What just happened????

This could be the catch cry of our first afternoon and evening in Paris.  We alighted from the Eurostar at about 2pm and thought we would take a taxi to the apt.

Mais Non!

First you have to stand in a taxi queue for 45 minutes then you get the surprise of your young lives.  Joyce felt very comfortable in the line-up, running the gauntlet of beggars and mean spirited people on one side, and the multi national really kind people on the other. We heard English, French, Russian, and German spoken around us. But in the end we got to the front then it got interesting.

There appeared a guy helping people to the cabs. We thought he was the station’s master of the cab rank. Turns out he’s a Gypsy man making his living. He demanded money and we didn’t know so paid it. Then all hell broke loose. Our driver leap out and chased the guy. Leaving us in the cab, doors open, drivers behind honking and he set upon (verbally) the Gypsy Man. There were guys coming up to the hatch back of our cab reaching in at our bags (the better to look at the issue) and the driver disappeared around the construction hoarding with the GM. After about 5 minutes of sitting in the cab freaked out. An amused cabbie leaning on a large hire car gave Chris a pleasant shrug like “relax, its going to work out”. Joyce rolled the window down and he came over to explain.  “What just happened we asked”. He explained that the GM was not official and had broken something in the back when he put a bag in. Our driver was ‘convincing’ the GM that he should give up the tip as part of the cost of repair. Anyway he came back and we started the trip.  Our driver was not too talkative in his agitated state but we got on okay. We had a great 25 minute ride to the door.

We were met by Shannon, a native of Los Angles living and working in Paris for a few months helping her aunt out. She got us in and sorted but didn’t have specifics on the nearest store so we googled the name she gave us and set out to walk the streets and buy toilet paper.

We did great. Just when we started second guessing ourselves the MonoPrix popped up . Its pretty intesting how the store was laid out in a understandable way and although there was no English on the labels.

An aside here…. As wee Canadian kids we grew up reading French and English on every food product in our homes and here we were with just the French!

All that language training paid off though… we got milk and cereal (not a big deal, an illiterate person could do that, but how about getting toilet paper that is hypo allergenic? Washing liquid that is hypo allergenic? And my favourite; capsules that are not Nespresso brand but WILL work in their machines.

We then walked back a DIFFERENT way and put the stuff away then we went out to dinner at the restaurant the is less than 50 meters from our front door.

Dinner was amazing, the apt is the smallest (not quite as small as the Love tower at Vancouver Expo) but small

More later