Paris March 2024

I work with people in Paris. Nearly all of my team is there. I used to go there a lot but first Covid and then I was sick… hadn’t been there in 4.5 years. When I was last there in September 2019 I would never have believed that it would take so many years until I was back. But now I was. I knew it would be very exhausting but I still wanted to go. Hadn’t seen my colleagues for so many years. It was time to go back. The train ride was an adventure because first we couldn’t get into the train station in Brussels because no track was free and behind the border to France we suddenly stood… and stood… and stood… technical problem. Finally the driver was able to get the train running again and we arrived about 30 minutes late in Paris. Next issue… buy a ticket for RATP. In the past that was not an issue but now it seems to be. Tourists at the machines having no clue what to buy and nobody there to help. I thought I had bought the correct ticket. When I arrived at Place de l’Etoile first thing I saw was that my exit to Champs Elysees was closed. Okay… take the only other one available. I came up and the system wouldn’t let me exit. When I showed my ticket on the exit I got the ‚mööööööp‘. Since again there was nobody to help I asked other people for help and I got it. Exiting I found that I was at the opposite side of Arc de Triomphe of where I needed to go… take a walk around it.
I arrived at the office rather late. One of my favorite colleagues was there and she helped me buying a muffin for lunch but then I didn’t really have time to eat it. One of my female colleagues told me that we should have a drink that day… and I agreed even though I knew it was too much. But in the past we were only two females in the team and now we are 4. And all of us were in the office that day so I HAD to go out with them. But I didn’t want to do it with my luggage. So I went to check in at the hotel before going back to the office for my ‚Ladies night‘. I was given a room at the 5th floor with the information that the elevator had just broken down. Oooops. 😀 I was offered to have someone bring me my luggage upstairs but I didn’t have time to wait for someone…. so I made it upstairs myself. Went back to the office immediately and we went to a restaurant that I had seen many times but never been and I really liked it. The ladies had cocktails while I stayed with white wine and finally had something to eat. 😉 When I was finally back at the hotel I was exhausted.
The next day I had already walked so much in the office that in the evening after work I only took a short walk along Champs Elysees. Paris has a lot of construction going on to ‚pretty up‘ for the Olympics this summer. So I noticed this. 😉
The next day was already my last full day before going home and I wanted to go to the Trocadero to see the Eiffel Tower. It is a nice spot where I had been a lot in the past. I hadn’t been sure if I would be able to make it back there but I REALLY wanted to. So I was more careful in the office about how many steps I would take (which is an indicator about keeping an eye on what I still can do – or not). I left the office earlier than the previous day (but I had been there early again) and started my walk over to the Trocadero. It really isn’t that far. Maybe 1/1.5 km? So I made it and when I arrived I got emotional about finally being back there after so many years. There are golden statues between the museums at the Trocadero from where you have the nice view to the Eiffel Tower. After I had taken my pic of the golden statue with the Eiffel Tower I was standing on the wall of the fountain next to the statue and thought ‚Ooooops, how am I supposed to get down from here?‘ 😀 I made it down without accident though. 😉 And I was really happy to have been back there. Usually I might have walked downhill towards the Eiffel Tower but apart from the fact that it would have been too much for me, most of the area below was closed of for construction.
The last day I asked one of my colleagues to help me with the ticket for the RER so I wouldn’t buy the wrong one (to the train station Gare du Nord). Even though upon arrival I DID buy the correct one. I told my colleague that I still had several tickets from 2019 and she said ‚We will activate them again.‘ And to my big surprise RATP (the Paris public transport) accepted the old tickets and they were activated again. There is a major difference in price from 2019 to today but didn’t matter. In Cologne they would never have accepted 5 year old tickets (at least not without having to pay the price difference of 5 years). In Paris it worked. 🙂
And then I went home again. Trip home was uneventful. My watch told me that over the past 7 days I had walked 30 km. Which might not be a lot for everyone else but for me it was… and my legs were complaining. But it was OK since I had known from the beginning that this would be a challenge. I made it and am happy about it. 🙂