May 18th, 2024 – Paris France

It has been a few years since Tim and I have been to Paris, and the first visit by our travel companions, Steve and Brenda. I’m especially excited to see everything fresh through their eyes.

On Friday morning, after a quick stop at the vets office, we loaded up our car and zipped over to pick them up. Our two year old Cavapoo, Maya, had needed some minor surgery a couple days earlier to remove a torn dewclaw, and we wanted to make sure she was healing properly before leaving her in the capable care of our friends/extended family. Thankfully all was good and we could leave, knowing she was OK and in good hands.

Tim had selected an off-site parking lot with Spectrum which would be a bit less expensive than the four of us taking Uber from Orange County, and much less than parking right at the airport for twelve days. Everything went smoothly, traffic was light, comfortable shuttle from the parking structure to the airport, walked right up to empty checkin kiosk, printed our boarding passed, dropped off our luggage and then breezed through security. We had allowed plenty of time and ended up relaxing and visiting over a casual lunch at “Homeboys” which was located right next to our gate.

In case you are not familiar with Homeboys:

Homeboy Industries is the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. For over 30 years, we have stood as a beacon of hope in Los Angeles to provide training and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people, allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community.

The organization was started in 1988 by Father Greg Boyle who was recently awarded the Presidential Metal of Freedom. Their work has been invaluable in helping restore and rebuild lives. Certainly well worth supporting their efforts.

Once we boarded, we hit our first small snag with an hour departure delay, but most of that was made up due to favorable tail winds.

Brenda and I watched an interesting movie, “The Taste of Things” while on the flight. We both love to cook, and to create good meals for our families. Honestly, this movie could have been one incredible gourmet cooking class. The videography was superb and I was drawn in by the sights, sounds, descriptions and presentation of each dish they prepared. The story line itself is simple, yet has both tender as well as heart wrenching moments. If you love good food, I can wholeheartedly recommend giving this a watch. Warning though: afterwards you are going to be craving a delicious meal and airline food probably won’t be all that satisfying 😁

When we landed at Charles DeGaul Airport, after clearing passport formalities, and claiming our luggage, we easily located a representative from Gate 1 who introduced us to our private driver, and off we went.

Paris is preparing for the Summer Olympics which is scheduled to open here on July 26th. We drove past two of the major stadiums that will house soccer and swimming events.

We are staying at the Pullman Paris Montparnasse Hotel for our first two nights. The hotel is clean, comfortable and will certainly serve our purpose with a much appreciated bed. The location is a bit further from the center of town than I would prefer.

After a brief rest and getting refreshed, we met up with our tour manager, Ana, as well as the other members of our tour group. There are 39 of us in total, about half are first time Gate 1 travelers. Ana had us each introduce ourselves, and then she covered some basic information such as where breakfast is served, meeting time and place for tomorrow, passed out name tags and sound systems with an earpiece, bus seat rotation, emergency contact information, dinner options, etc.

The four of us decided to walk around the neighborhood near the hotel, find an ATM and grab something easy for dinner. We ran across Pinocchio’s and settled on their plat du jour of fish and chips plus an Italian salad with grilled vegetables.

Time for all of us to get some much needed sleep. Tomorrow is a big day with our first local city tour to view some of the highlights of Paris, plus an optional afternoon at Versailles.

GRATITUDE MOMENT: Today I am grateful for how smoothly everything went in getting here. We are off to a wonderful start and I can’t wait to share more about what we see, do and experience while in France. Thank you for joining us ❤️