From: Rainer Subject: Rainer's Europe Trip 1998 -- part 32 Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 02:16:16 EST Sunday, 10/25 -- part 32 I wake up early at 0500 even with the change back to standard time. I set to work to catch up on the journal again and send out two more -- but I'm still behind. The rain from last night is gone. Blue, cloudless sky greets us for our last full vacation day in Paris. For breakfast we all enjoy good scrambled eggs again. This morning we set out on a walk to Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur Cathedral which are both very close to the hotel. Sacre Coeur is just swarming with people. As we stand at the bottom of the hill near the funiculaire, several of the black street vendors come running out of the park. In an instant there are lots of people racing out away from the church. Police are chasing them. One of them crashes into Monika with his goods wrapped in a big sheet. We're stunned by what's going and just stand there and watch. It's over before we realized what happened. The police chase someone down the crowded streets. Lots of people are pointing in the direction for the police to go. We never did find out what happened. What a strange way to start the day. Around the corner, in front of the funiculaire, a man and woman with silver painted faces and funny robes pose as a pair of statues, the woman seated before the man. In front of them is a little sack into which people drop coins. When a coin drops, the two statues come to life for a few moments and blow bubbles that the wind quickly carries away. They look in the direction of the person who dropped the coin and then quickly become statues again. There are too many people waiting to get on the funiculaire so we walk back to the steps, still not understanding where the mob of people came from. There's a three-piece band from the Andes performing on the steps higher up. They are drawing quite a crowd, but that's not enough to explain it. Near the top, we sit on a bench. An old man carrying a package and an umbrella walks by us and sits on the next bench, all the while talking quite loudly to himself. He fiddles with his package and gets up and moves on. Around the side of the church are more "statues", a woman in all white sitting on a column, a wind-up wooden puppet, and a Charlie Chaplin type. We stop and watch all of them. It's too crowded to even attempt to go into the church. The Mont St. Michel evening abbey tour comes to mind. Monika and I stay and listen to the Andean music a bit while Vera gives it a try. She soon returns. We wander around the corner to Montmartre proper, and the crowd just gets worse, or maybe just seems to because the open areas are much smaller than around Sacre Coeur. I don't believe my eyes when I see motor vehicles trying to drive through the streets which are totally filled with people. There's even a tourist "train" consisting of at least 5 or 6 cars that is at a total standstill trying to navigate through the crowd. What a mess. There are artists everywhere. Many hold just a large clip board and try to tempt you into having your face sketched in varying media. One even uses scissors and paper to cut your silhouette. The area is very scenic, if you've never been there. The paintings on display are mostly of the area itself. But, today, with all the mobs, you can't see the place at all. None of the paintings show very many people. We finally leave and head back to the hotel via a different route, stopping at a bakery for some goodies to take to the room. I wait outside the bakery which is also very crowded. I'm amused by a woman that comes with her dog off leash and goes inside telling the dog to wait. He sniffs around and scurries back and forth checking out each client that emerges from the bakery. He follows them a few feet and after determining that it's not his master returns to the glass door to wait some more. Back at the hotel I reconfirm the flight tomorrow with Air France. I will not put up with the crap we went through on the way over. I toy with the idea of a business class upgrade and choke when the woman on the phone tells me it would be 6000 and something. I ask her if this is in French Franks. No, she replies, it's in dollars. Dollars per person. Can you believe that? That would be more than the entire 5 week trip! Anyway, the flight is still going on time. We're supposed to be there 2 hours early. Not having been in touch with any sort of news who knows what may be going on in the world. Air France pilots could have been on strike or something. But there I go worrying again. We while away an hour or two in the hotel before setting out to take the Metro to the Bateaubus again. It was such a hit 5 weeks ago that we want to take it again but during the day. I forgot to mention that soon after we got to the hotel for our break, it started to dump rain. The sun was shining now and it seemed like a good time to leave again. We navigate the 2 or 3 trains to the St. Michel exit. As we leave the Metro it's raining again. By the time we walk to the Bateaubus along the Seine the sun is shining again. Quite a few people have bought tickets. We decide to ride topside rather than inside. However, all of the bucket seats are filled with water from the recent downpour. People anxiously getting to the topside are perplexed with what to do. Many women dig in their purses and pull out kleenex to swap up the water. There are little drain holes in the seats, but they are not centered well, and each seat has this little pool of water in it. I decide to stand in the back, getting a stand-up view over all the heads of everyone else. It's not until the cruise is underway that one of the crewmen comes up with a mop and sops up the water. I end up taking a lot of pictures again. This time the different bridge styles catch my eye. No two appear to be the same and I capture many of them digitally. It's quite chilly and most of the people that started on top end up downstairs and inside. After the boat ride we try to warm up in a Salon du The across the street. The small cafe insists on keeping the front door open and you can't get in far enough to really get warm. The coffee, tea, and hot chocolate help a little, though. We walk back to the Metro passing the Esmaralda and Walt Whitman's book store again. Since the English/French dictionary I bought there was such a success, I thought it would be nice to collect the set that I remembered there. Of course, they were all gone by now. We navigate the Metro to Place de la Concorde. It's now dark but still early due to the clock change last night. We take the requisite series of pictures of the fountain, the traffic on the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. La Tour Eiffel is also lit up by now and clearly visible against the horizon. We can see another storm cell moving towards us. We set off walking upt the Champs Elysees hoping to find a nice place to eat. The rain starts but we're prepared with raingear and umbrellas. The main part of the storm cell is towards the Eiffel Tower. We find an ATM machine and then proceed to check out several restaurants. They all are very busy. We try going down a side street and find the same thing. We finally end up at the Planet Hollywood Paris. Everyone agrees that this is somehow right. We've been talking more and more about what foods we've missed and how good it will be to eat American food again. Our waiter turns out to be from Belfast. The menu has all the dishes titled in English with explanations in French. We can read everything. Vera settles on the fajitas, Monika on a steak with fries, me on baby back ribs. Dinner is delicious. They even have Becks dark; not great but better than most beer on the trip. We have a great time together and agree that the large bill we've run up was worth it. Monika gets the first and only T-shirt that anyone's bought on this trip. Guess of what? We head up the rest of the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, then take the Metro to the Eiffel Tower. The night time pictures we got last time were only from the boat -- not to stable a base. We walk a bunch more and see the tower in it's lit up splendor which is really very pretty. By now it's after 2200. Vera's fading fast and we still have to metro back to the hotel. She crashes almost as soon as we get to the room while Monika and I stay up until after midnight doing our stuff. For a day where there was nothing really planned, we covered a lot of ground and had a wonderful time. It seems appropriate that we end the vacation where we started it -- in Paris. I've reassembled all of the digital photos into a single folder. There are over a thousand. Scrolling through the thumbnail images of them let one glimpse five weeks of excitement, mishaps, and joy. We've seen so much and done so much in that time. Each of us has chronicled this trip in their own way. We will each remember things differently, but we will remember many of the same things. The journals that we've all written will help to recall those seemingly insignificant details that are the threads from which the fabric of our memories are woven. We've talked a lot about how we all remember the trip and how we will be talking about it for the rest of our lives. We can envision sitting around after dinner someday, years from now, asking each other "Do you remember when ...?" And we will remember. There aren't a lot of artifacts or trinkets that we're bringing back -- some coins, some pins, some stamps. Mostly we bring back our pictures and our written commentary of the days that we've spent together.