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A Frustrating Day

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Day 4,      Wednesday, September 3, 2025

We are still jet lagged, me more so than Bob.  After a quiet morning we decide to find an Orange store to buy a SIM card for Bob’s phone.  Not so easy,  We walked about twenty minutes to the first store, only to discover that it was an Orange office building, no sales!  Next we take the metro to another Orange store in a big shopping centre, only to discover that they do not sell SIM cards (go figure!) and they send us to a Tabac store in the mall.  They only have one kind of SIM, and it isn’t one that will work for us…so we Google the location of another Orange store closer to the centre of Paris, take the metro again and surprise!  They don’t sell SIMS either! Turns out we have to download an E-SIM.  We sat down in the store to do that, thinking that if we have problems we could at least get some help, only to find that our Koodo roaming plan isn’t working again!  AARGH!  Enough…we quit and decided to go find a patisserie and buy some pastries .

We pass a world Heritage site, the Tour Saint-Jacques, a tenth century tower that is all that remains of the Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie Church. It always amazes me to see that something so ancient has managed to survive in the middle of a city.

We pass this interesting fellow dancing in the street, and he smiles after Continue reading →

We Are In Paris

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Day 2, Monday, September 1, 2025

Our flight had several turbulent episodes but nothing too scary. We were flying on the Dreamliner…a huge plane. I can’t sleep on a plane so I was very grateful to be able to watch movies all night long.
We walk down steps onto the runway, board a bus and drive to our terminal. During this bus trip I lost my balance and started to slowly fall backwards! Bob and another gentleman caught me before I hit the floor so all was well and everyone had a good laugh.

We pass through customs in Paris and our suitcases are waiting for us on the carousel. It is always a relief to see they have arrived. We added a roaming package on our home cell and it started working as soon as we landed. So much easier than trying to find somewhere to buy a SIM card at the airport, especially as the only SIM card store we saw was closed.

We caught the RER train into Paris, and then an Uber for the last part of the trip to our Airbnb. I chatted in French with the driver and we had a nice conversation.

Our cell worked really well until we got outside our Airbnb and then it didn’t work at all and we couldn’t message our hosts to let them know we were here! We stood outside for about five minutes after knocking repeatedly on the door. Then a little four year-old boy looked at us from the upstairs window and smiled, and I asked in French if his mommy was home and he shook his head no, then I asked if his daddy was home and he shook his head yes, so I asked him to get his daddy and tell him that we were here.

That worked and we were able to get inside. We had a nap, went for a few groceries, made a simple supper and then bed.