Paris, Giverny and Normandy: Toilets, Croissants and the Woes of Traveling with Too Many Suitcases!

Just to keep everyone up-to-date: My suitcase weighed in at JFK airport at a lean 48.5 pounds giving me 1.5 pounds lee-way for buying some mementoes.  As we are visiting both France and Italy, that’s not going to work.  Unbeknownst to Bob, sometime between now and our next flight, I will be moving things from my suitcase into his in order to maximize my future buying opportunities.  

We landed in Paris and hit the ground running.  As it had been a few years since we have been to “The City of Lights,” and our memories are not what they used to be, we did a morning walking tour to provide us with a review of where the major sights are located. Because we were absolutely exhausted, we then took a tour that can only be described as the “Cliff Notes” version of the Louvre.  For those who have never visited the largest art museum in the world, you need to be prepared upon arrival because it is not for the faint of heart.  The building is massive with multiple wings and approximately 625,000 pieces on display at any given time.  I would recommend at least 12 hours of sleep the night before such a visit.  Sadly, as we had been in the United States just 14 hours before our arrival at the museum, we had nowhere near the required amount of sleep needed to benefit from the masterpieces contained within the building.  So we took “The Greatest Hits Tour,” which meant a guide walking us to the 15 most important things to see while visiting the museum.  Yes, we saw  “Venus de Milo,” and yes, we saw “The Mona Lisa”—but just barely because of the crowds. What was extremely difficult to find however, were the bathrooms.  On three hours of sleep and three cups of caffeinated coffee, those became more important to find than DaVinci’s masterpiece.  

In our jam-packed day, I was reminded of two things about Paris:

1. The whole city smells like baguettes and croissants.  My God, I forgot about the exquisiteness of tearing apart a croissant and getting all those flaky crusts all over your clothes and not even caring because they taste so delicious.  This I know is a problem because I don’t wear that blue gown to the second to last night of our vacation and no amount of Honeylove shapewear/torture devises are going to help me get into that gown if I keep on eating croissants everyday.  

2. In many places you have to pay to use the toilet. Come on! Bob said after our third visit to a bathroom on our first day, that because of his aging bladder, he was going to be broke by the time we got home! My favorite toilet visit was when we were in the bowels (no pun intended) of the Louvre and saw after paying  our two euros each that the woman cashier was also selling a variety of candy!  Who the heck is buying a Snickers bar on their way to the toilet? 

Later that evening we met up with Bob’s brother, our sister-in-law and niece and were excited to begin our adventure the next day by visiting first Monet’s home and Gardens in Giverny and then onto Normandy, to visit the locations best known for World War II’s D-Day invasion.  My sister-in-law rented a car for our travels north to both Giverny and Bayeaux, the town we planned to stay in while in Normandy.

I can only say that my sister-in-law is both a hopeful and positive person. She had “hoped” that we only needed a mid-size car to get the five of us and our luggage to our planned destinations while in France. She clearly forgot that she was the mother-of- the groom, her husband, the father-of-the-groom, her daughter, a member of the wedding party, all of whom need multiple outfits for the wedding, plus whatever they needed for our French adventures.  And then there was Bob and I, who are no slouches in the packing department.  My brother-in-law and I waited with the many, many suitcases outside the hotel while Bob, my sister-in-law and niece went to get the mid-size car.  They were gone for so long that I assumed there was a problem. And there was.

About an hour after leaving us, my sister-in-law came slowly driving down the street in a small bus! Apparently, the mid-size car would have fit the five of us comfortably, but we would have had to have left most of our luggage on the sidewalk! Now, we are driving around France in an automobile the size of a tour bus! Fortunately, even with all our luggage, our drivers—Bob and my sister-in-law, can see out the back window, so every cloud has a silver lining.  The only hiccup we have had so far is that we had no idea how to go through French tolls.  Needless to say, our American EZ Pass-which Bob had with him-was not going to work over here. We saw that there was a toll gate that went up and down as people paid, and while there may have been directions displayed regarding the payment process, none of us speak French.  And we panicked. It may not have been the best thing to do to stop the bus in the middle of the highway but that’s what we did—much to the chagrin of the drivers behind us.  We tentatively entered the toll, only to find out payment could be made by using one’s credit card.  How civilized. 

We loved Giverny and are enjoying the quaint town of Bayeaux, including its Tapestry Museum, which contains a tapestry that explains through needlepoint, the story of William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings.  Tomorrow, we head to the Beaches of Normandy.  Fortunately, we are taking a tour and can leave the bus in the hotel parking lot….