Ahh, Paree!
At my income level, nothing is more important than price when booking a flight. I will endure multiple lay-overs, crowded seats, and bad airlines just to book that lowest price on kayak.com. By an interesting chain of events, booking that low price had an added bonus when leaving Cairo. It gave Nic and I a three day layover in Paris.
Oh Paris! Nic, who is a huge Francophile, had been to Paris before and I had too my freshman year of college. Since both of us had been to Paris before, we kept the sightseeing down to a minimum. Just Versailles. Versailles, the palace of the Sun King and the home of Marie Antoinette (at least before she was locked in a tower, is of course anything but “minimum.” It is ridiculous. We waited in line with every other American, Australian, Asian, etc. tourist in the whole of France for two hours.
Versailles, with it’s crazy wallpaper, room full of 50 chandeliers, and lots of paintings of not very handsome looking people, (royal inter-marriage didn’t do much for looks apparently), was gaudy and exciting. After looking at the 5th room that Marie Antoinette redid in gold leaf though, even a curious tourist like myself was ready to run at the old Queen with a machete screaming, “Viva la Revolucion!” Monarchy did not live in reality.
And we didn’t really either in Paris. We were on the 22nd floor of the Le Meridien and there was a slight drizzle for the three days. Also, the neverending movements were beginning to get to us. We barely went out! Instead of climbing the Eiffel Tower again, we mostly had room service and watched bizarre French music videos.
3 day weekends (in Paris) are nice.
