Monday, June 14th - Magic in Paris

It took almost all of Monday to get to Paris!  Leaving the flat at 9:30, taking the bus to the tube, the tube to Heathrow, the fkight to Paris.  The plane we boarded at Heathrow had two stories and held 535 people!!  Look at the size of the guys on the tarmac next to it.  It took one hour to board.  During takeoff, you could watch the plane taxi and take off on the TV screen at your seat because it has a camera on its tail.  The wings were wider than the runway!  It was a little nerve wracking!

Then when we got to Paris it was an hour on the Metro until we got to "our neighborhood" and a short walk to this absolutely delightful little apartment and beautiful area.  By then it was 6:00 PM.  So that was 8 hours for a one hour flight!  The joys of modern travel.

However, we didn't let the evening go to waste.  We no longer got into the apartment and dropped our bags then we went to the grocery store and the patisserie and got coffee, cream (which, since it was in French, we didn't find out until the next morning that it was sour cream!), and our evening meal - bread, cheese and wine!

Back to the apartment to picnic at the coffee table for a couple of hours, and then at Robin's urging to go for a walk.  Now, Robin, John's brother who had come to London to join us in Paris, has been here many times on business but not as a tourist.  However, he knew the neighborhood we were in in relation to the rest of the city and soon after we started on our walk, he grinned down at me and said "Tonight, you are going to see magic!"  I couldn't get him to tell me what he meant, but he kept grinning. About two short blocks later, we turned the corner and my gosh, right in front of us less than a mile away down this wide open boulevard was the Eiffel Tower!  It WAS magic!

My mouth dropped open and I stopped dead in my tracks.  It IS magic.  He was right.  We continued walking straight up this sandy expanse,  lined with trees, until we were almost there and then we just laid down on the grass and stared at it.  Robin kept saying "Tonight you are going to see magic!"

I couldn't get him to give me any more clues.  So we waited and watched - that was fun, watching the people, watching the sun set.  That was magic, too. 

And then it started - the sparkling of the lights all over the tower, like a bright Christmas tree.

If you click on this picture and imagine these specks of light randomly flashing on and off - bright halogen white, you might be able to conjure up the magic I was feeling but it would be very hard.  One of those "you had to be there" moments. 

And to think - we had four days of magic ahead of us.