First 48 Hours! REVISED & REPUBLISHED.

First 48 Hours

 

They're always the toughest.  A lot of running around, then waiting.  This time with the added tension of transporting Emmy -- and doing everything we can to make sure that goes safely.

 

This entry is going to be more in the form of impressions and vignettes than any particular narrative...

 

WEDNESDAY

Got to LAX in plenty of time, 3+ hours early in fact.  And, I'm the sort of person who in the early days of work travel used to pride myself on walking up to the gate just as they were opening up boarding.  We introduced ourselves to Air France who was quite cooperative in letting us check in our 160 pounds of luggage (yeah, it was that much!)  We're spanning seasons, dressing up for nice dinners and not, and having 2 holidays here.  We even brought 4 pounds of cranberry jelly and canned pumpkin.

 

We'd taped pictures of Emmy with each of us to the outside of her crate; the suggestion came from some website we'd seen.  The thought is that if she were to escape her crate and be caught running down the runway, they'd at least have a picture to go with the miscreant.  Anyway, we got points from the AF staff for having done it -- anything to make sure Emmy gets careful treatment.

 

Lots of little airport issues:  Air France computers went down during check-in -- does the computer know about Emmy?  Turns out the oversize item check in guy wasn't trained on how to check dogs in, and, for reasons that still remain a mystery, had no ability to call TSA.

 

(Wednesday) THURSDAY

We were flying on an Airbus A380.  I think it's the largest commercial jetliner.  Two full floors.  Most of the time extremely smooth, more than most, but there were 3-4 hours of pretty bumpy air.  Enough to keep me from sleeping, and probably enough to stress Emmy out.  I kept visualizing her crate, two stories down below in the hold, being tossed around.  I'm sure I was adding to my own stress thinking like that.  But, when we got her she had peed in her crate and we felt guilty.

 

Here's a picture of her at Charles de Gaulle airport, still in her crate, with a "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!?!?!?" look on her face.

 

Car service worked great -- remember the tonnage of our luggage...  The guy helped us carry everything up to the 4th floor, no elevator, apartment.  The place was exactly like the pictures we'd seen, we were shown how to use the appliances, then left on our own.

 

Took a 5 minute walk to the Franprix store (something about 3x the size of a 7-11 with real food and wine choices), stopped to pick up sandwiches, then home for the night.  Just before bed one last walk, to give Emmy a chance...  We are 5 minutes from the Arc du Triomphe, so here's a picture of Emmy's first visit there.

 

FRIDAY

Thanks to Google Street View (!) I already knew where the two local bakeries were.  Probably not well enough to walk there unaided, but more than familiar enough to recognize things along the way.  OK, I'll admit it...  In LA, I'd probably spend 8 hours "walking" the neighborhood via Street View...

 

We had a couple projects planned for today.  First stop was Darty (there's also a FNAC store across from it) to check out Soda Stream devices.  Maxine likes bubbly water and it's a lot cheaper and more convenient to make your own than to buy and carry bottles back.  Next stop was Monoprix (big sister to yesterday's Franprix) for real grocery shopping, which is quite different when you have to carry/cart everything home and up 65 stairs to your apartment. 

 

The afternoon project was the big one -- trying to have a semi-technical conversation and buy SIM chips for our phones and ipads (If you've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy you probably get how useful an ipad can be on unfamiliar streets while traveling).  I'd read that (and I'm sure that I've got this wrong, but in ways that I don't even understand) the best rates would be at Bouygues Telecom, so we went there.  Here's where the French willingness to be patient with the customer at hand came into play.  Our representative, Nancie, spent over an hour with us to sell us 90E worth of SIM cards while 6-8 other customers patiently waited for the single other clerk in the store.  She spoke no English and we speak crappy french, but things went fine (so far as we can tell) and we've got a month of phone usage with unlimited domestic calls and texts, plus 2gb of data.  And the phone "tethers" to our ipads, despite Nancie telling us that was impossible in France (I'd had other info here -- I'd checked with my friend's 17 year old son last month who'd confirmed that it would work...)

 

By then we'd pretty much had enough navigating the novelties of Paris and decided not to buy our Navigo cards today (like my word alliteration?)  The cards are unlimited use passes for the busses and Metro and incredibly valuable on trips like these.  But, they're pretty easy to get and we don't actually need them till Monday AM.

 

I was done by then, and figured we'd want to be asleep before we finish dinner and prevailed on Maxine to give up on the idea of eating out.  So, we found a nearby takeout place, brought stuff home, and ended the adventure