Here we are! On our balcony of our Airbnb. Can you believe that view?!
Our flights went well. Barb and I purchased extra legroom and that was so nice. Carol was on our plane, too. It was KLM, so everything was decorated in the Delft tradition, which was quite cute. Even the safety instructions were in the shape of a Delft tile.
When we arrived in Charles de Gaulle -- which our ticket taker charmingly called something like "sharl day gaugh" -- after a stop in Schiphol (Amsterdam), we waited for Susan to arrive, then Uber to the apartment on Rue Saint-Dominique.
When we arrived at the apartment door, I tried to call our concierge Alba, as our host Francesco had said, but international phone numbers are tricky. Somehow you're supposed to know what numbers to dial or not dial, but I dialed all of them and that did not work. I got a recording in French. Fortunately, Alba saw us from across the courtyard and came over.
Alba is very French, speaks very little English. We got through our communications with lots of repetition, hand signals, and pointing to instructions written in English. One confusing thing was when she wrote down her phone number and there were characters that looked like triangles, kind of like a carat symbol. I kept asking what they were. I even thought, do their phones have an Eiffel tower character or something?! Finally, Alba wrote a number, then pointed to it on my cell phone display. Turns out that triangle is a one. Ah.
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| View from our couch |
After the 7 hour flight with no sleep, we were all pretty tired. Barb and I slept for about an hour but the other two were of the persuasion they needed to keep moving. They took a walk and afterward we thought we'd take a bus around the city. It was not running, though, and some enthusiastic Romanian pedi-cab drivers persuaded us to take a ride to some sights with them. It was a wild and crazy ride!
We discovered there was a big soccer tournament for several weeks. The city is crazy with players and fans, often bursting into song.
We shopped for some dinner right on our little street -- fruit, baguette, macarons, chocolate, and wine. Delicious!
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| Our living area |
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| Our dining area |
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| Fruit display |
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| Like jewels |
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| One of the photos from our wild and crazy ride |
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| Plants growing on the side of the bldg. |
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| Eiffel Tower - one of the many views |
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| Another stop on our ride. |
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| View from the pedi-cab |
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| Champs Elysees |
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| Soccer (Football!) ball in the Tower |
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| Where we bought our macarons |
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| And chocolate |
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| One of the many groups of crazy, happy, singing soccer players/fans |
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| Our little lift |
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| Really little |
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| Delicious supper spread |
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| At night, the Eiffel Tower has a light show! |
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| Watching the light show. |
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| Thinking of Delaney and Madeline |
