Adventuring with MaryLou: 5-21/22-2025 Paris

Our voyage to Paris was long and uneventful. First, we took the train to London. At Kings Cross station, we spent some time with Harry Potter. That’s where Platform 9¾ is set up just like in the HP movies. There was a long line for people to take pictures of themselves at this spot. The line ended at a sign that said something like “if the line extends to this sign, you have about an hour to wait.”

We didn’t wait in line but Teresa managed to get a pretty good photo of the place where people had their picture taken . It looked like wands and scarves were available as props to pose with. I don’t know how much it cost to enter this fantasy world.

Teresa fed her fantasy in the Harry Potter shop.

Then, we went across the street to the Pancras International Train station and got on the EuroStar to Paris. We went through the Chunnel which was a long dark ride under the channel ...our ears plugged and popped and everyone was quiet....a bit mysterious.

In Paris, it was raining…a real rain. We walked about a block away and called an uber that took about 15 minutes to find us. Then, it took an hour for the driver to drive about 3 miles to the hotel. The traffic…people…congestion…noise was everything I remember it to be. Hmmm.

We stayed at TimHotel, Gare de Lyon. This hotel had extremely small rooms. How small, you ask? Weelll... It had 2 beds, a desk and a bathroom. Teresa took the bed next to the window and I took the one next to the bathroom. When she wanted to walk from the window to the bathroom, I had to stand in the corner to let her pass. If I wanted to walk to the window, I had to turn sideways around the beds. She had to sit on her bed. The bathroom was so small that in the shower, one couldn't bend over to wash one's feet without hitting the sink or falling in the toilet. The toilet paper roll, hung over the toilet seat. I know, it's hard to imagine, uh. (I had to use wide angle on my camera to get the rooms in.)

The purpose of going to Paris was for Teresa to see the updated Notre Dame Cathedral and to go to Mass there. That was her bucket list. I thought seeing the “Grand Lady” would be a treat too. We discovered that reservations for tickets are taken up as soon as they are posted and we read that the unreserved lines into the cathedral are very long so we decided to just go and make a day of getting inside. We took a leisurely walk to get there... about 1.2 miles.

The square in front of the cathedral was packed with people.

Fortunately, we had the inside scoop to get in. At about 11:15 we got in the line for Mass and at 11:30, we went through a special gauntlet inside and to the chairs in front of the altar. Here is Teresa, praying that we will have a quick entrance into the Cathedral for Mass...

We managed to snag front row seats which made Teresa ecstatic. I could see her bucket list filling up. Mass commenced and Mass ended. Behind us, there were a few hundred people also attending Mass. The tourists wandered around the edges of the inside of the cathedral. After Mass, we became tourists and did our own wandering. Take a look. The Cathedral does look spanking new.

This next picture is where a relic of the crown of thorns of Jesus is held.

After Notre Dame, we wandered to the Latin Quarter and ended up at the Luxembourg Gardens for quite awhile, then we walked back to our hotel. Somewhere along the way, we stopped to eat and had the most wonderful onion soup. (In the US it’s called “French Onion Soup” but the “French” part isn’t necessary here, of course.) Here are some miscellaneous pics of our wander….including the soup. (Note: Teresa and I had a few “discussions” about our trek. She insisted that we were going the wrong direction, no matter how often I showed her the google map and said to just follow the blue dots. We were a block off course when we started but google set us right and off we went up hill and down hill. Just sayin”… follow google and you can't go wrong.)