Last Night in Paris

No lie: as I leaned out the window to take this sunset picture Sophie leaned out too, and I said "What are you doing?!  Get outta there, I'm trying to get a nice shot of the view." And then I realized how much better she made the view and felt instantly nostalgic about how great my kid is and what a lovely time we've had here.  A bientot, Paris.  We leave in the morning.

See the wind in the hair bit?  I did that.  Pretty pro.  Just saying.

Underground Ugly Paris

We found ourselves with a free day so I googled Paris museums and asked Sophie what she'd like to do. She might seem sweet on the exterior, my kid, but inside she is obviously creepy and morbid since she chose either the Vampire Museum or the Catacombs.

Turns out the Vampire Museum requires you to make an appointment in advance-- you cannot just show up-- and more often than not you end up with a private tour by the serious vampire enthusiast who runs the place, which includes all sorts of weird artifacts, including a mummified cat.

So.... the catacombs it is!  It's an underground museum of bones that were all put together after a whole bunch of old cemeteries in Paris were overcrowded due to black plague and revolutions and whatnot.

We arrive at 10:30am to a long line.  But we are good at this-- we did Versailles yesterday and that lineup took an hour and a half.  At Disneyland Paris last weekend we accidentally waited a whole hour for the stupid Dumbo ride.  Today we have planned, so we have snacks and are in shade.  We are pros.

The thing is though..... this line is reallllllllly slow.  Two hours in and we are in the hot sun and having stupid conversations like this:

Soph:  What we need here, I think, is a person who's really cold and who doesn't mind waiting in lineups.  Then we could just go to a cafe nearby and they could wait for us.

Me:  Who is that exactly?  Frosty the Snowman?

Soph: Why him?

Me: Well, he likes cold.  Plus he can't walk to a cafe because he has no legs.  He just stands there.  He'd be good at this.

Soph: Mum, he'd melt.

Me: Okay, technically, yes, but then the people behind us could just, like, kick the carrot nose along to hold our place in line.

Soph: Mum, Frosty doesn't have a carrot nose.

Me: He doesn't?  Yes he does, he's a frickin snowman.

Soph: The song, mum: "with a corncob pipe, and a button nose".   No one is going to kick a button.   A button is not going to hold our place in line.

Damn. She has a point.

So we take turns waiting.  One will go try to find a shady spot in a square nearby to sit while the other is the carrot.  The carrot who is roasting in the hot sun, not moving, waiting to see dead bodies.  The German couple behind us give up and leave.

While I wait I listen to the Seattle couple behind us bicker about who is taking time off when Wade comes to visit net week.  They really drag it out.  I want to contact Wade and tell him don't bother.  I feel so bad for Wade.

I also notice the petite French girl in front of me in the line who is gorgeous and so French looking in her summer skirt has the thickest hair on her legs I've ever seen-- thicker than Seattle guy in his shorts.  Immediately I wonder if she doesn't shave her pits, and as though she can read my mind, she shifts her weight and puts a hand on her hip, and I can see with her tank top on that there's no hair there.  Why does she shave there and not her legs?  Can I ask her? We've never spoken but I feel that I know her since we've spent so much time together.

A woman rides by on a bicycle and stops at a traffic light.  She's also so Parisien- no helmet, wearing cute little sandals and a lovely patterned chic sleeveless shift.... and a Hannibal Lector mask on her face.  Just.  Why.

I see a very large, beer bellied man, wearing a Mickey Mouse Backpack and holding a pink flowered umbrella guarding him against the hot sun.

Another hour goes by.   Sophie says "Catacombs?! Cata-come on, is more like it."  I say "I think the bones in there are just the bones of the people who died waiting so long in the lineup."  We agree that the private tour with the creepy dude at the Vampire museum is looking so sweet right now.

At least they give us gorgeous foliage to look at in the lineup, like this:

It must be the only ugly area of Paris.

In the fourth hour the German couple who gave up two hours ago walks by and points to us and laughs outrageously in German.  It's the only time I've never heard someone speaking German not sound mad.  They are genuinely giddy about our misfortune.

Finally after four and a half hours we get in and walk down about 200 stairs and a few kilometres of low ceilinged narrow stone hallways and run into some information boards and then.... rooms and rooms and rooms that look like this:

They only show skulls and femurs, and tell us to imagine that there's so much more than we can actually see from our vantage point.  There are six million dead people in there.  We feel so bad for making stupid jokes in the lineup.  These are real people.

We learn that in 1898 a hundred people set up a private party in the catacombs and listened to Beethoven down there.  And in 2004 police discovered a full movie theatre setup in a cavern down there, with screen, projector, bar, tables, and chairs.  People are so weird.

Exiting through the gift shop made us instantly feel better about ourselves too though, once we saw  all the silly skull shaped joke products like this:

Full disclosure: My first thought when I saw this last one was "Mmmmm, BACON."  So perhaps I'm not so very sensitive after all.

Not a Navigatrix

Please know that even though it doesn't seem like it will, this story has a happy ending.

So... did you know that the address 9 avenue Franklin Rosevelt in Paris is different than the address 9 avenue Franklin Roosevelt, with two 'o's, just outside Paris?  Well it is.  They are at least thirty minutes apart by transit. The first one is the one we were supposed to go to at 1pm for a proper paid modelling gig for Sophie. The second one, the one with two 'o's,  is the one we were on our way to at 12:15pm.  Why?  WHY???

Maybe it was because we'd already done four different casting auditions that day all over the city.

Maybe it's because of the difference of one damn 'o' in a very similar sounding address.

Or maybe it's because I'm always really terrible at navigating-- like really, really, terrible-- and the online map world was getting back at me for that time I yelled "F#$% off!" really vehemently at my mom's car's GPS.  So vehemently that the GPS reacted by giving me the silent treatment and then said "system turning off" in that annoyingly calm and polite voice it has.

Anyway.

We realize our mistake at about 12:35 and leap off the train and run out of the station, top speed, to look for a taxi to take us back to the city.  But there are no taxis waiting outside the station; instead the taxi area is a block and a half away and we arrive at it breathless and panicked.  There are at least five empty taxis lined up there but no drivers.  There's a button to push on a sign that said 'taxis' and I pummel this button. Nothing happens.  A nice young dreadlocked guy on a scooter who speaks no English except the word "taxi" starts trying to help us since he can see I'm nearly in tears and my voice has that horror movie victim edge to it--  he waves down people to try to get them to drive us (ubers maybe?  I don't know), and then he points to the cafe where all the taxi drivers are sitting.  I run in and ask for a ride immediately.

They all look at me and say nothing.

I am clearly in extreme distress.  So I say it in French, my dreadful, cobbled-together French.  Then in English, they say "Not now.  We're not done yet," and gesture lazily to their cups.  Bastards.

I grab Soph's hand and we run as fast as we can back to the train station but we don't know which way the train back to Paris goes.  There are tons to choose from.  A lovely helpful lady who can sense our panic takes us exactly to the spot where the train we need leaves from, but one just left. The next one leaves in ten minutes.  We are both in actual panicked tears now.  I call the agency at an exorbitant cost to tell them we'll be fifteen minutes late, and can they please pass on our apologies to the designer and everyone?  We are so, so sorry.  Je suis vraiment desolé.  I look at Sophie and she is so desperately sad and angry that I screwed this up that she may never speak to me again.

The train arrives and we take it back to the city, running up escalators and in between metro stations for the two more different transfers we need to make, then frantically running to the elegant Hotel Le Marois.  Inside it looks like this:

People are milling about everywhere.  As we do our panicked run around the final curve of the staircase, J'ai tombé-- which is the much nicer, frencher way of saying I tripped on the last set of beautiful, marble stairs.  Soph sees me trip but knows to keep going though (it's like a war movie scene where I stretch out my hand and say "No!  You keep going!  Save yourself!) so she bolts to the area where the models are.  A very well dressed nice French man asks me "Ca va, madame?" and again, I say, for what I know will be the millionth time today, "Je suis desolé," and I get back up really fast and keep going, pretending nothing has happened.  Then I round the corner, go straight into the model area, red-faced, dripping in sweat and..... it's fine.  No one has noticed or cared that we are fifteen minutes late.  Soph is calmly standing there with all the other models, waiting for her designer and the makeup artists.  They all look bored and are checking their phones, so Soph gives me a knowing nod and a wink, and pulls out her phone too so she can fit in and I go back down to the lobby and start trying to breath normally again and/or stress sob.

Later a nice French waiter sees me slumped there limply on the couch and brings a marble slab tray of petite eclairs stuffed with chocolate ganache by and says "Pour vous, madame," and I decide in my weakened condition that I think maybe I am in love with him.  The eclairs are the size of my thumb and I try to delicately take one but he hands me a napkin and smilingly insists "Deux, sil vous plait, madame," and this is when I become certain my love is real.  We made it and everything is okay and this place is fancy and nothing has ever tasted this good.  Twice.

Sophie of course never broke a sweat the entire time and remained elegant and composed throughout.  How did someone as spastic and screwed up and sweaty as me produce someone so poised and perfect? Here she is, waiting to go in to present Ana Khouri's jewelry at an event where the designer eventually wins for best accessories of 2017.

And in three years she will get 37% of a very nice paycheque for the work she did and remember this frantic day.  (Thanks, French taxation laws that protect minors.)  Mercifully she has already forgiven me. But now she double checks my work on google maps.

Marble Sculpture Cartoon, Bro

I decided to make a cartoon out of the pictures I took in the Greek and Roman Antiquities section of the Louvre.

Arbitrary Paris

More picturesque Paris, with sassy commentary.

We didn't go up it, we just gazed up from down below-- mostly because we were disappointed to learn they closed the zipline ride that ran from the second level a few weeks ago.  Still, it's hard to take a lousy picture of the Eiffel Tower.

I tried to crop all the cops with machine guns out of this picture of the Arc de Triomphe.

You can kinda see why they need the guns though.  I mean, look how badass we look.

Not gonna lie: I nursed this tall cappuccino for ninety minutes, because I'm cheap and this cafe had free wifi.

Also took this artsy selfie there, same cafe.  Owner thought I was a dingbat photographing myself, I could tell.  This shot is me frantically photographing myself while trying not be be seen by him, but because I made it black and white I look supercool and calm.  Also, modest.

See how I have made it look like it never rains in Paris with these pics?  That is a lie of omission.  It has rained a lot. I'm trying to shield you from the bad stuff, guys.  You're welcome.

Soph pointed out these Mona Lisa dinner napkins and the other million different Mona Lisa products sold in the gift shop of the Louvre. "I love how they really downplay the fact that they have the Mona Lisa here," she said.  I realize now that I'm posting this that I took no pictures of the actual Mona Lisa painting itself, but I have at least six pictures of all the ML merch you can buy.  What does that say, exactly?

"Again Mom?  Really?" Soph said for about the hundredth time when I stopped to take this.  "Shut up, I'm artsy," I replied.

This is in fact how we spend most of our time, on the Metro. At least one of us is practicing our 'blue steel' look like a pro.

Sophie in the middle of traffic in the middle of the Champs-Elysees.  I wanted to get a better shot since this one has her eyes closed but I also wanted us both to live, so this is it.

The Quaintness of the French

Paris is .... quaint.  Isn't that what people love about it?  Everyone has a tiny, swirly wrought iron balcony you can't stand on.  People bring their tiny dogs into tiny shops. The cappuccino you order in a streetside cafe at a quaint little table is served in a tiny cup with a tiny spoon. When you buy lettuce at the grocery, you can't get a big head of lettuce but you can get a package of three tiny heads of lettuce, packaged together.  What gives, Paris? Every French person I used to have as a restaurant boss and that I've played soccer with over the years has a massive French ego, so something is amiss.

The other day at the Musee D'Orsay we saw the lovely Van Gogh painting of his room in Arles.  Our room is almost exactly like this.  We literally have these same chairs and table thingy. (The router and washing machine in our room are marginally newer though.  And if Vincent had to deal with the hundred tiny steps it takes to get up here and the spotty wifi we get with that router, I guarantee you he would have cut off the other ear too, plus other stuff.  And he probably would have painted the router yellow, with swirls for the flashing lights.)

The problem with all this quaintness is that Sophie is nearly six feet tall and we have to live here.  The poor girl has to duck in doorways and stairwells and kneel in the shower here, which was not mentioned in the airbnb rental listing, which should read 'petite, seulement, sil-vous-plait.'  The stove is bloody adorable and the fridge is the quaintest, tiniest thing ever, so it's a good thing models don't get to eat much food (although our hosts left all their condiments and a dozen beer in the fridge using up more than half its space which I might quaintly drink and not replace before we go.  Adorable, right?)

Plus I feel I have to mention the size of the elevators in the city, which are-- you guessed it-- quaint.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I love it that they exist but they're all so very old and coffin-like.  Many are less than six feet in height and narrow across too-- today the two of us went in one and we had to slide sideways and quaintly suck in our guts just to get in there and get the door shut (ok, yes, I had to do that.  Sophie... no).  Our purses were almost a deal breaker. So quaint!  How, when you're in an elevator that size, do you not immediately wonder what would happen if there was a problem and you were stuck in there for hours?  I realize now of course that it wouldn't matter anyway since we would run out of air in less than a minute.

Perhaps this is why Vincent Van Gogh saw everything in swirls. He got stuck in a French elevator and was oxygen deprived from all the quaintness. I like to imagine that in the storage room of the Musee D'Orsay there's an odd old Van Gogh painting of a tiny elevator propped up against a wall and the curator just looks at it and shakes his head thinking "Why did you paint this, Vincent?  I can never display it, no one will understand it.  Why did you go crazy and do all these weird ones?!" But we know the real story.

Imposter Syndrome

Models have to go to casting calls the way an actress would: they show up and be friendly and hand over a big business card with their picture on it and get looked at and photographed and then they leave.  Doing it in Paris is a whole different thing though.  Today, Sophie went to one located just off the Champs-Elysees and we felt like serious imposter dorks.

The building is fancy so there's codes to get inside. We have the codes; we try the codes, we screw up the codes, we try the codes again.  We don't freak out quite yet, because we're early. Besides this gives us time to remember to get Sophie to take out her invisalign retainer thingies and change out of her three dollar Old Navy flip flops into the high heels the agency bought for her.  (Even I know those flips flops are SO last year.)  While she does all this I see if I can get on some kind of free wifi nearby and Dior comes up as an option.  Uh, what?  I feel like Dior would know it was me trying and laugh like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz so I don't try.  We are still trying to figure out what to do so Soph attempts to look model cool while I take a picture of her.

We realize the reason the code hasn't worked is because we forgot to enter the A or B after the number part, even though that was a super obvious thing.  I feel like this isn't the best time to make an argument that models are actually smart..... which they are!  Anyway, we do that, and it works.  We are in. It's the fanciest building I've ever seen. I force Sophie to pose by the staircase because it's so fancy and she freaks out because she's worried people will know we're losers who've clearly never been inside a nice building.  I make her do it anyway.  I'm the mom, and that's how it works.

I want to point out that just outside the frame of this picture is a fancy fire extinguisher.  How are even fire extinguishers fancy?  I don't know how to describe it.  Bedazzled, maybe?  Anyway, at this point we see that there's a tiny little elevator that would hold maximum two regular people but maybe, like, eight models, so we take that upstairs-- because usually we would have to walk up six flights and then we arrive sweaty and panting which puts a bit of a damper on the good impression.

In the elevator we frantically remember that it is a casting for a jewelry company and Sophie is wearing earrings I got her at H&M for the princely sum of $1.50, so we take those out, just in case.

We knock on the door and everyone is lovely and kind and they ask Soph to wear earrings and look off into the distance while sitting in a chair. They take pictures of this while I thank god her ears aren't green from those H&M things this time.  "Is this your first season?" they ask, and for a second we both say nothing, since we're thinking "season of what?!"  (It turns out they weren't talking about the different seasons of Gilmore Girls, but Paris Fashion seasons.  We played dumb and I think it worked.)   The whole thing is over in five minutes or less so we get out as fast as we can before we make any mistakes.  She kicks the shoes off, throws her flip flops back on, and walk to Arc de Triomphe to eat macarons.

I tried to get her to eat this macaron and stare off into the distance while I photographed her just like the earring company but she gave me the finger and just bit into that sucker anyway.

Beauty and the Beast

What a great day we had.  Here's the view from our room at breakfast:

Next was caffeine and a walk, during which a young Parisian guy hit on both of us. Sophie didn't think much of it but.... some of us have to take attention where we can get it.

Then, so much beauty at the lovely Musee D'Orsay:

(This last one is for those of you with OCD, just to get you going. Sorry I couldn't get it any straighter, hehe....)

 But then we spied this.  And decided to go for a ride.

And just as we walked back home, Sophie turned to me and said "We are definitely the luckiest people on earth," and how could I disagree with that?  We walked 25,000 steps in the Paris sunshine today and it was magnificent.

 Oh, and also, this.

Poem for Paris

Awake at four to make a flight

to Paris in the dead of night

only to find our discount plane

made cancellations.  What a pain!

Steve and Han are still ok

to head to Edinburgh today

but Soph and I must make a plan

and get to Paris if we can.

She’s got a meeting there at three

(To be accompanied by me).

The taxi's coming very soon

(at ninety euros it costs the moon)

so the only thing to do is try

to find another flight to fly.

Steve books us one for 9AM

(Expedia is such a gem!)

so off we go, goodbye Milan;

be back in winter if we can.

We drop them first, goodbyes are said

to terminal 2 our taxi heads

but wait!  Guess what? Our flight is wrong

(The tiny violin now plays its song)

because the flight he booked’s at night

BUT 9 PM IS NOT ALL RIGHT!

“We’re screwed,” I say to Soph, aghast;

(I knew this good luck couldn’t last)

so off to ticketing I head

To put our budget in the red.

And for the record, let’s just say

don’t buy a ticket the same day.

There’s better ways to spend your dough

(trying not to think about them though).

So off we go, we’re on Air France

We finally do the happy dance.

We land, we get our bags, we go

But traffic makes our taxi slow

and phones don’t work so we can’t relate

we’re running just a tad bit late.

Now finally there and it’s SO posh

and again I hand out lots more dosh.

Soph goes in, her game face on

while I‘m frumpy, grumpy, pale and wan

in the lobby with the bags

looking at the fashion mags

and before we know it there she is!

(That’s how it works in fashion biz.)

And now we trudge through Paris streets

in search of SIM card, housing, eats.

Travel’s glamour has its cost

cause somehow, always, we get lost

and if you think it still sounds nice

Soph locked herself in bathrooms – TWICE.

My mastercard, it got denied;

my head it aches, my nerves are fried,

and our place is great—it’s tiny, cute

but it’s a workout for the glutes.

(I must admit I almost wept

when climbing up the hundred steps.)

But you know what? We will be fine

there’s croissants, chocolate, and wine

and not to end make it end all rude

But we’re in frickin' PARIS, dude.