Fun Friday:a Bucket List Dream Checked Off- My Adventures in Paris

Fun Friday: A Bucket List Dream Checked Off- My Adventures in Paris

By: Debbie

It’s hard to believe that I am writing on my last port of call in today’s blog. There’s a lot more I could’ve included in this series, but then it would just continue on and on. In retrospect, though, I think the timing’s perfect since I am embarking on a new journey to complete my fiction novel. The journey requires my entire focus and energy; I will only blog twice a week rather than the normal three times per week. That being said, I’d appreciate it greatly if you would pray for Darci and me. This partnership is bound to take a toll on each of us individually as the weeks progress.  For Darci, I pray she knows what a godsend she is to me in this journey and she would allow God to speak through her clearly and effectively to pass on her knowledge and make my manuscript the best one possible to get it published. For me, I would be open to every piece of advice she offers and implement it correctly within my manuscript. As a bonus, I pray this partnership provides a much-needed sounding board to flesh out chapter ideas and book themes.

As exciting as this is, I know that’s not why you navigated to my blog. You want to read more about my cruise to the British Isles. When we last left off, Mom and I explored Inverness, Scotland on our own, leaving Dad to rest and recover from a cold in the room. We hoped that letting him rest and take the medicines we purchased would enable him to join us in Paris over the next few days. It worked.

Unlike other excursions, the one to Paris left us with a bit of uncertainty. Not only because it was unclear whether the tickets would allow our party to stick together or be split apart into two groups, you see, we’d got two different responses to how the excursion would go. The first said that I would be allowed a companion to go on the excursion for free without needing to buy an extra ticket. The second person told us we did indeed need to buy an extra ticket. In the end, we went to the excursion desk and they cleared up the confusion. We did have to buy an extra ticket. But they would not split up a family.

The morning of the Paris excursion arrived and we anxiously went to the “Princess” theater to await further instructions. At this point, we weren’t quite sure whether we would be on the bus with other groups headed to Paris or if it would be like the excursion at Belfast, Ireland. Thankfully,  Dad accompanied us on this amazing journey despite bringing a box of Kleenex for his remaining symptoms.

Our number was called and we were off. Much like the Belfast excursion, we had a taxi to ourselves on the 3-hour drive to Paris. This was because we ported in Le Havre and had to drive the rest of the way into the city. It must have been uneventful, though, because Dad and I slept most of the way.

Unlike most cruise excursions, we could tell the taxi driver where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see. This put us at a slight disadvantage not knowing all there was to see in the area. We just knew we wanted to see the Eiffel Tower and get a meal along the way, but be back in time before the ship left port. That meant we had to leave time for traffic and the three-hour return trip to port. So our driver made the way to the Eiffel Tower first.

 

To be completely honest with you, I don’t know what I was expecting. Don’t get me wrong, it is a very impressive structure. But I think they over-romanticize it a bit. Built in 1889 for the Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair), Gustav Eiffel’s structure showed the many strides the country had made in terms of industrial and technological domains since the French Revolution. Originally intended to be taken down after the event, it became a part of the country’s rich history and has been that way ever since.

With that checked off my bucket list, we all were getting hungry. Originally, I had hoped to settle down at a little café and drink some coffee and have some kind of baguette. (A friend mentioned that’s what Paris is famous for.) But by the time we had arrived at a café. It was almost noon and the idea of coffee was forgotten. Plus, Dad invited our taxi driver to eat with us. I think Dad was afraid of us losing track of time or getting lost. So I had a hamburger instead. Bad idea. Little did I know that Paris standards of medium rare are different than ours. Out came a mostly rare (raw) hamburger. On the bright side, we got to know our taxi driver better. Turns out he started his taxi business out of care and love for the disabled community; he feels that they should have more opportunities to experience things just like regular people.

 

It always amazes me how God connects us to the right people at the right times. I’m not sure whether our guide will see this (being that he lives in Paris) but I hope in some small way, this may increase his business.

As we waited to pay the bill, Mom and I perused a few shops. Most were not wheelchair accessible, as they had a step to enter the shop. Thankfully, Mom knows my taste in shirts and cups and could take a few pictures of items I might be interested in purchasing. This was one souvenir I bought—a shirt featuring the Eiffel Tower and the Arc De Triomphe across the front.

We also visited the Arc De Triomphe, which was commissioned after the victory at the Battle of Austerlitz by Napoleon I. This arc which stands 164 feet high and 148 feet wide commemorates the achievements of the French during that time.

As nice as the taxi driver was to take us to see all these places, logos on the windows of his van obstructed my view. The only way I could see was through the front above his dashboard or from my mom’s pictures.

During our discussions in transit to our destinations, our driver reminded us how important the relationship between the United States of America and the French has been to the success of World War I and World War II. So much so that the French constructed a replica of the Statue of Liberty to commemorate it.

On the way back to port, we encountered a setback. As Dad slept in peace, Mom and I endured stop-and-go traffic on our way out of Paris. In the back of our minds, I think we were both wondering whether we would pick it back in time. Thankfully we did. In the back of my mind, I had hoped to get a piece of jewelry as a Momento of my time in the city of “romance”. But it wasn’t meant to be. However, I think God must’ve sensed my disappointment because just outside the port where we were supposed to board the boat again was a terminal- inside a local artist was displaying his beautiful watercolors of the great city of France. It was there that I found this portrait…