Last Tango in Paris

The most memorable and pleasurable travel experiences are those that are unexpected.  During our 1981 cross-country trip we had several of those.  In Chicago we went up to the top of what was then the Sears Tower on a day when there was an airshow, and the first thing we saw was the Blue Angels flying in formation—beneath us.  In San Francisco we got on a cable car being driven for a promotional shot by Clyde, Clint Eastwood’s orangutan co-star from the “Every Which Way” movies.  And in LA we got in line for what we thought was the NBC Studios tour, only to find the line was for the studio audience for the Tonight Show.  Shelley and I were the last two admitted, and we had second-row seats on a night when David Letterman was the guest host.

Yesterday falls into that category.  It was our last day in Paris before taking the train for London for our final stop on the Jump European tour.  J.D. left mid-morning to head home, and we had decided not to travel to London until evening to give us another day to enjoy Paris.

Shelley decided that she’d like to take one of the double-decker bus tours around town to get a sense of the Paris attractions we had missed, so after J.D. caught the shuttle for the airport we walked over by Notre Dame to catch a bus on the Green Line, the primary intro to Paris tour offered by L’Open tours.  When we got to the bus stop, Shelley noticed a sign saying that stop wouldn’t operate on July 27 due to the Tour de France.  When she asked two bus line employees standing there they explained that the part of the tour that runs past the Louvre and Musee D’Orsay and up the Champs Elysees had to be rerouted yesterday because of the finish of the Tour yesterday.

Travel makes it hard to keep abreast of what’s going on in the world.  From a sports standpoint, each morning I check to see how the New York Mets did the night before and also look at the box score for the Oklahoma City RedHawks, the team that my former student Austin Wates plays for.  I was aware that the Tour de France was going on, but it never occurred to me that it might be in Paris while we were.

We decided to scrap the bus tour, and instead took the Metro to the Charles de Gaulle/Etoile stop, right by the Arc de Triomphe, the finish line for the Tour.  It was close to noon when we came up to the street, and the riders weren’t arriving in Paris until 7 p.m., about the time we were heading for the train station, but there was a crowd already present, and right after we got there a group of women cyclists were running their closing time trial down the Champs Elysees.  We soaked in the atmosphere, sat at a café on the Champs Elysees right across the street from the original Louis Vuitton store, and had lunch and a couple of beers.  Having lunch on the Champs was, to coin a phrase, “very pleasant,” but as we sat there I wondered about what kind of security concerns there were in the wake of last year’s Boston Marathon bombing.  It wasn’t obvious. 

We also bought a Tour de France hat and t-shirt, and picked up our own giant green hands being given out by PMU, the French betting agency that sponsors the green jersey, one of four jerseys worn by the leaders of the race.  We had earlier seen a guy walking down the Champs Elysees playing the violin with one of the giant hands sticking out his butt, a true mixture of high and low culture.

We walked down the Champs Elysees toward the Tuilaries, but hit a point where pedestrians weren’t allowed to go any farther, so we doubled back and decided to catch the Metro.  The Tuilaries station was closed, so we got off at Ile de la Cite close to Notre Dame and decided to stop at a café for a drink.  I was in the mood for a coke, while Shelley had a beer, and the waitress made Shelley feel like a native when she told her, “That’s So French,” that the woman would be drinking beer and the man the soft drink.

By then it was late afternoon, with only a couple of hours left until we had to pick up our bags and head to the train station, so we decided to go to the Luxembourg Gardens not far from our hotel.  The Gardens are attached to the palace where the French Senate has its meetings, and it is one of Paris’s grand parks.  The last time I was in Paris, in the summer of 2001, I spent my last day hanging out in a couple of different parks, and it was my favorite part of the trip.

When we were a couple of blocks away, a couple of young women stopped us and asked, “Do you know how to get to the Pantheon?”  I did and gave them directions, not telling them that they had asked about one of the few Paris attractions I knew how to get to.  I also refrained from mentioning my seventh-grade report. 

At the Luxembourg Gardens we walked around looking at the beautiful flowers, listened to a folk singer, watched children sailing tiny boats in the lake (actually a pond), and had ice cream and drinks.  What we didn’t see is that supposedly the offices of the French CIA are located under the park.  We walked from the Gardens past the Pantheon, where the dome is being renovated, stopping to take a picture of the huge sculpture on the street of nude Mongolian Shen HongBiao.  We then finished our final day in Paris with a sense of symmetry, having French onion soup and beer at the same place we went when we arrived in town on Friday.

It was a great day in lots of ways, and I think it gave a sense of completion.  Yesterday allowed us to experience Paris at its best, and its best is pretty darn good.