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I woke up at 2.30am and couldn't get to sleep again, which was annoying as it was going to be a pretty full on day. But when I know I need to wake up at a certain time I find it very hard to sleep lest I miss the alarm. I never miss the alarm. I don't know what's wrong with me.
We left lots of time for things to go wrong, but nothing went wrong. I came up with the genius idea of parking at our new house so we could walk to the station. The money we saved on a cab or parking more than made up for having two mortgages and two sets of bills to pay.
Everything ran smoothly. We were at St Pancras an hour early and the Eurostar ran more or less on time. Ernie is terrified of being in a Titanic disaster (even on land) and so we didn't tell him we were going under the sea. Which is a scary idea even to my 56 year old brain.
It's almost 12 years to the day since Catie and I travelled to Paris on our honeymoon. I was certainly more hungover that time (though three hours sleep had helped replicate the condition). Now magically we'd doubled in number. How did that happen?
Once in our hotel we walked down to see the Eiffel Tower which looked rusty from a distance, but more impressive closer up. We stopped off at a cafe that you couldn't even see the Eiffel Tower from for a couple of pancakes and some chips that made those candy floss seem like a bargain and then walked on through Paris to meet up with my niece and her husband for dinner. From this half hour walk through an affluent area it felt like Paris is much more refined and respectful to its citizens than London. None of the shops were boarded up and there were amenities and people looked superior and grumpy (as one would expect), but content. We stopped in a square with a playground for a few minutes. It felt like we were in a small town, were it not for the Tower looming in the near distance. I took Ernie to a nearby toilet - imagined somewhere to play in central London, with amenities like this.
The toilet was free to use, and had those automatic doors. Very impressive. Until you got inside. Every surface was filthy and the sink was full of rubbish and clothes and some soiled children's clothes were on the floor. Ernie managed to do a wee without touching anything. At least there was a toilet, even if it was the worst one I'd seen this century. Though I was able to tell Ernie of my experience of French toilets as a child, when toilets in France were holes that you were expected to squat over to poop in. That was mentally scaring too. It's good that France is keeping up its reputation for terrifying toilets.
We dined on the top floor of the
Cafe de Commerce, my niece Emily's favourite restaurant, which Phoebe and Catie had been to before when Phoebe was a baby. It was very French and old-fashioned and the menu had some terrifying options including pig trotters and veal head (I went for a somewhat safer steak). Ernie noted that the place looked like the inside of the Titanic (he is fascinated as well as terrified and had been telling us facts about the White Star liners on the walk over) and was worried we'd hit an iceberg. We didn't though. The staff were friendly and helpful and the food was good. I was struggling to stay awake and we started heading back to the hotel after 9. The Eiffel Tower was lit up and hundreds of men were trying to sell lit up models of the Tower beneath the lit-up tower. It was incredible to see so many people trying to sell the exact same things in the same location at the same price, but presumably there's enough demand to make these identical businesses work.
It took us a long time to do the walk and we were just climbing up the hill at the Jardin du Trocadero at 10pm when the Tower does a little sparkly light show. As exhausted as I was by now it was a cool experience for the kids and a memorable one. Fun to be up late in a crowded foreign city watching a massive tower sparkle whilst hundreds of men try to sell you tiny sparkling towers.
