MY $37 TWO MILE TAXI RIDE
My son Tom dropped me off on Wednesday at the Asheville airport and I had an uneventful flight to Newark Airport and then on to Paris. I took a couple of mild sleeping pills and sprayed some melatonin in my mouth, not knowing how much to spray, and put on my AirPods with Billy Edd Wheeler’s songs and my pink eyeshades and kept my London hat on and wore my black nose and ear mask with a foam pillow curled tightly around my neck and skipped dinner. I must have looked like a space alien. But I didn’t sleep. Knowing how annoying it is to have the seat back in front of you leaned all the way back when you are trying to eat I kept my seat upright. But in spite of the pillow that was supposed to keep my head from flopping, I kept waking up in great pain with my head dropped forward. When I sensed that dinner was over I leaned back and slept well but at midnight when I woke up to pee I noticed that my expensive, and cool I thought, making me seem hip, AirPods had fallen out. I searched then and before leaving the plane. They should have been on the floor but weren’t anywhere. On the flight to Greece a year ago I left my Bose Quiet Comfort earphones on the flight. When you are half drugged with sleep it is easy to do.
In Charles De Gaulle airport a very helpful woman at the kiosk machine where you buy your tickets showed me how to get train tickets to and from Paris. But when I got to Gare Du Nord, the huge train station, not far from Montmartre, the world seemed turned upside down. I had taken the metro from there many times to Montmartre but now line 2 was inexplicably closed. I had no map and even Google let me down and I was groggy and in a brain fog. Looking for the 54 bus and not finding it I asked a taxi driver how much the two miles to Montmartre would cost. 15 euros minimum, likely 20 euros (or dollars). That seemed exorbitant to me. So I asked at the tourist kiosk where I always receive good advice.
The man there threw up his hands, showed me where I was on a map, where I wanted to go, said he didn’t know whether any metro lines were running, or any buses, that France and especially Paris was in a one day national transportation strike against raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, and demanding higher wages in a time of rapid inflation. It was too far to walk (only two miles) and my only hope was a taxi.
The temperature outside was two degrees above freezing in a light rain. My black pack was filled we electronic gear, squeezed down to look like it would serve as a personal bag but so heavy that I needed help from a kindly Indian woman to get it into the overhead rack on the plane, probably 30 pounds. I didn’t feel like walking with my bare hand pulling my red lightweight carry on bag.
I went outside again and asked a taxi driver how much to Montmartre, with the 15 euro minimum suddenly attractive. He fiddled with his cell phone for a bit, figuring out the fare. 65 euros for 2 miles. I gave up and looked for the bus stop and as I stood there in the light rain, not knowing if the bus was actually running, saw another taxi with its green light on waiting to pounce on the first person at the stop to give up hope. It was me. The driver was a very friendly fellow from Guinea, Africa. The fare would be 15 euros minimum but he would go by his meter. I had had enough experience in India being conned by meters not working or not being turned off after the last ride but I was too tired to care. I got in and when in about five minutes we got to Timhotel, the fare was $37.
But I didn’t care. I was in Paris in the cold and the rain but had a comfortable hotel room for the night. I slept most of the afternoon. When younger and going through jet lag on a trip to India I would force myself to stay awake in order to sleep at night. But that was long ago. Since retirement I sleep when I am sleepy and stay awake when I feel rested no matter what time of the day it is. The bed looked very comfortable. I slept on and off until 9 p.m., waking several times to knotting cramps in my legs, probably from not drinking enough water on the flight.
At 10 I walked the short distance to Bouillon, a restaurant where Susie had celebrated her birthday with Todd on the 16th. They had gone at 7 and gotten right in. At 9, still in a light rain there was a line 100 feet long down the sidewalk outside. But I was now rested and in Paris. The people in Bouillon at tables so close together that you had to pull the table out to reach your seat, were very interesting through the large windows as were the people walking along the sidewalk. Paris comes life at 9 at night. There was about a 50+ year age gap between me and everyone else in line. I felt as I was out on the town in Paris and once inside, after about 40 minutes, had a wonderful meal of French onion soup and sausage and mashed potatoes skipping the more exotic things like snails in the shell and pork belly. I recommend Bouillon, in a number of locations in Paris, to anyone visiting Paris. For lunch there is a flat fee of about 10 Euros for an appetizer, a main course and a dessert and wine is cheap.
And then feeling good just to be in Paris in the middle of then night with a light rain falling I went back to TimHotel in the belief that the strike would continue the next morning and wondering how I would ever make my 10:50 a.m. flight to Helsinki and Delhi, and got a good night’s sleep not realizing how topsy turvy the next day was going to be which would have kept me awake all night fretting about how to get to India if I had known.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 