I'm in a hotel in Paris, it's 2 am, and I just had to blog. I knew that, if I waited until the end of the trip, I wouldn't get in as much detail as if I staggered my entries. So here we go.
The plane flight was uneventful, except for when the crew gave some poorly timed announcements regarding the in-flight equipment ie. through turbulence. "Attention all passengers, we seem to be having a slight technical problem-(PLANE SHAKES)- "...with the video entertainment system. We can't reset it and we've tried three times, so there will be no video entertainment on tonight's flight. We do apologize for the inconvenience." First thought ? I should have packed my survival kit.
The moment we got into the airport in Paris, I began to see why coming to a country where the locals are fatted with tourism was a major mistake. We all arrived at the Avis car rental booth to learn that the car available to us was one with manual transmission, not automatic transmission as promised over the phone. After being ensured the rental would be refunded, we cancelled the rental and tried to rent at the other booths, and then promptly found there was no car of the size we required at any rental areas available in automatic transmission from any of the other booths. The Hertz rent-a-car agent actually insulted us over the phone with his colleague, and he immediately assumed in doing so that neither of us know French (I'm bilingual). I could ascertain that hWe then decided to hire a cab to take us to the hotel while we planned our next move. Then the cab agent counted wrong and we had to wait 30 minutes for a cab that carried 5 people plus a driver to arrive. I manage to find humour in the oddest places, and this was one of them. Hiring a cab from the cab stand was a huge production for a party of five travellers such as ourselves, and I was reminded of the movie "Taken" where the two girls are asked by their future kidnapper if they would like to "Share a cab" at the airport cab stand because "It's cheaper". I joked with my family that, if someone like that came up to us, we would immediately acquiesce, and then the would-be kidnapper would spend more time trying to find a cab that would fit all of us than they would spend kidnapping us.
Our cab driver was wearing a bomber jacket, designer jeans and nice sunglasses. Basically, the man looked like a runway model. He did not make any conversation whatsoever. The hotel misbooked our three- and two-room quarters so I ended up getting a third room to myself, on the house. I later found out that someone had smoked in my room, but we'll get to that later.
We went to search for a large, automatic car rental, and ended up walking around Paris for about 30-35 minutes. We had to wait until the receptionist had found us directions to the rental place because the hotel wi-fi did not work in the rooms. It was tiring to walk to the rental area from the hotel, but not as much for me as for my parents, who are completely out of shape and made no effort to improve on their physical activity prior to this trip, knowing full well how much activity it would include. I've decided to stop trying to convince my parents to exercise and eat well, as my advice is falling on deaf ears. Anyway, on the way back, my mother got winded walking up a gentle grade for a distance of about 200 metres. That's about the time I decided to stop trying to convince them that they need exercise.
We hire a car and the trip is slightly better as a result, but now we're still horribly jet-lagged and sleepy and hungry. We stop at a French-Italian restaurant (of which we have found many in Paris) and ate our fill, and had more left over for later.
Upon returning to my room, I noticed the smell of smoke and, upon notifying the receptionist of this, he blankly said "There's nothing we can do tonight, it is forbidden to smoke in the rooms (even though they have no smoke detectors so there's no actual way of enforcing this forbiddance) and we cannot change the room now because we are all full." This man clearly does not care at all that I have rented a room, and was unwilling to even move from his seat to verify the smell of smoke in the room. At that point, I had just about had it with Paris. I was convinced that nobody should ever come here on vacation, because the city is so overrun with tourists that nobody even cares whether or not a tourist dislikes their business.
It's 3 am now (I spent a while planning a bike route through Nice) so I'm going to bed. My vacation became much more enjoyable on the second day, but I will back-write about that tomorrow. I need to wake up at 8 am tomorrow to see the Louvre.
I did forget to mention one thing. When I boarded the plane, I looked at the stewardess who was greeting all the passengers and said "If there are any medical emergencies on this flight, please let me know" and she smiled and, as she was pulling out her pen , said "Thanks so much, and you are a...?" I replied "I'm a doctor." and she said "Doctor, awesome." She wrote my seat number on the palm of her hand for reference. Why? (Inhales slowly while everyone reading this prepares to roll their eyes) Because I'm somebody now.
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