Introduction
8 May 2004 (Saturday):
Café Leffe, Paris - Another reservation screw-up like in London: I arrived in Paris on the Eurostar late last night (Friday) at Gare du Nord station, and called the person I’m renting the apartment from. She sounded surprised--though not convincingly surprised--and she claimed that she hadn’t heard from me so the apartment was taken. Annoyed, I told her, quite firmly, that I had responded within minutes of the reservation confirmation e-mail arriving. She hemmed and hawed a bit, but she said had another one available.
I stood in line at the taxi stand outside the station, and drew an elderly and somewhat crabby African woman as my taxi driver. I showed her the address in my notebook and away we went through the alien and fairly empty streets.
The taxi driver drove pretty much like you'd expect any urban taxi driver: fast, semi-recklessly, and muttering and occasionally crying out at the idiot pedestrians in her path. Nothing we passed by was familiar to me (I missed seeing Notre Dame though we must have passed it and I didn't recognize the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) until I looked it up in the guidebook the next day).
We stopped on busy Boulevard St. Michel by Place St-Michel, and she waited while I broke a €50 note at a sandwich stand to pay my fare. I threw in what I hoped was an adequate tip (do you tip taxi drivers in Paris? I couldn't remember), and walked across the street, hauling too much baggage on my back, the pressed baguette sandwich I had to buy to break the €50 note stuffed into my jacket pocket.
I met my temporary landlady (one , and I never found out if it was Madame or Mademoiselle), who seemed a bit flustered: first she took me to a different apartment a couple of blocks away--which turned out to be occupied--and then back to the original address. Eventually, she put me in an apartment whose carpet was still wet from shampooing--luckily, I had brought slippers--promising to arrange something the next day. So it was pretty late before I finally fell asleep.
So today is my first morning in Paris. What can I find?
