Paris 2019, Day 2

November 28, 2019

Its been quite a day and it’s only 2:49 pm.  We started with an early alarm so we could leave the hotel by 8:30.  Our plan was to find the meeting place, identify our tour guide and visit Napoleon’s private apartment in the Lourve.  There was more "Humboldt drizzle" as we turned right, then realized the numbers were going the wrong way, turn around, cross the street and eventually find our meeting place.  We were 40 minutes early (we like to plan for plenty of time to get lost several times} and several times, we’ve needed every extra minute we budgeted.  

Eventually we found a tour guide (not ours) who informed us that the apartments were closed on Thursdays for maintenance.  Yes, every Thursday, including today.

Using my "pleasant, patient" voice, I said, okay how do we get a refund?  Since it's your company's error, can we reschedule?  She immediately pulled out her phone to text the company giving them our information and letting them know that we were willing to reschedule.  And now we wait.  Eventually, Ivan, the head tour guide, approached us to let us know that his company had made a huge mistake and offered to reschedule our tour to tomorrow at 10 am.  This was HIS tour, he assured us that he was an expert and was very funny and guaranteed that he would take special care of us tomorrow ensuring that we would completely enjoy ourselves.  How do you argue with that kind of guarantee?

I've never had a problem with human error.  It's really about attitude and how a problem will be resolved.  The company took ownership of the error and set about getting it resolved to our satisfaction,  Looking forward to tomorrow's experience.

[Update:  just got a call from the tour company.  It's not happening this trip as this is a very special tour and a guide is not available (wonder what happened to Ivan?).  She offered tickets to the Lourve or a refund ... which will be refunded to my account in four days.  They were very apologetic, but our tour isn't available.  I'm bummed.]

So we went shopping!  That would have been perfect timing to go out and find the fabric store I want to visit, but Sharon's purse now weighted in at half a ton (I hefted it and can verify it was darned heavy) so we decided to head back to the hotel to unload our "stuff" and regroup.

Today has rained off and on and then the sun came out blinding me.  I had left my sunnies in the room as the Weather Channel predicted 60% chance of rain all day and cloudy all day.  It lied.  Once we returned to the room I grabbed my sunnies and stuck them in my purse, guaranteeing that there would be no sun peakage the rest of the afternoon.

One of the cool things we have been noticing are shoes.  European men and women have the most stylish shoes I've ever seen!  I was noticing but not saying anything aloud when Sharon mused aloud that she had been noticing people's shoes.  I agreed and now I was fixated.  Today I began photographing shoes.  Haven't decided if I'm going to write about shoes, or just pepper my thoughts and pictures randomly.  Stay tuned for some interesting examples of shoes (or now that I've discovered this fact, perhaps I'll not see anymore good examples).

We decided to spend the afternoon in Vincennes, near the castle of King Henry of France and Queen Mary of France and Scotland.  We visited this beautiful venue several years ago when we discovered a favorite restaurant, La Table des Troy.  We visit them each trip.  Yum!  Today we each had a salad.  Eventually we'll return for a dinner, looking forward to Steak au Poivre

We wandered the neighborhood window shopping which was great fun and then suddenly I was cold and just a bit tired. Back to the room and dealt with more PC drama ... which I fixed moments before flinging my Surface out the window and sat down to write about the day and Sharon laid down for "just a minute".  She's back there sawing logs :).

Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family.  We'e having a lovely time, we hope you are as well.

Shon and Sharon