The first time I tried to go to Paris, I was a senior in high school. Each year, the French teachers led a trip there or to Montreal; I was extremely interested in the Paris trip. My mom must have known it would cost too much, but she gamely agreed to attend the information meeting. She said so little after the meeting that I knew there was no point in wheedling.
The second time was 2016 (we discussed tacking a New Year ’s-in-Paris visit onto an Ireland Christmas, but the timing made it eye-wateringly expensive; plus, it was fortunate in the end as we both contracted plague at the family Christmas). The third time was in 2017 (we bought Rick Steves’ Paris guidebooks, and now I forget why we didn’t go). The fourth time was in 2020 and, well.
One morning earlier this summer, I woke up to find that my husband had spent most of the night on the couch, unable to sleep. He showed me a video of a small hotel in Paris and asked if I liked it. When I said that I did, he revealed he’d booked it for the week of my birthday. We used the United travel voucher from the ruined 2020 trip to book the flights, and attempt number five was underway.
For a while, I didn’t tell anyone. I booked the time off work and marked it as “PTO” on the shared department calendar. I was just sure this would not work out for some unfathomable reason. But as the departure date approached, everything seemed to fall into place: we booked the kennel and the dogsitter, we bought new walking shoes. Nobody got sick. I arranged to hold our mail and postponed our Amazon subscriptions (old people shit like vitamins, probiotics, toilet paper, air purifier filters).
But I remained wary. And therefore, it was no surprise when, 24 hours before we were supposed to take off, United sent me a breakup text that said they’d canceled our connecting flight to Washington Dulles, but good luck in the future!
Allegedly, this had to do with a hurricane, but curiously the Washington-Paris flight was not canceled; in fact, it took off on time, information that did not at all make me grind my molars together!
We booked a different itinerary with a different airline (spoiler alert, we still have that pandemic-year voucher, which we are just going to parlay into refreshed travel credit until we die, I guess) and after an extremely turbulent Dublin-Paris connection full of screaming Eurodisney-bound children, we finally, at VERY VERY LONG LAST, arrived á Paris.
A FEW HIGHLIGHTS
In the middle of the trip, we went to Versailles, where an American lady asked me if I spoke English. When I responded in the affirmative, she pointed straight ahead and asked, “Is this Versailles?”
For reference, she was pointing at this:
No lady THAT’S THE MALL. Did you even study for this?
At Sacré Cœur, we were accosted by the infamous “string men” who first grabbed my husband’s arm and then mine. In that linked article, you will find advice instructing you to “politely decline” this so-called gift and let me tell you, if you grab my arm? Being polite is out of the question. I shouted ABSOLUMENT NON (h/t Miriam). That’s as polite as a crone can be!
We used a lot of our extremely limited French, which is usually a handy way to signal that you don’t really speak French. There were only a few times when we would casually toss off a particularly good bonjour and get rapid-fire French in response. This was always followed by an extremely humble JE NE PARLE PAS, heh heh heh! Je suis désolé, France!
Things I would do differently:
I would pack quick-dry clothing. I brought travel packs of laundry soap and a travel clothesline to avoid checking bags, but some fabrics take FOR-EV-VER to dry, even on a towel warmer turned up high. Note to America: why have we ignored wall-mounted towel warmers?
I would also pack some almonds or granola bars because my husband and I have very different requirements around eating in the morning. Whereas he is fine with coffee and vitamins until about three in the afternoon, I turn into a raging hatebeast without some sustenance by 10. Once I get the “hot shakies” it’s all over for you hoes.
I would also just more or less plan for any air travel to be totally fucked in some way – we had four different flight itineraries, all within about eight days.
Things I did that turned out to be good:
Use the G7 app to get cabs; this takes a lot of language issues out of the equation if that’s a concern and allows you to pay and tip through the app.
The SNCF app was very helpful for using the metro, which we took almost daily.
Foot Glide was a cheap way to avoid blisters or discomfort despite walking miles and miles and miles.
The Paris Museum Pass gave us a lot of ease and freedom.
We liked the Batobus as a way to see everything while doubling as transportation; you can buy the passes online and put them on your phone. And then you just show up at a stop and walk onto the boat
Maybe it is better to have gone to Paris as a crone of means (relatively) rather than a high school student, though I do wonder if a trip like that would have changed my trajectory in any way. Maybe not, though – I unearthed my yearbook to see if there was a picture of the group who took the trip, and of those I stayed connected with over the years, they’re all Just Regular, like me.
I guess that is just the way the croissant crumbles!