Paris: Rain, Rain, Go Away

It was a rainy night in Paris
And I'm sittin' by the Seine
It's a pleasure to be soaking in
the European rain

And my belly's full of fancy food and wine
But I know that it's going to get me
Somewhere down the line

(Thanks to Billy Joel for that intro!)

Second day in Paris. Yesterday hotter than HADES. Nearly 30 c, muggy, dirty feeling, polluted. Not a good intro to the city of lights.

Took the ICE from Frankfurt; the cool thing about the ICE in France is that it HAULS ASS. 280km / hour plus. That is some moving your hiney down the road. From Saarbrucken to Paris is half the trip in terms of distance. In fact, MORE than half. But much much less than half the time.

We got into the Paris Est stop, and took a taxi. I swear I was questioning the whole decision to visit, for the first two kilometers. Not a good neighborhood, nothing there that says, "NOW you are in just the place you want to be." In fact, it was more like "NOW you are in a third world country with no traffic laws and little chance of escaping with your property intact."

Mr. Taxi man was defending us pretty well, though. Using the "French emergency brake" (ie, the horn) liberally, he got us out into busy traffic by the simple expedient of....simply pulling out into traffic. It is true that this show of bravado did cause traffic to stop, at the cost of many Commodore Hornblowers attacking us broadside. But our Mr. Taxi was unmoved...literally. He waited until there was an inch, and took a mile. And we were off, down footpaths and goatpaths.

We got to our hotel, after learning that the idea of "stop" and "lane" have not really arrived in Paris. Not that we were complaining, since we were big fans of the "getting out" idea. And, when we did get out, we found our hotel was....odd.

But that is a story for tomorrow. Tomorrow is the rainiest day in the history of the world. Or at least the rainiest day this month.