After our exciting day at the arena in Nimes, we said goodbye to Provence, dropped off our rental car and hopped on the TGV to Paris. It was a pretty cool way to see the countryside, flying by at 300 km/h. It really is a beautiful country - sometimes I think the spaces in between the more celebrated cities get a little bit of short shrift.
We checked into our favorite little hotel in Paris after a somewhat harrowing cab ride from Gare du Nord. It seems the cabbie was paying attention to everything except the road - leafing through a road atlas, typing into a GPS, taking a phone call - all while weaving in and out of lanes on the banks of the Seine. Eventually we managed to guide him to the hotel, still in one piece.
We didn't have much planned for Paris, we had been pretty thorough in our previous trips. Our only real goal was to get through the Louvre. So we spent the afternoon and evening walking around the gardens surrounding the Eiffel Tower and enjoying the perfect roast chicken at the corner brasserie.
The next day we hopped the Metro and walked up to the Louvre. We were pleasantly surprised by the lack of a line, but it all started to make a little more sense when we read the signs saying that the Louvre was closed on Tuesdays.
As Fiona was starting to feel a little under the weather, we downshifted our priorities and headed to the shopping street. We went to our favorite restaurant for dinner that night, sharing a beef dish for two. More than a meal was served - our perceptions about the size of European portions was forever shattered. I had a starter with foie gras and raviolis, with no less than 5 pieces of seared foie gras. Our beef dish would have been enough to serve 5 or 6. Although quite delicious it was also quite impossible to finish and left us a little embarrassed with a a significant amount of food left on our plates.
We rolled out of bed the next morning thinking about going to the Louvre, but Fiona had started to worsen and we decided instead on a day in the hotel room, resting and concentrating on regaining our health. I zipped out to the shops and picked up a bundle of fresh fruit, cheese and bread and we ate, read and napped with the sun shining through our open window, a breeze keeping the room temperature just the right side of tolerable.
One of the other things we managed to do was keep very good track of the comings and going of the Icelandic ash cloud. Things had started to turn for the better, with flights starting to leave from Charles de Gaulle back to Aberdeen. After seeing all the flights the day before make it safely, we decided to forego our back-up plan of train tickets and attempt the journey back to Aberdeen by plane.
For all the problems the previous week, our trip went rather smoothly. Sure, there were larger than normal crowds around the airport and security took somewhat longer than normal, but in the end we took off as planned and arrived as planned. A whole lot of worry for nothing.
It did take some adjustment, however, walking out onto the Aberdeen tarmac to rain and barely 5 degrees when we had left a sunny 20+ in Paris. Oh well. All good things must end. We've already started planning our return to France. We're just not sure which chunk we're going to take next - Normandy-Brittany-Bordeaux or north through Alsace-Lorraine. But first some work and regular living ....
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