think they are.
Once the cab was gone, we began the work of figuring out how to get into our apartment. Tiredness was creeping in and it took several minutes to discover the door needed a push and not a pull. Inside the courtyard we were surrounded by Frenchness. The building is fabulously old and just like every movie you have ever seen about Paris. Windowboxes, tone on tone coloration, tiles. We haul our luggage up six sets of spiral stairs to the 3rd floor. There is a miniscule elevator, that hold a person and a bag, but we skip that. The cabbie told us that to get into this neighborhood, would set a person back about 2 million Euro - I can't wait to see the flat.
In the living room/ dining room/ guest bedroom
We open the heavy wooden door and come face-to-face with an armoire. The apartment is, in real estate terms, cozy and charming. In real terms, it's that and about 40 square meters. The whole apartment is smaller than my master suite at home. It has a bedroom, living room, bathroom and kitchen. It's perfect.
Soon we are back in our flat, enjoying our hard-won meal. Our wonderful host has left us with an assortment of goodies from some dark chocolate and macarons, to chevre and a local meat, and some champagne and red wine. Even as we chew, our eyes are drooping and our heads are beginning to list a bit sideways as we begin to slip into semi-consciousness. We need to keep moving.
We were under the impression that we were just 15 minutes to the Eiffel Tower by foot - but really it's 15 by Metro and 45 minutes by foot. We have all day to kill still, so let's do it! Well, the trip served it's purpose, in keeping us busy and awake, but I don't think I'd recommend it to others. It was long, it was sticky hot. As we wandered along past the Seine, there were dead rats - not usually included in Paris postcards. Soon the dead rats were replaced by a pack of vendors trying to sell bottled water out of buckets and miniature Eiffel Towers as souvenirs. It was a little sad to see all of this aggressive panhandling around such a cultural landmark. But then again, I felt a little bit of relief in knowing that this kind of thing is ubiquitous in the world and not just the U.S. I realized that I really, really, do not like tourist spots. My jaw hung as I counted the tour buses lined up and belching out fumes in the late afternoon - there must have been a dozen at least. Yuck - the line for going up in the tower stretched for 100 meters - it must take hours to get up there. No thanks.
(What tired looks like. The bare patch is an outline of others who have passed out in this exact location...)
I began to feel like I might pass out from tiredness, heat, hunger and thirst. We found a place to sit to think about where to look for a family-friendly bistro. My son and I both passed out. It was uncontrollable. As soon as we stopped moving my body just wanted to shut down. Again we rallied, got the kids some slurpy drink and headed away into the surrounding neighborhood, where we did find a very casual place to reconstitute.
We were going to catch the Metro back, but decided we were refreshed enough to walk back. We cut a long diagonal through the 16eme and got quite a swanky slice of life view of Paris. This arrondissement is very well to do. Beautiful people in beautiful clothes, eating impossibly beautiful food in beautiful bistros. An hour later we made it home to peel off our clothes down to our underwear and collapse wherever we could find a horizontal space.
My body was spent and I had been awake since 6am on the 29th (and had only slept 4 hours that night.) I fell asleep at 8pm June 30th. In Paris.
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