Will This Be the End of the Marvelous Paris Tale?

Hopefully I can sit long enough to finish the Paris story before I have to go get Caleb from school. Steve is back at work today, although most minor things that could have gone wrong this morning getting everyone sorted did go wrong - but that's for another entry. Or at least later in this entry.

So I think I had gotten our little group to the cafe. After we placed our order (spaghetti for Connor, a burger for C&A to split, tomato & mozzarella salad for me, and a Nutella crepe for Steve), Audrey fell asleep in Steve's lap. This answers part of the question of where my sweet little Audrey had gone and why this little terror was in her place. We woke her up long enough to eat some of the burger and french fries - they don't call them french fries in France. I think they were just "chips."

We all make a stop in the pay toilets at the restaurant and head out to get back to the hotel. We have a little time, so we ended up stopping in 2 different tourist-y shops on the way back. I got t-shirts for all 3 kids and Caleb found a great DVD that has over 100 photos of Paris on it. What a find! It has some annoying music in the background, but I can live with that. I also got a small handful of postcards to send to my grandmothers and my brother and parents. I even got stamps and stamped them thinking we would have plenty of time to find a postbox before we got on the Eurostar.

I'll end that part of the story right now. I actually finished writing the cards back in the UK and had to post them from here. So those in my family who got postcards - notice the 2 different stamps. I was bound and determined to use the French stamps because I bought the darn things and otherwise I'd just have to throw them away.

We got back into the Metro and immediately ran into a lot of problems: we couldn't get through the gates because there weren't employees manning them, we didn't know which tickets to use because they have this weird time-stamp system that we didn't quite master while we were there, we got on the right subway but went the wrong direction...at one point I was writing on the darned post cards and wasn't holding on to the bar. I was standing up (the stupid subways were PACKED on a Saturday afternoon - whooda thunk it?) when we stopped suddenly. All of the stops and starts are sudden and without warning. I went flying and clobbered a lady right behind me. All I remember is that a man grabbed my hand, Steve grabbed my arm, and I stomped all over this lady's leopard-print pointy-toed shoes. Oops. Sorry, lady. Steve still had hold of my arm and I was yelling at him to let go and he was getting aggravated that I was yelling and I was frustrated and majorly embarrassed. So here we are - 2 Americans exchanging heated words. I was just mortified. That's my excuse. At this point we realize we're going the wrong direction, so we have to get off and try to head back the other way.

Sardines doesn't accurately describe how squished into each other we were on the subway. We finally made it to our stop and got to the hotel - 30 minutes late. Yikes.

We joined up with the Versailles group then headed out to the train station. We were walking and I was appointed leader. Why me? I didn't want to be the leader. I don't know French! I knew roughly where we were going, but I wasn't positive of the exact set of streets we needed to take. At one point, I abdicated my position to another and we were off again...down a wrong street. U-turn and lots of hustling.

We made it to the train station with 30 minutes to spare. No big deal. We get up to departures fine, then have to get our tickets out to get through the gates. No big deal. We thought. Nolens made it through ok. Lynette & Nancy made it through ok. Baldridges couldn't find their tickets. Talk about nerve-wracking! All this time, I am working on the "visitor to the UK" cards that we all have to fill out. I'm filling in our address on 11 cards. It takes longer than you might think, but I get it done. I'm not sure when we'll need to present them - on the flights from the US to the UK we have to present them when we deplane in the UK and go through customs (Terry & Gwen - make a note of this and have our address handy on the plane). Here, though, we have to present them before we get on the train. We all get up to the counter, the Baldridges having found their tickets, and present our passports to the guys there. I was so relieved to hear English being spoken with an English accent that I almost cried. Only Steve and I had our cards completely filled out, but the nice customs men said it was ok since our address was on all the other cards.

We got through customs fine, but Cindy was having trouble getting her customs man to understand that they had flown into Paris from Africa, were going to the UK, then were returning to Paris to fly back to Africa in 2 weeks. What's so hard about understanding that?

Now comes my absolute favorite part: security. Steve says they should give up trying to run a "tight ship" security-wise because, in his words, "it's not like they're airlines." Anyway, we put all 3 million pieces of luggage on the conveyor belt then walk through security. Why does it take 3 times as long to gather up from security than it does to actually put your stuff down and go through security?

Then we have to split up to get to our coaches. The Baldridges are in coach 16 and the rest of us are in coach 1. Since we're some of the last people on the train, Steve is having a tad bit of difficulty getting our luggage stowed. But we get seated fine. There's enough room in our coach this time for us to take up 6 seats instead of the 5 that we actually have tickets for. We are sitting in 2 sets of seats that are in groups of 4 that face each other over a little table. Lynette and Nancy are in the aisle seats of one group and the 5 Nolens are in the other group. Audrey sleeps a lot of the way home, Julie is half naked since her diaper leaked, and Caleb cat naps and spills my Diet Coke down the back of my leg. Lovely.

Fortunately we arrive in London without any problems. But when we get to London, we have a whole new set of problems. While we're unloading from coach 1, Connor comes skipping up to us and says, "Daddy just fell down the hole by the train." What? "Is he hurt?" "Yes." Skips off. Cindy is walking over to us also to get Steve to come over and help. So I put Caleb in charge of pushing Julie, I give the 2 smallest rolling bags to Audrey and Nancy, Lynette grabs the medium suitcase, and I get the big suitcase and the backpack. We trundle off down the platform to coach 16. I'm imagining a broken leg and lots of train employees. What we actually see is Alan sitting on a bench looking perfectly normal..

He ends up with a badly scraped shin, but he doesn't know the extent of it until late that night. He ends up wearing shorts for several days so that nothing rubs against the scabs. Yikes!

At this point we're splitting up. I'm going to drive the van with Lynette, Nancy, Audrey, Julie and all of the luggage while Steve and Caleb go with the Baldridges via the tube to Paddington station to catch a fast train to Reading. I'm fully expecting them to arrive in Reading before we do. We have an absolutely fabulous drive out of London! Some of wonderful things we saw were: the National Royal Theatre (or some such building) floodlit purple and green, West End theatres with lit up signs for Evita and Stomp, Herrod's decorated with large Christmas-type lights, and fireworks the whole way home. Seriously. As soon as we got out of London we could see fireworks on either side of the motorway.

As we get to Tilehurst, I stop at the grocery store to pick up some Indian food for dinner. I rush in and rush out because I'm expecting to get home to a message from Steve to come to the train station to pick them all up.

As soon as we walk in the door, the phone rings. Steve. No, he's not at the train station in Reading. He's still in London. By now it's 8.30 p.m. Somebody has jumped on the train tracks and gotten killed. This happens about once every couple of weeks or so. They won't be able to leave Paddington station until 9.30 or later. Lovely.

So they finally all get on the train (after having a steak dinner) and I get them from the train station. We get the Baldridges delivered to their hotel and get all of our crew tucked into bed.

Paris adventure over.

Sunday we do nothing.



Monday everyone but me and the little girls go to Stonehenge and Portsmouth. Steve is unimpressed with Stonehenge, but says the HMS Victory at Portsmouth was fabulous! I think I'd like to go there before we leave.



Connor, Cindy, & Alan at Stonehenge.

Jarrett, Caleb, & Connor at the HMS Victory. They got to go aboard and see the whole ship from stern to ... what's the term for the other end?

Anyway, they had a great time and we have some really cool pictures of them on board.

I'm signing off now. I've actually already gone and picked up Caleb from school, but now I only have about 10-20 minutes before we need to leave to go get Steve from work. I'm driving the van today since I'm still feeling icky. You can see the swelling in my tonsils from the outside. It's yucky. Steve says he's feeling much better, but I'm still feeling nasty. At least I'm not aching now. That only took 3 hours this morning to go away.

Cindy, Alan and their kids are in Paris again right now. Cindy and the kids will return to England on Sunday night and will begin to look for temporary accommodation and schools for the kids. They have been temporarily relocated from Africa since the rebels there aren't behaving. Instead of being evacuated every 6 weeks or so, they chose to just stay here. It will be really cool to have them nearby for the remaining time we're here. Caleb and Audrey just adore their older cousins. And Julie is smitten with both of them as well.

I need to go save Julie from the lounge door. She keeps opening it right into her forehead.