Arrival gates

So this last blog was written in the innocent time before I arrived in Paris.

My mom and I had responsibly made a plan to meet in the Sheraton lobby which is in the middle of Charles de Gaulle airport, have a celebratory wine in the hotel bar, and then figure out the train into Paris. My plane got in 20 minutes after hers but she was coming into terminal one which was further away.

I go to the Sheraton as planned. The guard there did skeezily hit on me but like four other French people were pretty nice to me today despite me being a pretty bumbling American asking for a lot of help so we'll mark it an overall win for the French people. After an hour or so I took my phone off airplane mode to see if I could change the clock to local and maybe find some WiFi and apparently I had roaming turned on cause all my notifications came through. Including a text from my mom which referenced crying and the 18th.  

I went to find a SIM card at this stage, and was basically having a panic attack very quietly in the newsagent not able to get my SIM card slot open why is it made to be impossible. The helpful people helped after I stood in their way for long enough and I was able to whatsapp call my mom.

Long story short it's all true, big storms over new York, her domestic flight was cancelled, so she couldn't make her connection, she managed the delta and Norwegian reschedule on her own but of course wasn't the only one doing that and it's not ideal but Melinda checked everything off the internet and it's the best we could do.

Poor thing was stuck at the Raleigh airport for like eight hours with it being delayed and then they put them on the tarmac and then took them back off again and Harmony had to go back and pick her up, all a sad drag.

Things that made me cry:

1) There was a really big expectation vs reality disconnect between the moment I was sure was going to happen any minute of embracing my mom and having a drink together in a luxury hotel before going to nest in our apartment together and this moment sitting alone on an airport floor crying.

2) My mom was looking up and researching and finding stuff to do and getting excited about Paris more than anything. Now there's two less days and there was already too few days to do what she dreamed.

3) I didn't even want to go to Paris you know? This is not fully true of course I'm not going to not enjoy it. But the point of this trip in its inception was to show my mom Paris because I thought she would love the art so, and the triumphant return to St. Petersburg. I didn't have a big independent dream of Paris to do now.

4) Plus of course the obvious thing that I was just off a 20 hour flight and had few emotional reserves to cope with disappointment at the moment.

But you know, we're all safe and ok, we'll still get to see Paris together, and we've got a six week holiday which means by the end of it this will be a distant memory. I kept saying it will never be worse than it is right this second.

And then I wiped my tears and found the train and negotiated the metro and came out of the metro station into the world's most Parisian neighborhood.

Omg it's like a caricature of all things French. You come out of the metro into a sidewalk cafe. There is on this one intersection two cafes, a patisserie a butcher a wine shop and a florist. All the buildings are these five story white apartments that look very classic. There's a little sidewalk garden that has roses and those cabbage flowers and old French men in vests glaring at passers by. Literally every people in the cafe I went to was having aperitif de maison and chatting in groups. I sat in the outdoor area despite the smoke and watched the passersby. I had a goat cheese salad and omelette and two happy hour cocktails and an aperitif and spent like forty euros but jiminy I lacked the will to be frugal right then. I start my financial diet tomorrow. Then I went to the grocery store and spent a much more responsible forty euros on some really nice food and have already cooked my own breakfast this morning of hard boiled eggs and croissants and delicious gem cantelope.

I went home and basically to bed after that, falling asleep at 9:30 with the lights still on. I woke up a couple of times but basically awoke at 7 am this morning.  Thanks body for being great at your job. This morning I took a bath, unpacked made breakfast and wrote this over a second cup of coffee. Now it's 10:40 and I'll probably make a move. I was thinking about the Bastille as a place I might like more than my mom, that's also near, and the Lourve as a place I can spend an extra day in that will take nothing away from anyone cause it's too big.

Voila as the French say, which I think is on the level of de nada/ no worries in being a sentiment you always want to say that there is no word for in a lot of languages. You know a word that means ok there you go we're done here but not in like a negative way at all just like here it is.