DAY 1: Paris – Metz

Wow! What an interesting first day. Riel and I flew into Paris on Friday morning from Vancouver. Once the plane landed I got shuttled via bus to the terminal to find myself squeezed into a staircase with approximately 200 people and no air conditioning. Airport personnel informed us that the electricity had shut down and the electronic sliding doors were unable to open. So after hanging out in the staircase for about 20 minutes and sweating like a dog, the doors finally opened and I headed to go pick up my luggage. Some of you may be wondering why we wouldn’t just wait outside the terminal? Well, that’s a great question, however, it was pouring rain out, so sweating indoors was the better alternative. 

Once at the luggage carousel, again I found myself enclosed in a small area sweating like a dog, but only this time it was with approximately 1000 people stuck in a little terminal with two carousels. Since the electricity was still down, we couldn’t get our luggage. So we waited. And waited we did for about an hour. It was pretty miserable, especially after traveling for 14 hours. 

Yes! Finally, my luggage came out and poor Riel having flown in a couple hours earlier with another airline, was waiting outside for me. We headed to the train station to get tickets for the TGV (fast train) to Metz, France where we would be staying the evening with Fabienne, who I will elaborate on in a moment. Of course I didn’t get a chance to purchase our train tickets online prior to leaving Vancouver, so we had to stand in the huge ticketing line up for almost half an hour. Our train was scheduled to leave in 40mins, and the next one wasn’t for a few hours. So we got lucky. 

Fabienne was there to greet us at Lorraine Station. She was absolutely wonderful. Fabienne is Fred’s cousin, who lives in France with her husband Remy, and Fred is my boyfriend’s uncle who lives in Winnipeg but has a car stored in France, and who was kind enough to lend it to us for our trip. 

Our evening at Fabienne’s home with her three cats was delightful. We slept, talked, and ate wonderful French food. She made a marvelous ratatouille dish. After dinner she gave us a tour of Metz in the car, and showed us the new Modern Art Gallery that was being built. Her hospitality was magnifique.