I know I write alot about sweating, but taking the Eurostar from St Pancras Station in London under the chunnel to Paris Gare du Nord -- this London side of things, sweaty.
We pack our shit the night before and then we haul it all to the London station a few hours before our train because they recommend it for customs. IF you get in the line BEFORE they allow you to depending on your train time they WILL kick you out of the line and make you go to the back again like elementary school principals. We did that once.
It takes like an hour to get through the customs line and in this line I was looking everywhere for wheels for Barry's backpack so we could haul his crap without losing an arm socket and the whole time he is insisting he does not want wheels like he is suddenly against all wheeled luggage, not ours, but as pertains to HIM. But he IS our luggage in this case so we are looking for wheels. Which we never find. by the way.
The London station is actually the Glendale Galleria, just with trains running through it somewhere. We don't get food though because we want to get through customs and there'll be food on the other side we assume.
This Eurostar hub (sorry) has more of the feel of an Italian bus station than Italy did. It's humid, backpackers keep turning around and almost knocking you over the ropes with their 90 pound bags. People abandon coffee and water cups in every corner. The conveyor belt xray people look like angry trolls who have never seen sunlight. We don't have any trouble getting our stuff through, it's just that the train before us was delayed so the lines are backed up into last Tuesday, and there's no room on the floors or tables or chairs for any of us next train people. A train finally boards half of the people and we can funnel in with our newly stamped for France passports, excited that the kids will be seeing a new country with a weird language and so much bread.
We find a spot to sit and then another train is delayed and all the people going to Eurodisney at 1pm with their kids and mickey ears are sitting on suitcases and trying to make up french and british games to distract them from the fact that they are all crammed into a lobby the size of a movie ticket booth and jammed with several hundred football teams. But at least the air doesn't appear to be on.
The train in front of us going to Paris is cancelled, and ours is then delayed, and we are all holding our breath. Everytime the announcer comes on, the room gets hushed with hundreds of people praying please don't let us all die here and then the Mickey Mouse train is called and thank god all those people with mermaid suitcases and Lightning McQueen pillows leave and we can get a row of seats all together. Did I mention it was sweaty? We meet a couple going on their honeymoon to Paris, they are the friendly kind of dumpy 30ish newlyweds with zigzag teeth who look like they probly make a killer brunch and you wouldn't mind them marrying into the family. Our train hasn't been delayed and it's getting close to our time so we stand up to go toward the escalators because even though we have seats I still have this fear of all the stuff not fitting we have to get there first and then they call our train as delayed an hour, and we sag, and look back and our seats are all taken so we scatter to tabletops and lurking in sweaty corners and talking while standing to our newlyweds until we can get on finally.
The train is easy and only dark for a short time while you're zooming under the sea, and then forever you're crossing French countryside and all you want is to see the city. Nathan and I go in search of fun snacks and find our newlyweds on the train and take a picture of them eating their fancy meal in business class.
We get to Paris and Emma and I go first thing to the tourist booth to pick up our prepaid metro passes for our few days there for the family, and the guy is very abrupt and unkind but he does think we are Dutch which cheers us up. Bruce forgets his guitar on the train and runs back. We don't want to do the metro with all our bags and too many stairs for B, so we go out front to see costs of taxi for 6, and we have to swat away people wanting to snag you and charge you 100 euros to get the taxis for you and we get two taxis for cheap so we cram in and head to the hotel.
Cute, white, courtyard, little stairs up. Tiny ice machine in the lobby which gives out three cubes a day. This hotel has ping pong, grass, and our rooms are split up across the second floor which is the first floor there, so that we can open our windows (which we have to do, no air) and wave at each other across the little inner courtyard. If we reach out our bathroom window we can hold hands with Bruce in the other room, and I do moon him later. The girls bunk together, Bruce seems annoyed by Nathan and all his enthusiasm so there's no way that rooming would work out, so I get my baby boy while Barry and Bruce shack up in the middle room.
We take an uber to the catacombs since we have to get there quick since our train had been late, and this is good because the kids get to see Paris streets and we instantly love Paris because of the loops, everything is built on circles and waves, where London had been all serious business, straight lines, boxes.
We wait melting in the last of the sun by the catacombs and all our tickets are always on Emma's phone, traveling and tickets have changed, everything you just hold up your phone. The stairs down are many and I am worried about claustrophobia and also how the fuck are we going to get Barry back out of here but I decided we can fireman him out with both Bruce and Nathan taking a leg and an arm. The walk BEFORE the bones is the scary part, it's small and closed in it's A TUNNEL but then the kids LOVE the catacombs. The whole experience.
Stacks of human bones. I remember loving it back when I saw it, because it's so strange and horrifying and amazing. Better with the kids, whistling Pirates of the Caribbean, practicing reading and translating French history for them on the plaques, taking funny pictures and hoping we all get out alive. It's meaningful to revisit things years later, with these gangly kids, you see everything as difficult (logistically), but wonderous, and scary, and I like making them richer, inside. You can watch it happening.
B manages the many stairs up like a BOSS, seriously, he attacks this trip while ignoring his petulant body as only a very determined Barry could do. Because all of us can barely walk either. Out in the fresh air there's the talk of food as always and we decide to go to the Champs Elysee so they at least see some fun sites while we eat.
We use our new metro cards which are flimsy pieces of paper the size of a stick of gum, and easy to lose so I gather them after every use, and the Paris subway seems much easier to us than the London one for some reason. It's just mapped easier. We realize that we are going to be in trouble price wise to eat on the Champse Elysee, so we stumble over each other looking at the Arc de Triomphe in the middle of the road in the distance and deciding how the hell can we get a cheap place to eat, then the kids find this pub on a sidestreet where we can eat outside and the prices are right so we get to SIT and talk about the Parisian underground boneyard and when we're ordering we keep saying Bruce what do you want and the waiter finally says MISTER BRUCE it is up to you and we all get steak and french fries and salad and Bruce tries Beef Bourguignon which my mom used to always make and it tastes really good, like stew. The kids are happiest here, in our first French outing, and when we leave and are walking back to the Champs Elysee figuring out what bus goes exactly right up the famous street to the Arc, we hear someone yelling MISTER BRUCE MISTER BRUCE and it's the waiter running after us waving Lilly's wallet which she left on the seat. He had run after us at least three blocks. Hello, Paris.
Yes the bus is sweaty but our metro cards are awesome and we lurch up to the Arc de Triomphe, the one time in our lives we are going to be all together seeing a new thing on a bus in Paris. It is unreal and busy to be seeing lofty things in actual time. All this scramble off the bus and then silence because suddenly we're here and squeezed in front of this
who builds these kind of things. This ROCK of an arch acres high all lit up cause it knows it's special. It holds court over us, but so do the cars whizzing around it with no traffic lanes which Nathan loves the chaos, and the Paris night sky and the people just strolling. Everyone looking up. We made it to Paris, this night. Just because Emma had to go to school, how did we make it here, all these years later, raising these people every day not knowing ever we were going to get to this spot. The thing is much bigger than we are. And that arch, I certainly haven't carved that motherfucker. We assemble our clan of morons in front of the Arc for a picture and I think even if that's all we ever did. That's pretty good art.
We subway back to our cute little hotel, we watch cartoons in french, I go to sleep looking out at the wrought iron window ledge and the white square of light from Emma's window across the courtyard. Nathan's long sleeping legs, dreaming French things. The Paris shadows on the wall and the quiet of the night in a big city where I love the language and the waviness, I feel like a fit here. Paris whispers to me.
