We figured that visiting the "City of Love" would be the best appreciated on Valentine's Day. This also happens to be my mother's birthday.
We drove the 3 hours down to Paris. The traffic in town is just absolutely insane. There are basically no rules. People dart in an out as they please and ignore or follow traffic lights as it suits them. The worst was the motorcycles zooming past and basically using the dotted middle line as their own personal lane. It was enough to freak me out.
We made it there and took some great pictures. I'll have some more up on my Flickr account soon. We went to the second level of the Eiffel Tower and had a great view of the city. They had little gift shops inside and we bought a few things and then mom and grandma got us some real french fries.
Unfortunately as we left, Grandma noticed her billfold had been pickpocketed. Her Green Card to get back into the U.S. (as well as all her cash and credit card) was gone with it. Luckily she had he passport in a separate pouch. People at the Eiffel Tower were so pathetically unhelpful it was disgusting.
The security points us to a man, who points us to a police sign near the tower. We go there and he says we have to go to another police station and writes some imaginary landmarks for Grandma to follow. Dodge and I walk back to the car and mom and grandma go looking for the police station. After walking all over and asking several people for the police station they come back to the car. I then set up the Tom-Tom GPS device to take us to the closest police station and we were able to get grandma in to report her loss and get some paperwork to help her get back into the States.
It was a really wonderful day and cool experience until the pickpocketing experience. It ended on another rather sour note when Dodge accidently scraped the bumper of the rental car when pulling into the hotel parking lot. It sounds like a whole lot of bad and I really wanted it to be nice for mom. I hope she at least had a good time before everything went to hell in a handbasket.
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2 comments:
you drive pretty crazy, I'd hate to see the driving that scares you
yea welcome to the fun that is european driving. i have an international license, but kim does all the driving since she's driven in germany before. and she still hates it.
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