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.