Le Dernier Jour et le Voyage

Woooo so it's taken me awhile to write this post! Apologies! I've been literally running around since our last day in Paris, and the craziness still hasn't really stopped. In case you didn't know, my mom bought a new house this spring, and the moving date is next weekend. However, since I am moving back to school tomorrow, I had to move in to the new house by myself. So basically, I came home from France, unpacked my stuff, packed up my room, unpacked in my new house, packed up for school, and now I'm moving into school. Ack! I really like our new house, and I'm especially excited that I got to decorate my new room :) Yay for decorating. Anywho, I felt like I left this blog unfinished because as far as it seems, I'm still in France. Sadly, false.

Our last day in Paris was probably our best one. There was a small snaffoo involving the metro system not accepting our tickets and us having to buy new ones for the day, but it worked out! Mom's back wasn't bothering her nearly as much as it had been, and the things that I had planned for that day ended up being her absolute favorites. For starters, we got on the very first river cruise down the Seine at 10:00 a.m. The timing was lovely because we didn't really have to wait in line; however, it also meant that the only other people on the boat were old retired Russian people on a group retiree tour. Mom really enjoyed the boat tour, partially because she was able to just relax for a little over an hour, but also because, as she said, it gave her a different perspective on the city and it was a cool overview of most of Paris.

After the river cruise, we went to the Musee d'Orsay - the impressionist museum that used to be a train station. Mom is a super-big fan of impressionism, especially Monet, so being able to see the paintings in person was a dream of hers. I am also a fan of impressionism, Degas in particular, so I really liked the museum too. I also appreciated that it was far less crowded than the Louvre was and a little bit less touristy. There was actually time to stop and appreciate the paintings rather than trying to jostle your way through the crowd to see them. Also, everything was in French. I liked that, even though many people probably didn't, because it was just like "tough luck, learn French". Hehe, I'm so mean!

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Eglise de Madeleine, a Catholic church that was constructed to resemble a Roman temple. My grandmother (my mom's mom) sang in this church in the 1980s when she was with the Richmond Symphony Chorus, so Mom and I wanted to make sure that we saw it too. They had this really strange modern art exhibit going on around the outside of the church, which I didn't appreciate (see entry about the Centre Pompidou for how I truly feel about modern "art"). Mom was pretty tired by this point and sort of just wanted to take pictures outside the church and call it a day. I wasn't satisfied with the pictures from the back of the church and dragged her around the front, which turned out to be a fabulous accident. We decided to pop into the church just for a minute, and saw a sign that said that in 20 minutes a free concert of Bach's Mass in B minor was going to be performed by the University of Utrecht's Symphony and Symphony chorus! Too cool! Obviously, we parked ourselves right near the front and enjoyed a beautiful concert in the Eglise de Madeleine. And good gracious does that church have amazing acoustics! When they would stop singing, the note would linger on for several seconds, bouncing around the sanctuary. Gorgeous.

For dinner, we ventured down the street from our to a little Chinese place that mom had had her eye on for a couple of days. We shared a half bottle of rose wine (yummm, my favorite!), and I greatly enjoyed chatting up our server who had just been on a vacation to New York the previous year and wanted to talk all about America.

Unfortunately, our journey homeward was not as nice as our last day in Paris. It was by far the worst day that mom had with her back. I was doing many things for her from picking up her suitcase to handing her things on the floor because she just couldn't. Happily, there were no issues with the taxi service this time around; the driver came right up to the hotel's front door right on time. We also made it to the airport in great time, which proved to be a very good thing. I'd always heard that you need to add in an extra hour to get through lines at Charles de Gaulle, and that was definitely true. It took us over an hour and a half to check in our luggage and another 45 minutes to go through security. Annnddd I got selected for special searching. Fabulous. I got patted down, my carry-ons were all inspected, and I had to have all of my belongings tested for bomb residue with this fancy wand thing. I didn't really mind too much, and I sort of enjoyed using my French for one last time even if it was with security guards. Every time I'd get to a new inspector, their first question was, "Do you speak French?" and I was more than happy to say that I did :) They were terribly nice, farrrrrrr nicer than American TSA workers.

Our troubles didn't end once we boarded the plane. We got on just fine, right when the plane started boarding, and we had good seats. However, we were delayed from taking off for almost 45 minutes because yet another abandoned bag was discovered in the airport. Apparently, there were a few passengers on our flight who had been checked through but were detained behind where the abandoned bag was and for security reasons we couldn't depart without them. Finally, we took off, way behind schedule. The flight itself was fairly smooth, and the food, of course, was quite good :) Mom had a hard time sitting in the uncomfortable airplane seats for so long though with her back. And, once we got to the United States, there were storms up and down the east coast, causing us to have to reroute, and further delaying our landing.

When we finally disembarked from the plane, mom was literally dancing around singing about how happy she was to be back in the United States. I, on the other hand, not so happy. I missed the land of the cutely-dressed, fast-paced, tiny French people. Case in point - we walked into the customs area where we were greeted by an enormous, sweating, balding dude hollering in a Southern accent that we needed to go the right if we were citizens and to the left if we were not. Oh dear goodness how part of me wanted to wander to the left...all of the government employees in France were young and fit. America? What's going on here? How's this dude going to stop a terrorist? Sigh.

Our luggage came to us unharmed and intact, and our former pastor (who's now a seminary professor) came to pick us up from the airport! We stopped by his house to get mom's car, and his wife made me a sandwich (mmmmm American sandwich!) for the ride home. Unfortunately, I ended up having to drive most of the way home. We did make it safely back, but I was absolutely exhausted the entire way. It felt like it was 4:00 in the morning to me, so driving was quite the challenge. I collapsed into bed almost immediately upon arrival, but only after having single-handedly unpacked the car....with a small amount of bitterness towards my sister who had already gone to bed. Umm hello. If I can unpack the car at what I think is 4:00 a.m. then you can unpack the car at 10:00 p.m. But no harm done. Clearly, I'm unharmed.

Sooooooo that was that! Je ne suis plus en France :( Donc, ce blog termine ici. It's been lovely writing for all of you!! And here's to hoping that this will not be my last adventure in France!!! (My host mom, who I called from the Charles de Gaulle airport before leaving, said that I am always welcome back, and I plan on taking her up on that one day.)