Saturday, 9 June, the rest of the way to Paris (via the CDG emergency room) and the apartment

Written 10 June 2018

As I feared, though, our purchase of tickets that allowed seat assignment only after check-in proved a nuisance. On the short hop to Atlanta they seated us together in a row of two, but for the long haul to Paris, the plane was configured 2-3-2, and they put us both in the center seat of the center section, in successive rows. Drat. Still, the flight wasn't too onerous (although the meal was awful—choice of hot chicken or chicken salad—we got one of each and they were both dreadful; not up to Delta's usual standards). I watched just one movie (The Black Panther) and then managed to doze a little. Our prearrival snack was an okay fried-egg sandwich on a croissant.

Once we landed in Paris, we taxied for a record-breakingly short 6 mins before stopping at our gate. In the terminal, we made a bee line for passport control, hoping to get reasonably short lines, but as we threaded the tortuous routes among the crowd-control stanchion-and-ribbon maze, David decided the next lane over would be better and tried to duck sideways under the ribbon. He straighted up a little too soon, caught his backpack on it, then caught the toe of his shoe on the carpet, staggered a few feet and went sprawling! The debris field was impressive—first his water bottle, then his backpack, then David himself, stretched full length, and finally, three feet farther along, his glasses! Unfortunately, when he sat up, he proved to be bleeding in several places. Passers by offered Kleenexes, and an airport emergency person with a walky talky was there within a minute. She had David stay on the floor, sitting with his back against a pillar, called for medical back-up. She first described David as an "old man" who had fallen, but at a look from him, she modified it to a "fairly old man" in subsequent communications. She examined and disinfected while I explained what happened; she was relieved to hear that it was a "chute mechanique" (a mechanical fall) and that he hadn't fallen because he got dizzy or fainted. She was very concerned that he might be internally injured or concussed, but in the end everything boiled down to scrapes on the knuckles and backs of both hands, a spot where he bit his lower left lip (which stopped bleeding immediately), and a split left eyebrow, which she slapped a temporary bandange on and said needed at least one stitch—not a wide cut, she said, but quite deep.

At that point she went back to her post and the stalwart young man from the airport's in-house emergency medical service took over, questioning us about any medication David was on, any health problems he might have, etc. Finally, we got David on his feet and the young man escorted us to the airport's emergency medical office. He said they occasionally get a day with no medical emergencies, but sometimes he brings in as many as 15! He carries around a backpack that must weigh 50 lb., presumably carrying enough supplies to cope with everything up to and including a plane crash! After we waited just a few minutes, David's eyebrow was stitched, we paid up, and we could finally catch a cab to our rental apartment.

Then we stood there on the sidewalk, stymied, because you needed an access code to open the big wooden doors into the courtyard off which our building opened! (I would probably have had it if I had downloaded the VRBO app, but I was offended by all the stuff they wanted access to on my phone, so I refused.) The apartment had no windows overlooking the street, my phone was not yet equipped to work in France, and we were baffled. I was about to go in search of a café from which I might be able to e-mail when a resident of the building opened the door to go in and allowed us to follow her. Then we had to go to each of the several doors opening off the small, irregularly shaped courtyard until we found our landlady's name on one of the listings and could be buzzed into the building. We had to make two trips to get the luggage to the 3rd floor (= 4th floor in American usage) because the elevator is about 2 feet deep by 4 feet wide, and we couldn't get both ourselves and our bags into it.

At the apartment door we found not our landlady but her rental agent, who gave us a tour of the place; supplied the access code for the outer door, a key for the building door, and a key for the apartment; and pointed out the room down in the courtyard where you take garbage and recycling. Also her phone number and an invitation to call her about any questions or problems. Whew. We'd finally arrived.

But no rest for the organizer of the party. While David napped, I inventoried the place (it comes already equipped with salt pepper, sugar, oil and vinegar, a bunch of herbs and spices, dish soap, laundry soap, bath soap, Kleenex, toilet paper, and paper towels (and the window boxes supply fresh rosemary, thyme, and mint), so that shortened my shopping list by a good deal. I headed first for the "Boutique Orange" (the phone store), where I acquired a French SIM card good for two weeks and rechargeable for the third. It cost way more than the deal I got last time (also from Orange, at a boutique in Valence) but it includes lots of data time as well as voice.

Next I hit a chain bakery I'd spotted on the way and got some almond and chocolate croissants for breakfast the next morning, since we had to be up and out early; then an extremely compact (not to say claustrophobic) little Franprix supermarket for butter, eggs, milk, etc.; and finally a bookstore, where I acquired the 2018 Gault-Millau restaurant guide.

For supper, we decided to keep it simple. We would just walk down to the Place de la Bastille and go to the Hippo (aka the Hippopotamus Grill) for a steak (we had been thinking fondly of an entrecôte for two that we had a couple of years ago in Perpignan).

On the walk down the Boulevard Beaumarchais, we passed Le Bar à Huitres (The Oyster Bar). David averted his eyes, while I admired and photographed its magnificent array of cold seafood. Alas, I doubt I'll be able to talk David into going there for dinner one night. He hates to watch me eat cold seafood (their vast menu includes exactly one nonseafood dish—a steak; maybe he'd go for that). Anyway, all that red stuff in the rather small photo is "arraignees de mer" (common spider crabs. Maja squinado). They didn't seem to have any "tourteaux" (edible or brown crab, Cancer pagurus). Also shrimp, langoustines, oysters, and other bivalves (in boxes of seaweed at the bottom of the display. There's even a rubber-banded bundle of yummy razor clams (called "couteaux," or knives, in French). According to their full menu, posted on line, they also have live tanks inside with an even wider variety.

The photo at the right is of large trays of ice, lined with decorative scallop shells, waiting to be filled with seafood for serving. If you want to see way better photos of their seafood than I got, try their website, at http://www.lebarahuitres.com/fr/bar-huitres-vosges.php.

Of course, once we got to the Hippo and studied the menu, we were both tempted off in other directions by old favorites listed there—David went for a magret de canard (a large boneless, skin-on duck breast cooked and served like a rare steak) with a baked potato. The potato came with sour cream and chives, and from the list of available choices, he chose Béarnaise for the duck. I ordered an andouillette (and not just an andouillette but a "véritable andouillette de Troyes AAAAA"—a fat sausage stuffed with coarsely chopped pork chitterlings) with mashed potatoes. It came automatically with mustard sauce, but I still had a sauce choice coming, so I also picked Béarnaise, which was good with the potatoes.

Having skipped the appetizer course, we had room for dessert. David ordered panna cotta topped with a coulis of red fruits, and I had salted caramel and coconut ice creams with salted caramel sauce. I didn't think the coconut ice cream was such a much, but the rest was great. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures.

At the left here is the little wire basket of bread they brought us. It was soft and chewy rather than crisp but agreeably coated with flax seeds.

At the right is a shot of the Place de la Bastille from in front of the Hippo. That's the Genie of Liberty shining on top of the column (commemorating not the original French revolution but a different one in 1830) as the Bastille opera house looms in the background.

The rain held off until we got back to apartment, and David headed straight for an early bedtime. I, on the other hand, wanted to restudy our transport options for the morning. We had to be downtown near the Pont Neuf by 8:45 a.m. to board the boat for our first river cruise, but (1) David didn't want to get up any earlier than he had to and (2) even with Google's help, I was wary of predicting travel times by bus or metro. I hadn't yet gotten our monthly travel passes for public transport and didn't want to mess with that when we were in a hurry, but I did have some leftover metro/bus tickets from a previous trip, so we could use those if we had to. On balance, we decided it would be better to try Uber for the first time to be surer of being on time.

David went off to bed, but if we were going to use Uber in the morning, I had to change our account over to our new French phone number. I had downloaded the app, set up an account, practiced with it, etc., but could not, of course, use the French number because I had no way of knowing it in advance. So I Googled up instructions for changing your number in the app and set about doing it, but somewhere along the way I must have touched the wrong thing because I wound up exiting the app accidentally. When I tried to start over, the whole app crashed and burned. When I tried again, it wouldn't accept either the old number, the new one, or my e-mail address! Aaargh! Fortunately, a little link on their website said basically "If [what happened to me] happens to you, click here."

I did and set about filling out the form and adding a detailed explanation of what happened, what I was trying to do, etc., pointing out expecially that I would need an Uber ride in only about 8 hours and could they please straighten this out! But when I clicked "I am not a robot" before submitting, the whole form suddenly went blank, and I had to start over. Aaargh again! I finally got the form submitted and went to bed.