Day 1 an 2 April 1-2, 2025

 Today we are leaving for our much awaited 6 week adventure to Europe. Although I, Janice, have done a small tour in 2012 Richard has not been to any of the countries we are about to embark on. So excited! 

My morning starts very early and I am up at 4:30 AM and Richard isn’t far behind me getting up at about 530. Although I have set aside all of our belongings to take with us, I haven’t actually packed them in the suitcases. That’s what I’m gonna busy myself with this morning and hope I can remember everything I wanted to have with me. I know I want to keep it pretty compact so that’s the priority. I managed to get everything into two carry-on suitcases even though we have decided that we will be checking those two bags at the airport in Vancouver. I convinced Richard to only have the shoes that he’s wearing as if he needs to take another pair. We’re gonna need a whole nother suitcase for Mr. Bigfoot. Well, mission has been accomplished, and we are ready to rock ‘n’ roll.

We’re on the road to Todd’s place at about 8:30 in the morning as we are going to leave the truck in Surrey at their place while Todd takes us to the airport. We arrive in good time and by 10 o’clock we are on our way to Vancouver international airport for our flight that will leave at 1:45 PM. We fly to Calgary and from there on to Paris. I booked Premium Flex tickets with West jet so although we’re not in the first class, we are one step behind that. We have a bite to eat in Vancouver as there isn’t a lot of time in Calgary. Our flight is delayed for an hour from Calgary to Paris, but it gives us lots of time to get to our gate which is a long way from out arrival gate  

Once in Calgary, we board the WestJet Dreamliner which is the newest airplane in their fleet. We get priority boarding and are seated in the first row behind first class. We are in 5H and 5K and we’re rather excited because we’ve not been on a big jet like this in a very long time. Now, remember, no matter how comfortable your seat is to begin with it ends up feeling like you’ve been sent to hell by the time you reach your destinations. We brought some Ativan so that we could sleep on the way, but of course me being me I decided that I probably didn’t need it. That was my first mistake. Richard took one and slept like a baby. All in all I have to say it was a good flight and we were served dinner and then breakfast just before we landed in Paris.

Know if you’ve never been to CDG that in itself is ann experience. Once we got off our flight, there were direction signs to the exit and baggage, which we followed like sheep, until we arrived in much larger area, and then everybody kind of dispersed, and we were left on our own to try to find where our baggage was. We found an information counter, and of course we have a language barrier, so I was trying to ask this young guy where we would get our baggage.and he pointed to my baggage tag and said I had to go to Calgary to get it. Well, I knew that wasn’t right so eventually we discovered that we had to take a train to another terminal to pick up our baggage. We talked to a few people while on the train and discovered that nobody seems to know where they were going. It is signed pretty well and we did eventually find our way to the spot where we should be. We had to go through a passport check before we were directed to the luggage area, which was on carrousel 41. While Richard collected our luggage I sat down and activated my Orange eSIM. Fortunately, there was a kiosk for Orange, and when I did experience a little bit of trouble, the fellow there was very helpful and showing me what I had done wrong. It actually was quite a breeze to put it on there and we now had connectivity in France.  Whew!

Now we have a whole new set of decisions to make and that is how do we find our way to our accommodation. I had done lots of research at home and knew that I had to either take a bus or a train to get into the middle of Paris so I began a little bit of research on it and found that to take a bus it was two euros each where as to take the RER be it was going to be €13. Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you which option I was going to take. After searching for about a half an hour for a bus, we ended up giving up and taking the RER and then we had to take the M4 to another stop. I thought I was going to kill Richard with all of the stairs that we had to go up and down with our suitcases. Thank God we did not have any large luggage because we think we would both be buried here in Paris. We did eventually find the road we were looking for after going through a labyrinth of underground passages on their subway system.

Now we are looking for 12 Boulevard Poissionniere dragging our suitcases along with us. We must look quite the site. All of a sudden an elderly gentleman comes up to Richard with a piece of paper in his hand and of course I think that he’s trying to sell us something but Richard sees on the piece of paper our name. This happens to be Mr Dokic and we have been told that he will help us get to our accommodation. He does not speak a word of English, and as it turns out, Richard does not speak French either lol.And all this time I thought he was fluent, and that we would have no problem when we were in France. This came as a bit of a surprise. Anyways, this man is very gracious, and does what he can to help us.

Now it’s April 2 so this blog is going to be for two days. After being shown, how to unlock and lock the entry to our apartment, and then our actual apartment we bring all of our stuff inside and lay everything out trying to figure out what we might need until we go to bed. In the meantime, Richard lays down for a little nap. I’m hoping that he’s still alive by the time May 15th comes along.

 I was told that we would have free Wi-Fi so after Mr. Dokic shows me the numbers to type in to get connected this begins a whole new kettle of fish. Their password is 26 letters and numbers long and no matter what I do I cannot get connected. I finally text the lady that we rented from, but she doesn’t know anything and doesn’t speak English either. She texts me in very broken English that she will have her friend call me and help me get connected. This lady, whose name is Blueberry in English (Myrtolne in French) is very helpful and tries very hard to get me connected, but is not successful. By this time I have just given up and figure I’m just gonna use the data that came with my Orange.eSIM; it’s 70 gigs so I should be fine.

We finally get out of the apartment after trying to wreck the door getting out. And now we’re actually out on the street with no luggage in our hands looking for a place to eat. There are literally hundreds of restaurants and because the weather is so beautiful, everyone is sitting outside. It’s such a beautiful site to see because everybody is so socialized here. Very different from in Canada for sure. We end up choosing an Italian restaurant and each have a delicious beer and equally delicious pasta dish. Our waiter is from Brazil and when Richard tries to thank him in Spanish, he laughs because he says he understands por favor as he also speaks Spanish and Portuguese.

After dinner, we drop back into her apartment to leave our leftovers and pick up a grocery bag as we are now going to try and find the grocery store that Audrey Kangro suggested to us; Monoprix  My Google Maps program tells us it’s about a 2 km walk and because we’re so fit we’ll have no problem at all  The walking path ziggs and zags until we finally find this tiny little storefront that says Monoprix. Once we get inside though it is absolutely huge and more like a Superstore or Walmart and have pretty much everything you could ever need to eat. We pick up some bread and milk and fruit just so that we have breakfast food first day here.

By this time, I am certain that Richard isn’t going to make it and despite my efforts to zigzag a different way home so we can see more we do eventually arrive back at our apartment with our, I swear to God, 50 pound bag of groceries in hand. Actually, I think it was maybe 10 pounds but anyways. By now it’s the evening and Richard immediately is down on the bed and falls fast asleep.I wake him up to take his pills and I take my pills and we are both in bed sleeping by about 830. Good night.