Part 1 – 40th Anniversary Adventure

As I get new blog entries completed I will post them. So sometimes you may get more than one a day.

Pre-Paris Scramble

Like all vacations this one began long before we took off for Paris. Over many months we planned our itinerary, made arrangements for hotels, and saw our travel agent to set up our plane tickets and Paris lodgings. But as the day to depart drew close, the activities became more and more intense.

You may remember from the last blog entry that Karen hurt her leg when a ladder collapsed under her. Generally, things seemed to be getting better in the last several days before we left, but as we were running errands we stopped by my mother Paddy’s house and she thought Karen’s leg looked bad and that she ought to go to the doctor. We decided we would do that the next day but as we continued ticking things off our list, Karen began to get worried and we decided to go to the Insta-care clinic. The doctor was appalled, said Karen had waited far too long to have something done to her leg, gave her a shot of antibiotic and prescribed some high test antibiotic pills for her cellulitis. Her leg was all inflamed around the one little graze that she got. He told her to keep her leg elevated from that point until we left for our trip in order to get the swelling down.

Part of the planning process included making a manual of all aspects of our trip and all things we would need to refer to when we were checking into hotels, etc. I also created an atlas of the route we would take when we drove around Normandy. I had to have those run out at the local quick print shop.

I planned to take stereo photographs during our trip and bought two Canon A590 digital cameras for that purpose. Early on I cobbled up a rig to hold the two but when Karen looked at it she said, “That looks like a bomb!” I was just too close to it and didn’t see it but once it was pointed out to me I realized it did look like a bomb. I was going to have to reconfigure the bracket so it would get through airport security. So in the last week or so I was busily remaking my rig. Here is what it ended up looking like:

July 2 & 3, 2009

The big day finally arrived and Mom and Lisa showed up bright and early to take us to the airport. We had them take our picture as we unloaded our bags from her car, the first one of our trip.

The trip to Cincinnati was uneventful and the first of our uncomfortable flights. Once we arrived in Cincinnati we had the bleak prospect of a six hour layover. But we were fresh and excited and those six hours didn’t seem too bad. We hung around the airport and finally boarded our plane for Paris at 7:50 p.m.

We had an overnight flight and were supposed to be able to get some shut eye but I couldn’t sleep and neither could Karen. After sitting in the airport all that time the eight hour flight seemed never-ending and took a heavy toll on our behinds and Karen’s leg was swollen and sore.

We got through the Paris airport fairly easily because we had planned our luggage to be all carry on. They didn’t even have a customs check. We had arranged for an airport shuttle to take us to our hotel but there was some small confusion about that and it took quite a bit longer than we expected. We shared a van with a couple from Hawaii who were on a geneology trip to research family roots. A white knuckle ride to say the least.

We did finally get to the hotel, the Hotel Moderne St. Germain. Check-in was at 2:00 p.m. and we arrived about a half hour earlier than that. They said our room would be ready soon and we could just have a seat. It ended up taking till 3:30 for them to get our room ready. The room was newly redecorated, had everything we needed and was even air conditioned. We unpacked and settled in. We were exhausted and took a nap till 7:00. After that we felt better and went out to have supper, our first meal in France. We ordered from a French menu, didn’t insult anyone, and seemed to get along just fine.

Even though our trip there spanned two day’s time it was more like one unending day to us. We slept like logs. (Our room was the next to the last one on the right before the downspout in the second row of windows above the flowers.)