Oct 15, 2004
With the jet lag still messing up our natural timing, we all woke up about 4:30 in the morning and couldn’t seem to get back to sleep. We all laid in bed until 6am before deciding that breakfast was probably ready downstairs and it wouldn’t hurt anything to start the day early.
Being the big music fans that we are, there was one site that wasn’t on any standard tour which we just had to see. Buried in a Paris cemetery within walking distance of our hotel was the final resting place of Jim Morrison. He was THE singer for The Doors, but in about 1971 he went to Paris in an attempt to get his life back on track and failed. His girlfriend found him dead in the bathtub. I guess the French adored him enough that they didn’t want to let him go and buried him in the Poets Corner of Père Lachaise Cemetary.When we got there it was kind of hard to find him surrounded like he was with so many other tombs right up against his. But we found it!! We were running late on time, so we had to hurry back to the hotel and grab our luggage. It didn’t feel like we’d spent nearly enough time in Paris, but we had a German friend meeting us at the Eiffel tower that we didn’t want to miss.
Lugging heavy bags we hiked to the rail station and bought tickets out to the Eiffel tower, still somewhat amazed by the dirty looks we were getting from Parisians. Any time one of the guys would stop to ask directions they would get a snotty comment at best. Robyn and I at least got admiring glances from the men, until we opened our mouths and English came out.
We reached the Eiffel tower and were surprised to find more of the postcard carrying beggars scattered throughout the crowd. Fearing the loss of our luggage or valuables, we kept them on our backs as we waiting for Franz to show up and take us to Berric.It must have been less than an hour before French police cars began pulling up all around the tower. They were completely blocking off the road and traffic started backing up all the way down the street. We could see immediately that Franz was going to have a problem getting to us, so we sent Jason out with a sign to walk up and down the street looking for him. It’s bad enough trying to find someone when you’ve never met, but trying to find someone in traffic like that looked impossible.
To our great relief a silver car squeezed through two parked trucks only moments later, and it was our lost driver Franz to the rescue. We were amazed that he’d been able to weave his way through standing traffic, but I guess if you’re driven enough anything is possible.
Unfortunately the car was a little smaller than we’d anticipated. Especially considering that our bags were almost as tall as we were. It didn’t help that the French police were trying to break up the congestion caused by their previous road block, and that we were now hindering their progress. As quickly as possible we crammed two giants bags in the trunk, laid a third bag across the laps of the two back seat passengers while the fourth (and smallest) of the four bags had to sit on Jason’s lap in shotgun position.
Amazingly the doors closed and we were off on the next leg of our vacation. On our way to a beautiful estate in the French countryside town of Berric.
Next: Berric France >>
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