Right then. After being jammed into a straight jacket called a plane seat till everything merged into a painful blur, and time itself stood still, we arrived at Charles DeGaulle Airport. Wrung out, strung out and particularly testy. Its a bloody long flight, and I'm getting past it. Took forever to get through immigration, because only two people were working at the checkpoint. Apparently this is normal. Thought it might have been because of the Rugby World Cup just about to kick off in France. More on that later. Down to the luggage carousel to find Cas's trolley had been damaged by the gorillas employed as luggage handlers, and the retractable handle would not extend. This made it particularly difficult to move. This is despite the "I love luggage handlers" tag on the bag. Should have bought one with a picture on it. There was a throng of touts, taxi drivers, limo drivers, bus drivers hanging out near the exits, like sharks waiting at a river mouth for hapless fish to swim straight into their open jaws. "Taxi?" Yes please. First mistake! Before we knew it we were in a spotless Tesla being driven by a guy in a sharp suit, heading to central Paris. We had just hired a chauffer driven town car, about the most expensive option available.
Poorer but wiser, we reached our hotel right alongside the Gare de Lyon. Dropped the gear in a smallish hotel room, which we were then obliged to vacate, because it was either people or luggage in there, but not both at the same time, so we decided to go for a walk to check out the neighbourhood. In our zombie-like state, we nearly got run over by 5 cars and a bus, and that was just crossing the first street! Nevertheless, we were both proud of the achievement, so we had a celebratory drink and gave the rest of our money to a waiter. Going well sofar, I thought. Sleep could not come quickly enough. Next morning we had most of the day to sightsee.
Caught a taxi to the Basilica de Sacre Coeur (where is spellcheck when you need it?), walked around and did a bit of oohing and aahing, and grabbed another cab to see the Arc de Triomphe. On the way, we passed the Moulin Rouge, and went through the Pigalle area, which was every bit as sleazy as I remember it from 1977. In fact it brought back moderately happy memories of accidentally walking into a backstreet bar where it seemed to be pumping. It took me a few minutes to suss it out because it was dark and I was fairly liquored, but I do recall thinking that these French chicks are bloody big and hefty, not to mention butt ugly! Most of them had faces like a robber's dog. My first and last Drag Queen venue. But that was then, and this is now.
We got to within about 200 metres of the Arc, and the cabbie said the road he wanted was closed, but the Arc was just up there. And so it proved to be. Problem is that the cops had a barricade across the road. And every other road within cooee of the Arc. And they were all big mean looking bastards, tooled up to the hilt and packing serious firepower, like automatic weapons. There were police vans parked everywhere you looked, hundreds of them. The area was locked down tighter than a fish's arse. I thought of saying "thanks guys, no need to go to all this trouble just for us", but the year 8 French language skills were not up to par for that. Turns out King Charles 111 (that's the Third, not the one hundred and eleventh) was in town to open the Rugby festivities along with President Macron, right there at the Arc in a couple of hours time. But I've already seen Charlie a few times in the past (one in particular at Royal Ascot, when he was in a horse carriage being drawn down the main straight and I was in an open top double decker bus parked on the infield with a bunch of fellow Aussies who had been on the turps since sunup. I wonder if he remembers me?).
So we hoofed it across the Champs d'Elysses heading for that Eiffel Thingy. Tick! (again). It was considerably more difficult to access these days, compared with the 70's, a sad reflection of the times we live in. Then it was taxi back to the hotel, which turned into another sightseeing tour because of all the aforementioned road closures and subsequent traffic chaos. We got back there just in time to see the end of the fly past down the Champsd'Elysses, consisting of the RAF Red Arrows and the French equivalent, about 12 jets in all, trailing red white and blue smoke, making an exit turn right over the Gare de Lyon. So that was an unexpected freebie.
It took us a while to figure out the train workings to get to our TGV train for the trip down to Montbard. Is it too much to ask for some bastard in a train uniform who works in the place to ask for assistance? Well, as it turned out, yes it is. On top of that, the train was delayed by 25 minutes, amended to 58 minutes. The irony of a super fast train that starts an hour late was not lost on us. Picked a great day to visit Paris!!
Anyway, about an hour later we reached Montbard which is some 240 km south east of Paris, so it doesn't muck around when it works. Collected from the station by Chris Phillips, the man with whom I rode from Singapore to England in 2008, we were driven for about 30 mins to Origny. Chris and his wife Claire live in a 200 year year old farmhouse which they are renovating in this tiny, ancient village. A BBQ dinner with sufficiently copious amounts of vin rouge was just what we needed, as we proceeded to catch up and tell each other stories, some of which may have been true. Or at least contained an element of truth. We are here for a few more days to relax and get over the jet lag, so we are at full throttle for the tour. We fly to Lisbon from Paris on Sunday afternoon, then spend a couple of days sightseeing before official departure. New country, new language. But the French language revision might help a bit when we get to Morocco. We shall see.
How much cheese can you eat before it becomes toxic to one's vital organs? I don't know either, but I'll let you know!
