Australia/France

Paris 17^th March

. It was a good start to our trip: a morning flight to Sydney and met by Joan’s sister and Ewen, a visit to see the Archibald Prize art exhibition then an afternoon spent on the harbour in the cruiser they have shares in. Most civilized.

That morning I had woken early, about 3.30. Shuffling out to the kitchen the enormity of what we were doing suddenly hit me. For a brief moment I was looking at the trip as a whole, it’s just too big a venture to do that.

On checking in at Sydney on Sat. morning our first hiccup occurred. The woman behind the counter told us that France had a regulation saying visitors to that country had to have an onward ticket. We did have one Paris/Norwich but I hadn’t printed it out. Not good enough she said. I had to find a way to connect my laptop to a printer to print it out. Two hours later, completely and utterly stressed out and with hands so shaking I had to ask someone else to work my laptop for me, I was still without the necessary hard copy. I then did something that I should’ve done in the first place, go to the JAL office upstairs. The woman there had never heard of such a regulation neither had the supervisor at the check in counter who she phoned. Back down I went just as the check in counters were closing and handed our documents over without the bloody onward hard copy. “Who told you you needed that?” the woman who served us said. She had never heard of it either. All that stress for nothing. I was seething. Unfortunately the woman who put us through all that hassle was gone otherwise she would have heard what I thought of her.

I always Always wonder which is the best way getting to Europe from Australia. We usually take it by the horns and get there as quickly as possible even if it means 27 hours in the plane including a refuelling stop in some place like Abu Dhabi at some ungodly hour of the morning. This time we thought we would do it differently. Japan Airlines has a flight that leaves Sydney mid morning, a very sensible hour, takes 9 hours to get to Narita near Tokyo arriving at 6pm local time. They put you up in a hotel near the airport, meaning you sleep in a bed that night in clean white sheets, a hearty breakfast is part of the deal the next morning. A short bus trip back to the airport to catch the 11.05 flight to Paris, arriving in our favourite city the same afternoon at 3.30pm. It was very pleasant.

Jetlag h Jetlag hasn’t been too bad, we spent the morning on a cruise down the Seine taking in all the highlights of the city and later in the day went to the Pompidou Centre to visit the at gallery there. I had never heard of Louise Bourgeois before this afternoon, she is a sculptor and painter. Now 97, she has an exhibition running at the Centre at the moment. What an amazing artist. Her work covered a variety of styles and methods but all so interesting. That exhibition alone would have been worth the admission fee. It is cold, 9c today, but at least the sun is shining off and on. Tomorrow we visit the Catacombs and the Sewers of Paris before flying to Norwich later in the afternoon.

18th March

catacom The catacombs were closed, a nuisance after a long metro ride out to them. We decided to revisit the Pere La Chaise Cemetery where we had briefly looked around a few years back. It was bitterly cold, brief shows of sun breaking through a sullen sky, trees that were still devoid of leaves, perhaps the right atmosphere to wander through a grave yard. But it’s the people buried there that brings the crowds: Edith Piaf, Chopin, George BIzet, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Steyn, Jim Morrison to name a few. Maria Callas was for a while until she had her ashes scattered over the Aegean. There are well over a 50 people of note buried amongst the Parisians. Well worth an hour or two visiting.