I just spent 2 days in Paris with the Watkins. It's the same crew as Normandy: Andrew, Catherine, Leslie, Roger, Walter, Nan and myself. We even got to meet one of Andrew's friends from school, Asma.
Paris really is a beautiful city. Until Andrew told us the story, I did not know that the uniformity of the architecture was due to George Haussman, who convinced Napoleon the 3rd to knock down and rebuild the city block by block. The result is wide avenues with sidewalks full of pedestrians and an architecture. It's also so full of history. There are churches and monuments on every corner.
This whirl-wind 2 days truly covered the American in Paris experience from top to bottom. Our days started with breakfast at a Parisian cafe, ended with dinners and wine at a fine restaurants, and were loaded with plenty of architecture and history in between. We walked the Champs Elysee and admired the Arc de Triomphe by night, visited the Louvre (and had the best French Onion soup I've ever tasted there), soaked in La Chapelle and Notre Dame, walked down the Left bank, strolled through the Luxembourg Gardens, had a drink at the Les Deux Margots, climbed the Eiffel Tower, visited the Opera House, and shopped at Chanel. It was a very full 2 days! (A side note: Our extremely kind and attentive sales clerk at Chanel pampered us for an hour, let us take pictures in the famous Chanel foyer, filled bags with freebees and said goodbye to us with "Thank you to the United States for your 3 heroes. [who foiled a terrorist plot on a train earlier in the week]")
I'll let the pictures below and their captions do the talking for the famous sites we saw, but . . . there is one more typical Parisian tourist experience that deserves capturing: pickpockets.
Just for a little background, Walter is a Ft Worth Police Officer and stands out in a crowd. Let's just say he is neither small nor quiet. We were all taking the metro on our last day in Paris (another must-have Parisian experience) to pick up our bags from the hotel before heading to the airport. As we were boarding the train, I heard Leslie say something like, "Help, she's stuck in the door." Sure enough, there was a tiny young woman who had her hand/forearm wedged in between the doors and was desperately trying to get through them. The doors wouldn't budge. Then I hear Walter bellow, "She has my wallet!! " Three other girls about the same size and age as the first were standing just outside the subway car doors, watching the plight of their friend. As soon as Walter yelled, one took off running. Walter pried those doors open like they were toys and took off after the fleeing thief. To add to the bedlam, Nan starts screaming for the Police at the top of her lungs. (Roger later claimed that he had not seen his brother move that fast since high school football). I take off after Walter, assuming he is about to get separated from anybody else that can speak the language or get him to the airport.
I catch up to him in the subway exit tunnel where he has apprehended (and I do mean apprehended like he was on duty in Ft Worth) the fleeing girl who kept protesting in French "It wasn't me!" He was hauling her by the arm the short distance back to the platform where the train was miraculously still there. When we turned the corner, I saw the rest of the family holding the doors open and a stranger trying to hold on girl who had been attempting to get out of the train car. This stranger, Stranger #1, had grabbed her by the wrist and was struggling to hold on. I watched her slide out of her long sleeve shirt and start walk/running to the exit in her bra in an attempt to escape justice. Stranger #1 was left holding a shirt, which he threw after her in disgust. Roger called out to us, "We've got your wallet." So Walter turned loose of his prisoner and hurried back onto the train that was threatening to leave.
Weirdly, the stranger who tried to help us also got back on the subway was chastised in French by another apparent stranger for getting into the middle of the chase, until Stranger #2 realized that I also spoke French and shut up. Stranger #1's response was simply "Thieves are bad for us all."
Our family debriefed and the story emerged that one of the other two girls by the door had been passed Walter's wallet and realized this deal was going South quickly. So she tossed the wallet back through the doors into the train and took off.
Walter and Nan rode an adrenaline high for hours after that encounter. To top it off, we had to turn around and get back on the metro to go to the airport, this time with all our luggage. Walter and Nan were in Viking mode with "don't mess with me" looks painted on their faces until they finally relaxed on the plane out of Paris.
Lessons learned on avoiding theft in Europe:
- The safest place for your passport is at your hotel. If, for some strange reason, you absolutely feel the need to carry it with you then separate it from your money and credit cards.
- Beware of groups of little people bumping into you, especially in the southern countries where pickpockets are plentiful. It's usually a distraction. Along those lines, stay aware of your surroundings by looking around. They usually pick on people that they consider easy targets, such as tourists.
- Keep your hand on anything valuable that you don't want to lose, such as a purse. Walter had (correctly) put his wallet in his front pocket and probably still would have lost it if Leslie had not inadvertently blocked the thieves exit.
- Don't mess with a cop from Texas!
Alls well that ends well, and we'll definitely be retelling about the story of Walter's police work in Paris at every subsequent family gathering.
