From Balleroy to Paris

Well, if the drive from the Dinard airport in France to Balleroy wasn't clue enough about the drama of road trips without a GPS, today's trip to Paris was an eye-opening experience in WHAT NEVER TO DO AGAIN.

As stated earlier, we had no GPS in our rental car. The good bit was that the giant "Paris" signs on the highways are very obvious and frequent, so the first leg of the trip wasn't bad at all.

With the good, comes the bad, and getting into Paris to drop the rental car at Gare du Nord was nothing but bad. So just when we thought things were going well we took the wrong highway and that sent us on a wild goose chase into the city.

We ended up at a toll road that was entirely underground and once we got into what was starting to sound familiar Dad was swerving around bikes, motorcycles, and buses - he ended up going down a street that was one way and in the wrong direction of course. And to make matters more stressful, there were two French police officers on motorcycles waiting at the next intersection. The two officers yelled in French and Dad did his best "I don't speak French and I don't understand your streets" face - and thankfully the officers just assisted us in making a U-turn rather than handing us a citation.

About 1.5 hours later we made it to Gare du Nord (which should have been a 10-minute drive from the highway exit), but then couldn't figure out where to drop our rental car in the parking garage, add on another 30 minutes and we finally just double parked in the Avis lot where Mom and I abandoned Dad with the luggage to find someone to help. Thankfully that was the right move to make, as we found the Avis desk in the train station and were able to leave the car where we had parked illegally (our things were out after that and the keys turned in, who cares what happened next!).

Even though we were far behind schedule, Mom was still insistent that we try and take the metro to the Eiffel Tower since Dad has never seen it. This too was not a wise choice and after buying 3 round trip tickets to the tower and back, we went to the metro and ended up turning around to return to the train station (the last thing we needed at this point was to miss our train to London).

So, with about 1.5 hours until we needed to board the train to London, we walked up to the street outside the station to find a place to eat (AND drink after a car ride like that). Mom and Dad ordered giant (100 cl) beers and I had the smallest one I could order. I didn't like anything on the menu and as we were in Paris I couldn't leave the city without having my favorite ham and cheese crepe.

I was lucky enough to find a small stand about 5 blocks from where Mom and Dad had stayed to eat lunch. My crepe was perfect and that made just about all of the day's stress leave my system (the beer helped too).

The train to London was uneventful, which we all needed. The EuroStar took about 2 hours to arrive in London and we made our way to Knightsbridge as soon as we got off the train.

This evening, just a short time ago, we went to Covent Garden and had dinner at my favorite pasta restaurant in the world - Pasta Brown. I've been going there since I was 13 and I couldn't imagine not eating there if I'm in town! I had a wonderful penne with sun-dried tomato pesto and arugula.

I just got out of the shower and am very comfortable in my PJs as I get ready for bed this evening. We have a taxi coming to pick us up at 6 a.m. so that Mom and I can get to the airport to catch our flight to Rome.

Now, it's off to bed...