Like last year, I ended the summer with a visit to the City of Lights.
Unlike other trips, my travel buddy and I were flying out together. He had already upgraded to “comfort zone,” and when I checked in, I decided to too since it was a red eye and just $90. It was totally worth it. More leg room, lots of free movies, and, coincidentally, the same row as my bud with no one in the middle. Score!
As is my M.O. I couldn’t really sleep. Instead I watched Mad Max: Fury Road, which was awesome but for some reason on a higher speed so that the action scenes looked cartoonish, and Spotlight, which I’ll have to watch again since I kept falling asleep.
We landed at about 8:30 in the morning. It took forever to get through customs. In front of us was this batshit lady. I had noticed her at JFK: maybe in her 70s, tons of plastic surgery, too-tight clothes. She kept commenting randomly to people, “This is ridiculous!” Her speech was quite slurred. I don’t know if she had a neurological disorder or was on a lot of drugs, or both. Either way, I tried my damndest to avoid eye contact, and was relieved when she cut into another line.
To get the apartment, we took the RER to the subway. The RER is never speedy, but this time it was ridiculously slow. Apparently there was some “incident.” We were supposed to pick up the keys by noon and were worried that we wouldn’t make it. Luckily we did, with 30 minutes to spare.
As with past trips, my very enterprising friend had arranged a (free) apartment swap. This year we stayed in the 14th arrondissement, close to Parc Montsouris. The apartment was just lovely. The bedroom and living room each had a door, and the kitchen and bathroom were off a hallway so no going through the living room to get to either. So that meant lots of privacy for both of us.
Next up, what else? Museums!