Monday, May 03, 2004

Paris, avec Claire

I'm back at d'Artagnan after seeing Claire off at Gare d'Austerlitz -- she took the last train back to Orleans, at nearly midnight. It was so good to see her again today, the time just flew. We were discussing possibly meeting in London on Friday night, but she's stuck in Luton training for new job with Easyjet, so it's going to be an incredibly boring month for her there. If I wasn't meeting George in the city on Friday night, I'd head out to Luton for the evening.

This morning when the alarm went off, I was cursing my pride. Both Jerome and Claire offered to pick me up at the airport last night, but I opted to get into the city myself. Stupid me, I should've said yes!! I would've had a much earlier night.

But anyway, I booked in for this evening, and explained to the front desk person that there was a 50/50 chance I would be going to Le Touquet for Tuesday night. She was very accommodating and made a reservation for me (this place is VERY BUSY), and I said I'd find out today if I was going to visit Jerome or not.

After a train delay from Orleans, Claire met me in the lobby of the hostel, and we headed out to Montmartre after sitting in the sun over some catch-up chat at a sidewalk cafe. What a gorgeous day! We wandered around for photo ops, and headed towards the Eiffel Tower, avoiding the hordes of tourists. We were so engaged in conversation we weren't making much headway on foot, so I decided we'd take a little break and bought a couple of boat tickets so we could continue talking and taking photos and discussing the points of interest, like Pigalle, Moulin Rouge, Grand Palais, Pont de Neuf, Notre Dame, the islands... It was a bit surreal, since it was only a few months ago that we were in Vancouver in Claire's last days there, and we were doing something similar -- walking very slow and talking very fast.

Like I said, the time just flew... along with our animated conversation, Claire gave me the tour of Paris, a layout of the city and some historical information. I felt that Paris was not the kind of place that could be covered in one visit, since the museums alone are enormous and there's a great deal of territory to cover. It's the kind of city I'd return to again and again and still be able to see something new.

We had a fantastic Lebanese dinner after some aperatifs at a pub/bar, and I decided I'd better try to ring Jerome if I wanted to meet him for dinner tomorrow. Le Touquet is 2.5 hours away by train, so it would mean leaving Paris in the late afternoon, probably before rush hour. We couldn't reach him on Claire's mobile phone, so then I tried to call Manu to set up a time to meet tomorrow, hoping that I would have enough time to still go to Le Touquet. We did manage to reach Manu, and set a time and place, but we still couldn't get through to Jerome. If I don't go to Le Touquet, I'll stay in Paris another evening. I booked the TGV for Wednesday to leave for Rennes at 7:05pm, so I'll have to be back in Paris either way, to get the TGV from Montparnasse.

After I saw Claire off at the train station, I arrived back at the hostel hoping for a message from Jerome, but instead there was one from Philippe, who lives in Montmartre and whose number I didn't have since the notebook where I'd written it was lost somewhere between Barcelonia and Valencia. I can't pick up my Telus e-mail, so I don't know if Jerome has sent me an e-mail, which means I don't know where I'm staying tomorrow night. I'll have to try and reach him in the morning, but fingers crossed, I'll get a chance to see him before I leave for Brittany. I'm just glad I was able to see Claire today, since now that she'll be working for Easyjet, she'll be in the air all the time!
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