24 hours in Paris
Sunday 2000-09-10
Right now I'm in Paris. I leave for the USA on Tuesday afternoon. I've been gone for almost 3 weeks and it literally seems like it's been 3 years. Here's what has happened since the last update...

When I woke up Wednesday morning in Berlin it was clear, beautiful and warm. Because the weather was finally nice I decided to take a 4 hour bicycle tour of the city. Wow! It was great! There were 11 of us on the tour - me, 4 20-ish people from Portugal, a couple from New Zealand, and a couple & their kids from California. Our guide was named Paul and he's from Kansas. He's been in Berlin since 1994. We rode all over the city. I had already been to some of the sites on foot earlier in the week and many of the others were new. Paul was a great guide. After the tour he asked us if we wanted to grab a beer at a little funky cafe. The Portugal group and I went with Paul to the cafe. Paul and I ended up talking for a couple hours. He's into para-sailing and I'm a pilot. So we talked a lot about flying. We also talked about his kids and about his time in Berlin. By the time we finished the beers and our conversation it was about 5pm.

As I said in the previous update, there is an unimaginable amount of construction in Berlin right now. And apparently there was even more a few years ago. On the bike tour Paul told us that 80% of Berlin was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II. He also told us that in the mid-1990's 80% of all the construction cranes in Europe were working in Berlin. It's really amazing.

I spent most of the next day (Thursday) just retracing on foot the places we had visited by bike the day before - the Riechstag, Brandenburg gates, pieces of the Berlin wall, lots of cool churches and buildings, the site of Hitler's bunker and the Nazi political buildings, etc.

After the bike tour on Wednesday I had decided that Berlin was just too interesting and that I didn't want to go to Prague at all. Instead I decided to spend another day in Berlin and leave on Friday for Holland. I was going to spend the weekend with Saxwin & Angela and leave for Paris on Sunday or Monday. Late in the day on Thursday I went to the train station to get my ticket for the trip from Berlin to Rotterdam. The place in Berlin where I do my email is right near the train station. So before getting the train ticket I decided to check my email just in case. It was a good thing that I did! Anna had sent me an email saying that her plans for the weekend had fallen through and that she wanted to go to Paris! So I had to immediately cancel the Rotterdam trip, get train tickets to Dusseldorf and Paris and find a place to stay in Paris!

I left Berlin on Friday morning by high-speed train. I think it took about 4 hours to get to Dusseldorf. Anna couldn't pick me up at the train station, so I had to take a bus to her house. She had given me directions for the bus, but the bus driver spoke no English and I ended up at a hotel a few kilometers from her house. I gave her a call from the hotel and she picked me up. Yeah! Finally there! She made me a great dinner, but the best part was the 'concert' after dinner. Anna is a very talented pianist and singer. She played some Lizst on the piano and sang French songs accompanying herself on piano. It was one of those nights that you want to somehow bottle up and keep forever.

We left very early Saturday morning for Paris. It's a 4.5 hour trip by high-speed train from Dusseldorf to Paris. We arrived in Paris about noon. But there was a slight problem... I hadn't been able to book a room in Paris while I was in Berlin. So we had no place to stay! It's a real pain in the neck (not to mention expensive) to book a room when you have to use a pay phone, don't have a good list of hotels, can't speak the language, etc. Fortunately. the tourist office in Paris will do last minute bookings. So we dragged our stuff to the tourist office and were able to find a nice little room in the eastern part of Paris. Cool!! By the time that was all done it was about 3 pm. And Anna had to leave Paris on Sunday at about 3 pm. So we had 24 hours to do Paris! Let the fun begin!

Anna has been to Paris once before, so she is familar with the city and knew what she wanted to do. I was tour guide. We walked a lot. Ran a lot. And saw a lot. We met the nicest French lady at a tiny art shop. The best sight might have been the Eiffel Tower at 11 pm. It's lit with special lights that make it look like a giant sparkler on the 4th of July. Incredible!

This morning we were up early, even though we were both very tired from the night before. I told Anna that I had to take her to my favorite park in Paris - Jardin Luxembourg. It was a beautiful day and we got there before any tourists. We just sat and enjoyed the day, the flowers and each others company.

After that we walked around the city a little and shopped. We left to catch her train about 40 minutes before it was scheduled to depart. But the metro wasn't running well and we ended up stuck in a station. Oh my God! So we jumped out of the metro and ran to the street to flag down a taxi. Of course it seemed like an eternity before we got a taxi, but it was really only a few minutes. We raced across town, ran to the train and arrived a few minutes before departure. Of course her car was literally the last one on the train, so we had to run the entire length of the train. But we made it on time, so it was just another fun adventure instead of a problem.

And now I have another day and a half in Paris. The beautiful, hot weather is supposed to continue, so I'll probably just sightsee tomorrow and take some photos.