A trip to Western Europe: Paris, part1

We woke up early the next morning, got ready to leave for Paris. The cab driver was an African Englishman. He was talkative, and pretty good looking as a high end chef or butcher. The very first thing he complained about me regards to the non gallant treatment toward my lady. He showed me how the English treat their ladies. To him, I supposedly pulled 2 suitcases, carried 2 bags on both shoulders, and held the door open for my wife, at the same time holding her cup of coffee, all the while she was carrying next to nothing looking elegantly. What a start for a new day!

He talked and talked for the whole trip from the hotel to the train station - the Gare du Nort heading to Paris. I wasn't annoyed but rather indifferent about it. Fortunately for me that the ride was a mere 15 minutes. By the time we got off the taxi cab, my ears were ringing. My wife was happy with him, that's why he earned himself a nice 25% tips. We got thru the international security check in way ahead of time. The EuroStar trains were very sleek in design. They gave a complete futuristic look. The seats were spacy, handsome, clean, and a lot more comfortable than on the airplanes. After 15 minutes settle in, we were served breakfast. What a surprise!

The train was not as fast as I expected. It stopped a few times along the way to pick up more passengers before going non-stop to Paris. Soon after it left the city, the view became more and more like any country side in the world, no end in sight with corn, and wheat farms. It took almost 40 minutes to reach Paris' outskirt area where we found a surprisingly amount of graffiti on the walls of all buildings, barricades, and commercial vehicles. I thought it only happened in L.A.

Surrounding area of Paris du Nort Train Station

It took a complete 45 minutes to reach Paris du Nort train station. The station looked just like what I had seen in movies. But the surrounding area was not the same in reality. They were a little filthy, and trashy here and there on the ground. It was crowded with business and commercial kiosks every where. The French were a bit noisy as well. We soon found out when we stepped on to the street to grab a taxi cab to our hotel. The view outside the station was totally different. People were yelling, screaming to get attention. Beggars in middle east traditional clothing were every where. Taxi cab drivers were fighting over customers. Customers were fighting over a specific size cabs in order to get better fares. Officially, a sedan can only carry 4 passengers, and a van can carry up to 7. A large family were being split into 2 groups by the cab drivers, at the same time the family tried to flag down a van to carry the whole group ... etc. It made quite a scene. The waiting for a cab line was pretty long, but the process was very fast and efficient.

 Outside of Paris du Nort Train Station

 Eventually, we got to the front of the line. We had a very new Mercedes 300 sedan for ourselves. The driver was a Middle Easterner who spoke very good English, not much of chit-chatting on the way to our hotel. We got to our hotel in 20 minutes. We checked in way ahead of our group, in which we supposed to meet here in the afternoon.

 Paris du Nort Train Station

Since the meeting of the group wouldn't be in a couple of hours, we took advantage of the situation by leaving exploring the neighbors. Paris in general looked very familiar to our eyes. It seemed we had been here all our lives. The striking similarity puzzled us. Finally, we realized that Sai Gon was built very much the exact same way, from the living arrangement to the side walk cafes, from the windows advertisements to the attitudes of its sale people. Sai Gon and Paris were just like an identical twins. Sai Gon had copied it down to the tiniest details, even to duplicate the same concept of taking a couple of hours nap at lunch time, and to shut down the business' doors and turned away the shoppers.

We finally met with the rest of the group here at the hotel around 6:30pm. After a round of introduction, we got to the hotel restaurant to have a dinner. The group was big with forty some tourists, some as old as late seventies, and some as young as six or seven. My wife and I both hurried to finish up our dinner so we could spend more time exploring the city. Unfortunately, the meal dragged on and on for quite more than a couple of hours. Someone in the group mentioned that this is quite a norm around here, and as likely as the whole Europe. People tend to spend more than a few hours for their dinner. Wow, no wonder, nothing gets done around here as we'd noticed in the last few days. Everyone seemed to have only one speed, slow.

We met again after dinner around 9:30pm ready for a trip to view Eiffel Tower at night with all of its glory. To conserve energy, they now only had the lights turned on for only 15 minutes between 10:00 to 10:15pm. Someone in our group missed the schedule. The trip was delayed. Even though the driver insisted that we would be there on time, but we could only saw Eiffel Tower with its beautiful lights on from far away, by the time we got closer to half of a mile, all the lights now turned off. We missed the chance to see that, and there was no time to reschedule unless we canceled something else. That's our very first misfortune on this trip, and for sure it wouldn't be the last.