Last Friday my biological niece had her first child after a lengthy (31 hr) labor. Part of me is surprised she didn't have any pictures of the actual delivery on FB, and yet in many ways she is quite private, so I am glad she didn't. One of her FB friends contacted me, a woman who we had connected with during a tour-bus trip to greater Paris that was my niece's high school graduation present. The agreement was that I would take my niece, her best friend since third grade and her mom (my sister) to somewhere-that-required-a-passport as her graduation present. By the end of the negotiations, the grandma and (now ex) sister-in-law had joined the party and we were a gaggle of six and we were headed to Paris.
This woman, I'll call her Meg, who was probably a grandma in her own right decided to enjoy, rather than be grumpy about, these two silly teenage girls who were on this highly informational 'blue hair' bus trip around Paris. Meg got along with the teens famously and so could discretely be the responsible adult who was watching over them, and quite often playing with them, which allowed the girls to get a sense of freedom and still be quite safe in this foreign place where none of us spoke the language. This is Paris of the late 2002, when things were rather calm, the people were friendly, helpful, and really rather genteel, and kind hearted towards Americans; the worst any of us expected to see was some homeless guy peeing on the sidewalk (which we did, as I recall).
A hundred memories float up after being reconnected with Meg. Every one of them was glorious. The morning coffee, the baguettes, fruit and cheese for breakfast; the food at every meal was beyond magnificent (this was fabulous French cooking after all, Julia Child would have been pleased). The teens wouldn't touch most of it, as it was too strange for their tastes. Man, it was good. The incredible museum with the giant slides outside, that Meg went down more readily than the two teen girls did, enjoying the moment immensely. Monet's garden, looks just exactly like the paintings, even now. And the crazy castle ... Chambourd? ... with all the towers 600+ as I recall, reminding me of a manic sandcastle built by kids at the beach.
One of the single women on the trip, I think her name was Diane, wanted to go see a burlesque show in Paris and I thought, why not? So she and I took a taxi across the city to the Lido to see a show. The dancers, who were about 7 ft tall and painfully bone skinny, wearing little but feathers and sequins, were incredibly talented and completely matched in their movements. It was a gorgeous, fabulous show. I think the tour guides may have told us it was a bit challenging to get a taxi in the evening after the show in that part of the city, but I'm not clear on that detail. Anyway, we got out of the theater and tried for at least 45 minutes to hail a taxi and none will stop as they are all engaged. We were well across town, not exactly sure where we are, or where the hotel is exactly but we did have a hotel business card, and neither of us spoke the language. Finally this man approached us and asked in English if we were looking for a ride. Diane and I discussed this briefly, then showed him the address where we need to go and asked him how much. He quoted us a fare of 40 francs and Diane decided to quibble and got him down to 35 francs. So we got in the back seat of his Beemer and he started driving. Our tour had been in Paris for about a week by that time and I had been paying attention to the streets and the landmarks. Suddenly Diane started panicking, that this man was going to sell us to the gypsies. I calmed her down, the gypsies wouldn't want us ... we were too old for breeding, not strong enough for manual labor, nor rich enough to be useful as hostages, and honestly not beautiful enough in the eyes of the French to be worth selling to the gypsies. And besides this man was driving past all these familiar landmarks that marked the route to our hotel. We got there, after what seemed a bit of an extended trip (he did make a few wrong turns on the way) and we paid him his requested fare and gladly exited his car. What stories, what memories, what a trip.
Its all good.
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