A long day for very a short trip (Saturday)

It was a few minutes after 3 a.m. when Neil woke me; he was dressed and had the coffeepot going already. I slipped into the clothes I had laid out the night before and drank some coffee: we were ready to roll by 3:40. And roll we did: through the quiet countryside, along the mostly empty motorway, and right into Heathrow, where we made a couple of detours but ended up in the Avis lot in good time. The shuttle took us to the terminal and we began lining up. Heathrow’s gate-attribution system is frustrating for infrequent travellers. The gate is not announced on-screen until very close to departure time, so you have to hustle to the gate, which is a long way, of course. And then you line up again, to get on the plane. Then the plane had to line up. Air traffic control in Brussels said we would have to wait to land in Paris, and so we couldn’t leave Heathrow for a while. Of course other planes needed to get to the terminal so we “went to park in a quiet corner for a while,” to quote the pilot. The 40-minute flight happened eventually and he did not have to circle Paris too long. Then we lined up for immigration, lined up for baggage and found our way to the bus into Paris.

When we arrived at the Gare Montparnasse (back door, apparently), we hoped to find a taxi because of our quantity of stuff. The first one said it was too short a trip: the Holiday Inn was “just over there”, but we had a useless map and could not figure out how to get from A to B. We tried another taxi, who said he could take us if it wasn’t a very long trip (go figure!). He was very pleasant and found the hotel, and charged us a bunch of Euros.
So, we thought our troubles were over…well, almost. The key-cards for our room did not work. Neither did the second set brought up by a staff member we found in the hall. Only the staff master keys or the Emergency key worked, so we spent the weekend passing that key in at the desk and retrieving it, whoever came home first.

Lunch at a sidewalk café near the hotel, where this cat holds court.
I popped out to the Champion grocery store around the corner and acquired chocolate, Picon, herbes de Provence, and Russian Earl Grey tea. What else should I be buying, folks? Cynthia came along and took us to her apartment (for the month) in Monmartre. It consists of one large room, with bed, couch, chairs and TV—with a view of the Eiffel Tower and other monuments--a bit of a kitchen and a bathroom. Her sister Rosalind and their niece Mikki are living there, too. First, though, we had to shop for some dinner ingredients, such as roasted chicken, bread, pie, cheese and wine. The street has lots of shops, cafés, people, action. It looks like this from the apartment window.

We had a pleasant supper, catching up, and the Eiffel Tower was all lit up when we left. There was a full moon, too: I didn’t get the picture of both, but I did buy some postcards.