We left Boise at 1 pm, Friday, April 4. We flew to Salt Lake City, where we changed planes and took a direct flight to Paris. 10 hours later we landed. It was a long full flight. We had the worst seats possible. Stella and I were on the left side of the plane in the 2 seats, 1 aisle and 1 window right across from the lavatory. Which seemed kind of handy. Then we realized that there would be a lot of foot traffic. And boy, were we right. I swear every person on that plane used the lavatory at least twice by the time we got to Paris. My sister, Beverly, and her friend, Gretchen, had the same two seats on the right side of the plane. Needless to say, we all used the eye masks that the flight attendents handed out to everyone, because with the lavatory door opening and closing all night long, the light was going on and off and on and off, well, you get the picture.
We had a 12 hour layover in Paris and had made reservations to do a 4 hour city tour. After taking at least an hour to check our carryon luggage, buy metro tickets, get to the train station, we settled down for the trip to the city. It's like herding cats, and there are only 3 others (I'm Norma, by the way). But we made it to the stop we needed to be at and only had to change from one line to another one once. We got on a bus and did an hour tour around the city, went by the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, etc. Then we got off and went up the Eiffel Tower, and got the overview of the place. It was a beautiful spring day, must have been in the high 60's and everything is in bloom. It was crowded, but not too bad. We gave up on the boat ride because there was such a line that we couldn't have made it back to the airport in time to retrieve our hand luggage before 9:30 pm. As it was, we didn't get off on the right subway stop and rode 4 stops past where we needed to change to get to the airport, but we finally figured it out and retraced the route. We got to the airport with about a half hour to spare, got our luggage, ate dinner, found the next gate. At almost midnight we were wheels up on the way to Cape Town. After a 10-1/2 hour flight, we landed on Sunday morning. Beautiful weather here, actually, it's downright hot and humid.
Stella and I saw something in Paris that we decided we would have to put in the blog and do you think we can remember it now? Um, that would be no. But maybe we will before the trip is over.
We took a taxi to the hotel, and the driver made Stella sit in the front seat which made the three others of us smile. He was telling us about all the sights we should not miss, like Table Mountain which has a cable car. He patted Stella's arm and said, "but you could hike it in 4 hours." She did not agree with him and he said "you could if a lion was chasing you." :)
The others went out and walked around the neighborhood after we got to the hotel but I have such a cold/allergy thing going on that I slept for awhile. Our rooms weren't ready so I slept on the couch at the hotel until they came back and we got our room keys. We're on the third floor. There's about a zillion steps, but it's a fun hotel, every room has a different mural. Our has a desert scene complete with a barbed wire fence. Beverly and Gretchen's room has the map of Africa painted on all the walls with a bright pink fluffy thing glued on where Cape Town is.
I revived enough to go eat dinner last night at a nice restaurant that overlooks the market that was busy packing up and closing for the night. When we got back to the hotel, we discovered that the rest of our travel group had arrived to it was a long-time-no-see reunion with them. These are mostly the same people we went to Croatia with and some that Beverly and I went to India with. The tour doesn't officially start until 5:30 tonight when we all go to dinner together so we want to the market and shopped a little bit this morning. It's an 8 hour time difference from Boise, by the way.
So, tomorrow, we go to Cape Point. More later.
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