20240612 Wednesday, June 12, 2024: The Final Push Home

Thankfully, nobody decided to use the fitness center last night so we had a good night's sleep.  It was nice that the Holiday Inn had modern air conditioning so we slept at a comfortable temperature and didn't have to feel like we were sticking to the sheets at night.  It was also nice that the room was quite spacious. The only real problem was the ADA bathroom was poorly conceived and constructed because the shower flooded nearly the entire bathroom floor whenever anyone took a shower, and there was no big squeegee to get the floor dried, so you had to mop it up manually with the shower floor mat.  

The Holiday Inn breakfast buffet had a pretty complete spread so you could have a full english breakfast, or fresh selection of baked goods in addition to cereals, toast, fruit, cold cuts and cheeses.  Ben made a couple of sandwiches for the airport with some fresh baguettes.  We're sure going to miss the fine breads here in France.  They have a way of making breads with crisp light crusts and a substantial but open textured crumb that hold up really well in sandwiches, but are also quite tasty in their own right.  

After checking out, we boarded the free Hotel Airport Shuttle van with two members of a private charter flight crew from Portugual.  They cater frequently to tour groups that travel by cruise ship one direction, and then fly home on private charters for the return trip.  Many of these are German clients.  They also did trips to and from the Caribbean, which they really like doing as flight crews.  

The hotel shuttle dropped us off where it had picked us up yesterday- terminal 2B.  CDG airport is a massive complex, so getting around can be confusing.  There are light rail services between some of the terminals and hotels, in addition to bus service and multiple train lines also serving the CDG airport.  It took us a while to first fine the check in counters for Delta Airlines, and then we had to find our way through French customs and passport control and security.  

Exiting France was pretty simple. We put our passports in a scanner which then opened one set of doors.  Then a camera took our photo and matched it to our passport and opened a second set of doors.  Then we handed the passports to a bored looking passport agent who simply manually stamped a blank page and waved us through.  

Getting through security was a bit more work, but they were well staffed and there was no real line.  However, they were super sticklers to detail, requiring laptops and tablets be taken out and put on their own trays to run through the X-Ray, and Janet got a pat down because her foot brace kept triggering the metal detector wand.  Ben had forgotten to take an iPad out of the carry on suitcase, so he had to take that out, and they then searched everything in the suitcase, swabbed it all for explosives residue and ran the iPad through the X-ray by itself.  Then Ben had to repack everything back into the suit case.  It was a good thing we gave ourselves plenty of time to get through the check in, customs and security procedures.  

We did manage to get through all those processes and to the boarding gate about 45 minutes before boarding began.  When we did board, we were surprised that unlike most flights we have been on, this one was far from being sold out, at least in the Economy Plus section.  There were several empty seats and even an empty row two rows behind us.  There was one open seat in our row of 4 seats between us and a stranger in the opposite aisle.  After the plane got to altitude, some people moved quickly to occupy the empty seats/rows so they could lay down for portions of the flight.  

The flight was just under 10 hours.  The leg room in Delta Economy Plus was generous enough that we could recline our seats without guilt and we could nap reasonably comfortably, although a first class fully reclining sleeping pod would have been nice.  It was just hard to pay an extra $1000 per person for that.  Ben watched a Dune marathon since both Dune and Dune 2 were available.  Flying from east to west, the jet lag isn't nearly as big an issue as it is flying from west to east because it's like staying up really late one night, rather than missing out on an entire night altogether.  

Delta Dinner- tasted better than it looks, but the bread

was awful after all the wonderful bread in France.

Midflight snack.

We had departed Paris at 4pm, and ended up arriving in Seattle at about 5pm, so it was like we were traversing the lines of longitude nearly as fast as the earth was rotating beneath us, flying over the UK, Iceland and Greenland, and then angling down across Canada to Seattle.  

Sea-Tac's new international arrivals terminal is very nicely done.  It is modern, efficient and easy to navigate.  We got thorough luggage collections and then using the MPC (Mobile Passport Control) App to pre-upload out passport and photos while waiting for luggage to arrive, we pretty much walked straight through US customs to the airport exit.  

It sure is a nice thing to be able to take the Whidbey Sea-Tac Shuttle from Sea-Tac home to Oak Harbor.  Ben spent most of the trip napping, but this was the first time we had seen the new Mukilteo Ferry terminal in detail.  Most of our trips have been one way towards SeaTac so the shuttle just drives right off the ferry and heads up the Mukilteo speedway to the interstates.

Our son Price picked us up in Oak Harbor and we were plenty ready to retire straight to bed after walking in the door.  We had been gone since May 3, when we started this transatlantic adventure to visit our Son John in France.  It was good to be back home in time for beautiful spring weather to arrive in the Pacific Northwest.

We really enjoyed the transatlantic crossing by cruise ship and would not hesitate to do another transatlantic crossing by cruise ship.  We just wished that we had known that we could have stayed on the ship and ended up in the Baltic, rather than spending nearly 2 weeks driving around the UK.  It would have been much  more enjoyable and less stressful.  

Driving in the UK is not at all enjoyable, especially with the extremely tight schedule that Nordic Visitors had outlined on their itinerary.  We would NOT recommend that itinerary to anyone.  It was much too rushed, and it did not include parking arrangements in key locations. Parking in the UK is a HUGE headache.  All the tiny villages have inadequate provisions for tourists traveling by car.  All have pay lots that require a minimum of 2 hours payment, when you can pretty much see what you want to see in under an hour.  None of the big cities accommodate tourists in cars either.  After getting home, we were notified by the car rental company that we were charged $85 for having accidentally driven into a "Charge" zone.  We had no idea what the sign meant- we thought it had something to do with electric cars, but we were just following Google Maps instructions to a castle, and when we got there, we could only directly turn around and leave immediately.  We had hoped to see a castle that was a film site for the Harry Potter movies, but instead got stuck with an $85 charge to drive 3 blocks in an extremely stressful super narrow cobble stoned street to nowhere.  

There are vast stretches of the English, Scottish and Welsh countryside that are spectacular to see, but the driving on the suicide lanes is so stressful and difficult that you can't really enjoy seeing the countryside. You're driving on a 12' wide bit of torn up pavement with 2 way traffic, no speed limits, and blind corners every which way you look.  Driving in Australia was so much easier and enjoyable.  We can now see the charm of doing a bus tour to see the English countryside because you'd never have to drive.  I can say I hate driving in the UK, not because you have to drive on the left side of the road, or because they have roundabouts everywhere- those things are fine and easy enough to get used to- but because it seems everything else is set up to make driving as uncomfortable, inconvenient, and expensive as possible.  Pretty much the exact opposite of the US's car centric culture.

The Railbookers France section of our trip was much less stressful and enjoyable because we spent a minimum of 3 nights at each place and did not have to drive at all.  Lille, Paris and Lyon all have excellent mass transit systems that are reasonably easy to figure out, and both Lille and Lyon are very walkable cities with plenty of charm and history.  Although our rendezvous with John and Ciara in Lyon was brief, it was very enjoyable to share in our adventures together in a new setting.  

After spending so much time in the UK and France this spring, we are really appreciative for how beautiful and wonderful life is in our little corner of the world in the Pacific Northwest.  We're glad to be home.

20240611 Tuesday, June 11, 2024; Beginning the long journey back home

20240611 Tuesday, June 11, 2024; Beginning the long journey back home

John and Ciara popped out to the Pain des Jacobins bakery and brought back some Pink Praluline Brioche, a pink praline tart, and a fresh baguette to go with some cheeses they picked up in nearby cheese stores for breakfast.  There was no better breakfast to celebrate our last day in Lyon.  

A Properly set Pink Praline tart is a thing to behold.

Janet and Ben took an Uber to Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, which is a large indoor marketplace full of gourmand stalls selling the freshest seafood, produce, meats, produce and local products, as well as many restaurants showcasing Lyon cuisine and French cooking.  Paul Bocuse is a legend of Lyon’s and France’s culinary history. It is said he inspired the character of chef Auguste Gusteau in the 2007 animated film Ratatouille.  To be sure, there were a lot of stalls selling all sorts of gourmet items.  

The kids and Tom’s family checked their luggage into storage at the hotel and walked to Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse.  It didn’t take them all that much longer to walk there than for us to make it by Uber. In fact, as we were working our way through traffic in the Uber, we passed them walking on a bridge about halfway to Les Halles.  

They arrived about the time we emerged the far side of Les Halles after walking through pushing and pulling our suitcases.  They wanted to have a gourmet lunch experience but John volunteered to help us with our suitcases to roll them to the train station, which was a 15 minute walk from Les Halles.  

As we were leaving, a huge glass skyscraper next door was being evacuated for unknown reasons, causing a bit of a pedestrian traffic jam.  Everyone was calm and there were no fire engines or other emergency services, so it may have been a company drill of sorts.  

We got to the train station without trouble and said good bye to John who had a flight out in the early afternoon but who was going to join Ciara and Tom’s family on an outing back to the Parc de la Tête d’Or before heading out.  

Ben ended up picking up lunch to go from a Five Guys in the Westfield La Part Dieu across the street from the train station once we knew where we had to go to board our train.  

The TGV trains run on a pretty tight schedule, but they don’t post which platform a train will arrive on until about 20 minutes before it arrives, and once it arrives, it usually leaves within a few minutes, so it’s best to get situated a bit early and be flexible to get to the right platform once it is posted on one of the TV monitors, and then to find the correct place on the platform that aligns with which car you will be boarding.  

It was a little confusing at first because there are big signs along the platforms with the letters A-Z, but below the big signs are small signs with other alphabet letters, but these designate the platform, so on one side of the platform it might have Big letters A-Z down the length of the platform, but all the little one’s will be the platform number which in our case was “H”.  There are a handful of monitors along the platform that show where the cars of the train will align with the platform.  In our case, car 2 was between the “R” and “S”.  If we did this a few more times, we’d be experts.

You do have to be attentive about the stops because there is no onboard display of which stop is next and our train would run all the way to Bruxelles if we fell asleep and missed our Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle stop.  It was still a little stressful dealing with our big suitcase and the very limited space in the train luggage area.  This time, we did have to move someone’s small suitcase to make room for our big suitcase but it all worked out.  What was a bit odd was that we never had to scan our train ticket anywhere to board the train, and nobody came through the cars to check tickets.  It did look like our car was sold out, but they do seem to rely more on people’s honesty in France than they do in the US.  

Once we got off the train, you end up in the massive Charles de Gaulle airport terminal complex, which is the size of a city.  It took us a little bit of searching to find where to meet our Holiday Inn Hotel shuttle bus.  To add to the confusion, there is a Holiday Inn Express that is physically attached to the airport complex that is accessible by a light rail, but we eventually ended up at the right curb and Ben eventually found a phone number to call to confirm that a shuttle would be by to pick us up.  Our hotel reservation did not include a phone number and Google kept pulling up reservation sites with no direct phone numbers to the hotel to force you to book through their agents.  All of our other hotel reservations made through Rail Bookers did include a direct phone number, so they’ll get some feedback on that.  

The Holiday Inn Paris Charles de Gaulle is a modern and spacious hotel that caters mostly to flight crews and businessmen.  

ADA bath was actually a big minus- shower floods

the entire floor- no squeegee to dry it off. It wasn't 

Sloped to drain properly.

It is in the middle of the airport industrial area surrounded by hangers with no services within walking distance, so we were pretty much a captive audience.  We could have taken the shuttle back to the airport but that took almost 20 minutes, and then it would take nearly an hour to get back into Paris using the RER trains, so we just set about reconfiguring our luggage for airline check in and checked our weights.  We will be flying back to the US on a Delta direct flight from CDG to SEA. It should be about 9 hours flight time.  We booked this one Economy Plus.  It won’t be much fun, but we’re ready to get back home.

Since there was no place to walk to for dinner, we made reservations in the hotel’s restaurant, the Palm.  We decided to just go with the menu de jour, although Google Translate was unable to translate the hand written menu.  There was a fillet of fish for the plat or main, and tiramisu for dessert, but we couldn’t decipher the appetizer (entree) or first course.  

They did bring out some crostini with olive tampande and a nice bit of baguette with herbed butter to start on.  

Then they brought out two large bowls filled with fried baby fish- literally fried fish frys.  We were both a bit shocked by the appearance.  But they were deep fried in a thin tempura like batter, which made them crisp and light. 

Surprisingly, they didn’t taste fishy.  The texture was a bit crunchy like French fries, and they were served with a nicely seasoned tartar sauce.  There was just a whole lotta baby fishies.  At one point, Janet pointed out that the pilot that had rode with us in the airport shuttle had just sat down to eat behind me.  I asked if he was still in his pilot’s uniform, and Janet said no, he has changed into a rabbit suit.  “What do you mean by that” I asked and turned to look.  All I saw was a man in a nondescript grey suit jacket.  “What makes that a rabbit suit?” I asked.  “Oh, never mind said Janet.  When I turned back to my meal, my bowl of baby fishies had roughly doubled in size, and Janet could barely contain her tears of laughter.  

They did eventually bring out a fish fillet served on an artistic splash of yellow and green sauces, covered with an orange sauce that looked like the lobster/crawfish sauce that the Lyonnaise Pike quenelles were served with.  

There were also some roasted cherry tomatoes and a bowl of grilled peppers and zucchini (courgette here).  The fish fillets were pan fried with the skin on, crisping it , but it also dried out the fish.  The grilled peppers and courgette were the best part of the plat.  

Finally, they brought out their rendition of Tiramisu, which looked like a bowl of whipped cream that had been powdered with cocoa powder.  You might joke that the theme of tonight's dinner was the food chain: what the bait ate, what the sea bass ate, the sea bass itself, and finally what the sea bass left behind (pardon the French humor).

At the bottom of the bowl were little crispy bits like the crumble layer in the middle of a Diary Queen ice cream cake.  It was a strangely deconstructed tiramisu, but it was light, and after having eaten nearly 2 full bowls of fried fingerlings, I didn’t have a whole lotta room left in my stomach.

Before we went to dinner, Ben noticed that there was a rhythmic thumping like a dance club audible in the room.  Well, on the way to the dining room in the elevator we saw that the fitness center was one floor above us (we were on 4, it was on 5).  

Who puts a fitness center above guest rooms?  Well, after dinner, Ben went up and confirmed this was the case.  We hope nobody decides they need to get in a treadmill workout between 10pm and 8am.  If you ever book the Holiday Inn Paris Charles de Gaulle, don't book Room 445.

20240610 Monday, June 10, 2024; Lyon in a Day

20240610 Monday, June 10, 2024; Lyon in a Day

Today started off with a Birthday Bakewell pie for John and a belated Birthday Bakewell pie for Ciara.  We had been toting these in our luggage, carefully packaged, and they made it to today in mint condition.  The Bakewell pies are filled with almond paste, so they are very rich.  It’s a good thing we didn’t get larger ones.  

Ciara’s fiancee’s family arrived mid morning so we stashed their suitcases in our room and began a whirlwind tour of Lyon with them.  The tour began with a southern leg to see the fountain at place des Jacobins and the statue of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in place Bellecour. 

Then we headed across the passerelle Saint-George and wandered through the south half of old Lyon, encountering a group off a Viking River cruise.

Murals found in Old Lyon

New for us was a trip on the funicular up to the Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière at the top of the hill.  The funiculars run in pairs along a single track with a bypass in the middle connected by a common cable so as one goes up the other goes down.  They run most of their journey through pitch dark tunnels.  

The station at the top deposited us right on the front steps of the Basilique, which was built in 1896.  We toured the Basilica upstairs, as well as the crypt below, which was deceptively large and cavernous.  

This Basilica has huge murals depicting historical scenes including one with Joan of Arc riding through a city on a horse.  The downstairs crypt had an interesting array of depictions of Mary from many different cultures including a black African, Chinese, and Filipino depictions.  

We had sandwiches for lunch at the cafe associated with the Basilica and took in the views before checking out the nearby Tour Métallique and then the ancient Roman amphitheaters.  

We took a second funicular back down into old Lyon and then found a couple of traboules to traverse, which are indoor passages between buildings which frequently served as shortcuts through blocks.  These frequently connected tiny courtyards and air shafts between buildings. 

We found a mechanical clock at the Gadagne museum which strikes each quarter.  A man emerged from a door at the top like a cuckoo clock to blow a bugle and a series of puppets in the main compartment rang a few bells to announce the hour.  It was a bit underwhelming for the small crowd that had gathered to watch. 

  

The next leg of the tour headed through the streets of north old Lyon and then across the St. Vincent pedestrian suspension bridge into the Croix-Rousse neighborhood where we visited the “rescue des Lyonnais Cèlébres, 

and then up the hill to le Mur des Canuts, which we hadn’t seen before, but which Ciara really wanted to see.  It was about a mile hike up the hill, but proved worthwhile.  There was a display of how the mural has evolved over the years. It was first painted in the 1980’s but has been repainted a couple of times over the years reflecting some changes to the neighborhood and culture.  From there, we headed to the east end of the Croix-Rousse for a view of Lyon Part Dieux, on the plains east of the Rhône.  From there it was down the hill to the now infamous Cour de Voraces et traboule that Janet and I had stumbled upon earlier.  

This time, knowing what they were, it was a lot less scary, and we were able to follow a series of traboules down to the place de Terreaux where we got group pictures with the Opera House, City Hall and the Bartholdi fountain.  

We took a brief rest stop in the sculpture garden in the Beaux Arts Museum before making a bee line back to the hotel so that Tom’s family could get formally checked into their hotel room and bags moved in.  

John had tried to get dinner reservations at the Bouchon Chabert et Fils in Old Lyon but was unable to make one for a party of eight so he called some other nearby Bouchon Lyonaisse restaurants and was able to make reservations at L’Auberge des Canuts, on the square of the Lyon Cathedral, so we headed over there for dinner.  Ciara started 2 loads of laundry, but it takes the European combo washer/dryer a really long time to do a wash and dry cycle (over 4 hours) so she hung back a little to switch the wash to dry cycle.  She was able to join us before they were ready to take our orders.

There was some misunderstanding regarding the terms Bouchon Lyonnaise because we were expecting another all you can eat fixed price feast like what Janet and I had on our first night in Lyon at Chez Chabert around the corner.  But this place did not have an all you can eat style menu. Instead, it was a fixed price for appetizer, main and dessert with an optional cheese course for extra.  They also had an a la carte menu which was a bit more expensive.  All the fixed menu prices were significantly higher than Chez Chabert’s 29€ for all you can eat, so that probably explains why that place was sold out.  

Lyonnaisse salad

French Onion Soup- still not as good as Princess'

Pork Sausage with lentils

Pike Quinelle, very skimpy on the sauce

Breaded tripe

Pink Praline pie

This place had the same dishes, but the quality and quantity were both lower than either Chez Chabert’s or the La Mère Maquerelle where we dined last night.  But they did seat our party of eight and the food was OK.  We just wouldn’t recommend it to others in the future.  It would be worthwhile to call to make reservations at Chez Chabert’s a day in advance.  

Statue in front of Palais de Justice

After dinner the kids walked around for a bit to see the city after dark while we headed straight back to the hotel to get the second load of laundry started.  We encountered a racket in the street as we approached the hotel and just missed a group of protesters chanting and heading towards city hall.  Apparently they were a mix of people upset about yesterday’s EU elections which were carried by the far right candidates and the Gaza war.  There was loud chanting, but no violence.  We did pass some police standing by the entrance to the pedestrian suspension bridge, but they were just assuming a non-threatening standby stance.  We just thought they were just keeping us tourists safe.

Tomorrow, everyone packs out and heads in different directions.  The kids want to see a few more sights, but since Janet and I have been here nearly a week, we’re just ready to begin our trip home, and plan on sleeping in and heading to the train station a bit early.