Friends, Fellowship, and le Tour de France

Nick and I awoke early on Saturday so that Uncle Winfred could drive us to the airport at 5am. This was so that we could catch our Air France flight to Paris. Other than the flight being delayed for 30 minutes, all went smoothly and we found ourselves in Charles de Gaulle airport by 10am. We wandered through the crowds to a tourist information booth in order to purchase our Paris Visite pass, which would allow for unlimited train travel for the next two days. We then wandered down to the tracks to hop on the B line to Saint Michel-Notre Dame. This was our first taste of French train travel, and it was pretty interesting.
Once we emerged from the train station, we found ourselves in the hustle and bustle of Central Paris. We made our way to a bridge across the Seine River, which gave us a spectacular view of Notre Dame Cathedral and Palais de Justice. We slowly walked in the direction of Notre Dame, taking numerous pictures along the way. To my chagrin, and Nick's amusement, I have very much turned into my father since I take numerous pictures of the same structure, just at different angles. We walked the perimeter of Notre Dame and I stopped briefly in a souvenir shop to purchase a Tour de France shirt for my Uncle Bob and myself. Soon we found ourselves on the steps of Shakespeare and Company, which is a local English bookshop that Nate had recommended to us. I thoroughly enjoyed this quaint little shop, and ended up buying a book by Bill Bryson on Shakespeare, which I'm sure will be hilarious.
After our stop in the bookshop, Nick and I ventured into the Latin Quarter. Everywhere we turned, we were intrigued by new sights and sounds. It began to rain, but instead of getting discouraged, we ducked into Le Petite de Cluny, which is a nice little French cafe. The food culture of France worked in our favor because by the time we finished sitting and eating our meal of a panini (Nick) and ham and cheese sandwich, the rain had cleared and we could venture on without getting completely soaked.
The next stop on our list of things to see in Paris was the Louvre. We took a train from the Latin Quarter to Chatelet, where we transferred to the 1 in order to get off at Louvre-Rivoli. If you haven't ever had the chance, I would highly recommend trekking to the Louvre because it is a spectacular piece of architecture. Nick and I could not get over how massive it was, and thoroughly enjoyed gazing at the structure. We didn't have time to go inside, and that would have been difficult anyway due to the fact that we had our backpacks with us. We then wandered off in the direction of the Arc de Triomph before veering off along the Seine towards the Eiffel Tower. Nick and I were constantly pointing and saying, "That looks so cool! What is it?" We would then get out our map and realize that it was number 15 on the map, but we were too lazy to actually look it up. (Number 15 happens to be the Grand Palais for those interested). Other sights that we walked past but refused to look up at the time included Sainte Chappelle, Conciergie, Musee de l'Armee, Musee de Cluny, Musee de Orsay, and Petit Palais. We finally made our way to the base of the Eiffel Tower and spent a lot of time just gazing up at it in wonder.
Once we got tired and realized it was getting late, we decided to head back to the train station to make our way to Massy-Verrieres, which was where Nate was planning on picking us up. This, of course, was not an easy task given that part of the C line was under construction. This meant that we could take the C line from the Eiffel Tower to Invalides, where we had to hop the 8 train to Concorde and then the 4 train to Chatelet before we could get on the B line towards Massy-Verrieres. Nate and Kaden were very happy to see us once we arrived and we had a pleasant car ride back to the apartment, where I thoroughly enjoyed the comfort and simplicity of watching Cars with Kaden and rolling a marble back and forth on the floor.

It was nice to have a vacation within our vacation with Nate, Erica, Kaden, and Luca. Nothing quite like spending time with English-speaking, Christians in my book. We had a lovely dinner of paninis, which Nick is very astute at creating and making, to the point that we believe he should bail on his nursing profession and open up his own little panini cafe. We enjoyed pleasant conversation and shared understanding of the difficulties in the language barrier and how sometimes you end up agreeing to things you don't mean to agree to.
Sunday morning we had a breakfast of croissants before wandering to Eglise Reformie Evangelique for church. The sermon of course was all in French and I could only understand the word "Jesus", but I still felt very much at home with my fellow believers. Apparently the message was based upon Peter's denial of Christ, which is found at the end of Matthew 26. I passed my time by copying down the Lord's Prayer and Apostle's Creed in French from the back of the hymnal for a friend back home. After the sermon, I was approached by I woman. I told her that I did not speak French, and she promptly spoke to me in English and asked me if I was associated with the language school. I said that I had relatives in Germany that I was visiting and that I knew Nate and Erica. Apparently this woman has a 27 year old daughter living in Germany that she and her husband were going to be visiting for 8 days soon before travelling to Ireland. I was then approached by another woman dressed completely in magenta. She was very friendly and apparently her name is Evelyn. We had a very lengthy conversation about how she grew up in the Champagne region of France and how they have plenty of vineyards and strict quality codes to follow in order to make champagne. She isn't a fan of the cheap champagne that is produced in California, which I can understand. She shared about her younger years, which apparently included a 3 month kabutz in Israel. She was very happy that I taught her that in English, a portable is a cell phone. She actually took out a little notepad to write this down, which I thought was cool. I also informed her that the German's call it a handy before parting ways.

I went outside to find Nick and Kaden playing on the playground. We soon wandered home for a very quick lunch of sandwiches before Nick, Nate, Kaden, and I went into Paris to watch the last stage of le Tour de France. We staked out a spot on Rue de Rivoli, just up from the corner of Rue de Moldovi, which is across the street from the Louvre. First, there was a parade of random cars advertising everything from water to lighters. Then all of the team cars and buses drove by. Then came the long wait for the cyclists. I knew that they were coming due to the helicopter flying above us, obviously filming the race. I got some pretty cool pictures and video of the racers flying by on 4 of the 7 loops that they do. We decided to bail early so that we could go to Sacre Coeur in Montmartre.
We took a train to a station that apparently has a lot of stairs, so we waited with everybody else to get on the elevator. I was surprised to see how massive this elevator was; probably the combined size of my kitchen and living room at my apartment in the Burg. We went up one floor and foolishly got off, bringing some unlucky people with us. We then had to walk up four flights of a spiral staricase before we reached the exit of the station. We were greeted by more stairs up to Sacre Coeur, but the view over Paris that we got was definitely worth it. Nick and I did the quick walking tour of Sacre Coeur and then enjoyed the street performers. There was a guy on a pedestal performing amazing tricks with a soccer ball, along with a man on the steps playing acoustic versions of "Let it Be" and "Wonderwall". We then went back down to the base of the stairs so that Kaden could end his day on a high note: the carousel.
Around 8pm we wandered back into the apartment for another delicious meal Erica prepared. This time it was sausage on a bed of white rice with tomato sauce, green beans, and French fries (my first time ever eating them in France). It was a very relaxing evening filled with fun conversation, a tasty chocolate chip cookie cake extravaganza, music, and prayer. It was a wonderful blessing to be able to gather in fellowship and pray for one another before crawling into bed.
Monday, Nick and I found ourselves on a plane back to Frankfurt. We landed around 11am, and ended up taking a scenic bus ride through Frankfurt to Süd Bahnhof because we got on the 61 bus instead of the shuttle to Terminal 1. We then hopped on the S5 back to Oberursel, where we wandered the streets of Altstadt, had lunch at the bakery, and sat and relaxed on the steps of St. Ursula's church. When we arrived back at Oma's, we were greeted with cake and coffee. Uncle Winfred and Monika were there and giving us details on the trip we will make to Koblenz tomorrow. I was also greeted with the surprise that I had actually won €27.50 when I played the lotto for Oma the previous week. I also learned that Winfred has an astute sense of hearing because he told us to be quiet and listen to the car driving by; apparently it was a Ferrari. Who knew my family was filled with such fun secret talents? The rest of the afternoon was spent lazily watching television, eating a dinner of rice and chicken in white sauce, and chatting with Aunt Edith. A very long, but relatively refreshing day.
Finally, for those interested in the score, it's Kayla 12; coffee 0.