In France

Stories from the road
May 23, 2017
Paris, France

The train ride from Alsace to Pairs was swift and scenic. I napped and continued to read, “The last Pilgrim,” as we traveled through rich farmlands. Once in Paris a number of cabbies didn’t want to transport four people with luggage, even though their cars were big enough. This was hard to understand, since it seemed to me that a fare was better than no fare. Finally a driver “accepted” us, and we were off.

Our driver was kind of a crazy guy. Initially he was fine, but he seemed to wind up as the drive across town proceeded. At one point he thought a scooter cut him off, and he began screaming at the other driver. The scooter person pointed out loudly that the taxi driver had gone through a red light, which was how I silently saw the situation. The cabbie complained to us broken English about the other guy, and we could only commiserate with him in an attempt to calm him down. After that we told him some jokes and the ride went better, though he continued to drive like Napoleon on steroids.

Speaking of Napoleon, we visited his tomb later in the afternoon. If Napoleon was on the short side, his tomb definitely was in the other direction. In essence it was grandiose and in my mind a little ridiculous. After that scene we went to the War Museums in the same building and found them to be interesting and well done. Like the museum at Caen in Normandy we noted there seemed to be minimal room given to the United States’ participation in the war.

Later it was off to dinner on foot to a nearby café. Randomly we found one that turned out to be excellent. Our waiter Marcel was fun and on the ball, and we all enjoyed our meals. On the way to our hotel we had gelato, and looked at Mephisto shoes in a store window.