1. Getting there
That title is an homage to that melancholic movie "The Last Time I Saw Paris," which is loosely based on a story by and the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love that sappy, melodrama. I must have seen it a dozen times.
But, let me tell you about the first time I saw Paris.
It was in the days when one considered air travel--especially trips across the Atlantic--as great adventures. One dressed up to travel then: I wore a suit and tie, as did most of men when they flew somewhere, and women dressed as if they were going to a party.
I flew into Mexico City the night before the flight to Europe and stayed in a fashionable hotel on Reforma Avenue. It was a quarter past nine by the time I had settled into my room so I decided to go down to the lobby bar for a drink before I went to bed.
I sat on a stool at the bar and ordered a scotch on the rocks. (I felt that if I ordered my usual drink, a beer, I'd look like the young "innocent abroad" I was then.) When he heard what I had ordered, the man next to me at the bar said in accented Spanish, "¡Ah, yo también estoy tomando eso!" And, he told the bartender that he wanted another Scotch on the rocks and to put my drink on his tab because he was buying me a drink.
I turned to say that there was no need for that but he interrupted me with a laugh and said in English, "We scotch drinkers have to stay together." I had no idea what he meant by that but I smiled and raised my glass to him when the bartender brought our drinks.
He was an older man, as the bushy white mustache and bushy white hair attested. The lady sitting next to him knitting--I later found out--was his wife. There was a champagne glass, with some pinkish stuff it in, standing on the bar in front of her, although she never drank from it. She just knitted and knitted.
The man was gregarious, to say the least. He put out his hand to shake mine, and asked me if I was "from around here" but before I could answer he told me he was going back home to Italy the next day on the eleven o'clock KLM flight to Amsterdam where he would catch a connecting flight to "Milano". I managed to get a word in and told him I too was on that flight but my connecting flight was to Paris.
To him, this coincidence was cause for a celebration so he asked for more scotch for him and for me. His wife, without looking up from her knitting, said something in Italian which I did not understand but took to mean something like "You're drinking to much."
After three scotches I was feeling woozy so I excused myself by saying I had to call home to let them know I had arrived safely. The man thought I was calling my wife and I didn't disabuse him of that idea thinking it would be embarrassing to clarify that I was calling my mother. I was only twenty-three at the time.
After I called mom, I set up the travel alarm clock my sister had given me. I set it for eight o'clock, and as a measure of safety, I called the front desk and asked for a wakeup call for fifteen minutes past eight. It turned out that I didn't need either because I was so excited about the trip that I woke up at seven. I showered and shaved (showers took longer than the shaving in those days), and I dressed in a freshly pressed suit that came promptly as eight thirty as I had ordered room service to do so.
I was at the airport a half past nine, way too early in those days even for an international flight. The KLM people had coffee service at the gate, so I asked for a cup and a newspaper and then sat down to wait for the boarding call. I had just taken my first sip when I heard a booming voice behind me say, "Ah, we meet again!" It was the man from the bar. He was walking up to me with an outstretched hand. Behind him was his wife. She was knitting.
I put the newspaper down and managed to put the coffee on a nearby table so I could shake his hand. He told me he had had a headache when he woke up and that he thought it was due to the fact that the scotch we had been given the night before wasn't "the real stuff." He asked if I had had a headache. I hadn't but I lied and said I did out of a strange sense of solidarity. He and his wife sat down next to me and when he saw my boarding pass sticking out of my suit's handkerchief pocket, he asked where I was sitting. I showed him my boarding pass and he noticed it was marked "First Class." He slapped me on the back and said loudly, "You must be a rich young man, traveling first class." I felt myself blushing since he had said that loud enough for all the people in the waiting area to hear. I managed to stammer that, no, I wasn't rich but rather that the corporation I worked for insisted that people traveling on business using the corporate name must stay in certain hotels and travel in first class when available. (Sigh, those were the days!)
He started to say something when the announcement for first class passengers to board came over the loudspeaker. I got up, a little relieved that I was going to be free of this boisterous man but then I was quite surprised to see that he got up and his wife got up as well. Then, as if all of the past coincidences had not been enough, he said, "You know what? We are sitting on the same row! I think you are sitting just across the aisle from us! What luck!"
Indeed, he asked his wife (who never stopped knitting for a second) to sit on the window seat, and he sat on the aisle side seat, just across from my aisle side seat. Yes! What luck!
Even before we took off, the stewardess came along asking us if we wanted something to drink. Before I could say "no," he had ordered scotch on the rocks for both of us. "Now we'll get some of the real stuff," he promised.
It was a long sixteen hour flight, in those days, because KLM made a stop in Houston, Texas before heading across the Atlantic to Amsterdam. But, I wasn't aware of that because the entire flight was a blur. The man kept ordering scotch for the both of us throughout the flight. When they brought us food, I hardly touched it because he kept insisting I drink wine and then an "liqour." His wife knitted the whole time but kept saying things to him in Italian which I think were warnings that he was drinking too much and making me drink too much as well. Through the haze of alcohol, I remember that he showed me pictures of his son and of a red Ferrari. He told me his son had crashed it into a lake and that he was going home to buy him another car, also a Ferrari. I think he said he was the owner of a famous bicycle manufacturing firm, one well known for it racing bicycles as well.
The landing in Amsterdam was one of the roughest I've ever experienced. We landed amidst a terrible snow blizzard. Thank goodness that the KLM pilots knew their stuff because outside the windows it was a complete white out. We only knew we had landed when the plane hit the runway with a sharp "thump". Some people clapped in relief. I was so drunk that the plane could have crashed and I would not have noticed.
I stumbled off the plane and into the busy airport lounge. I looked at my wrist thinking I'd find my watch there but to my annoyance my wrist watch was missing and I only had a white band of un-sunburned skin on my wrist. I looked around and saw a sign pointing to the duty free shops. So, I followed the signs and went into the a shop that had wristwatches on display. I bought a cheap digital watch, which were a novelty in those days, and I had just paid for it when again, behind me, I heard the now familiar voice of the man from the bar, and from the plane--and his knitting wife.
"Ah, my friend, what are you buying there?"
I turned and managed a smile. "I just bought a wristwatch. I think I left mine in the hotel room in Mexico City.!
"Ah, don't worry. They will keep it for you. When you go back you can claim it." He moved closer and put on a mock sad face. He said, "I am afraid I have some bad news for you."
That cheered me up a bit because I thought the bad news was they would have to leave right away.
"Our flights have been canceled!" He said and laughed. I had no idea why this made him laugh. I was annoyed, although again, out of some silly sense of friendship, I managed a not-to-convincing chuckle.
"The good news is, we can go into Amsterdam and have a drink!"
This put the fear of God into my heart,
"But, what about our flights?" I blurted.
"Oh, they said that maybe in the late afternoon, when the storm is less, we can go. So, come on, we go to Amsterdam."
He took me by the arm and rushed me through the crowded airport. Before I had a sense of where I was we were rushing along in a taxi that was slipping and sliding over the snow. Although the windshield wipers were on, I could not see where we were going. The taxi just rushed along through the heavy snowfall. I think that taxi driver knew by memory where the turns and stops were because he barely looked forward but rather kept turning toward the back seat. He was having a lively conversation with my companion in what I took to be German.
When the cab came to a stop, we got out in a narrow street that had lots of signs announcing bars, cafés, and restaurants. People were about despite the snow. The bars, cafés, and restaurants all had windows cheerfully lit up. We went into the nearest bar.
This time he did not order scotch but rather large pints of beer. He said that the dutch and the belgians make great beers so that is what we should have.
We did. We had lots of beer.
When we left the bar, it was nearly dark. "What time is it?" I asked, forgetting that I had a watch.
"Oh, it's early. Only four o'clock."
"Aren't we going to miss our flights?" I asked not out of worry but rather out of curiosity. I was way past any sort of worrying by then. I was numb from the alcohol and the cold.
We didn't miss our flights. We got back to the airport just in time to get on board. I really don't remember much of how I got on the plane or anything about the brief flight to Paris. I slept most of the way. The stewardess woke me up to tell me I had to bring my seat back up because we were about to land. I looked out the window. The sun shone on the Seine: it looked like a flow of molten gold.
I smiled as the thump of the wheels of the plane hit the tarmac. I was in Paris.
Next posting: 2. Paris--the ride into town
That title is an homage to that melancholic movie "The Last Time I Saw Paris," which is loosely based on a story by and the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love that sappy, melodrama. I must have seen it a dozen times.
But, let me tell you about the first time I saw Paris.
It was in the days when one considered air travel--especially trips across the Atlantic--as great adventures. One dressed up to travel then: I wore a suit and tie, as did most of men when they flew somewhere, and women dressed as if they were going to a party.
I flew into Mexico City the night before the flight to Europe and stayed in a fashionable hotel on Reforma Avenue. It was a quarter past nine by the time I had settled into my room so I decided to go down to the lobby bar for a drink before I went to bed.
I sat on a stool at the bar and ordered a scotch on the rocks. (I felt that if I ordered my usual drink, a beer, I'd look like the young "innocent abroad" I was then.) When he heard what I had ordered, the man next to me at the bar said in accented Spanish, "¡Ah, yo también estoy tomando eso!" And, he told the bartender that he wanted another Scotch on the rocks and to put my drink on his tab because he was buying me a drink.
I turned to say that there was no need for that but he interrupted me with a laugh and said in English, "We scotch drinkers have to stay together." I had no idea what he meant by that but I smiled and raised my glass to him when the bartender brought our drinks.
He was an older man, as the bushy white mustache and bushy white hair attested. The lady sitting next to him knitting--I later found out--was his wife. There was a champagne glass, with some pinkish stuff it in, standing on the bar in front of her, although she never drank from it. She just knitted and knitted.
The man was gregarious, to say the least. He put out his hand to shake mine, and asked me if I was "from around here" but before I could answer he told me he was going back home to Italy the next day on the eleven o'clock KLM flight to Amsterdam where he would catch a connecting flight to "Milano". I managed to get a word in and told him I too was on that flight but my connecting flight was to Paris.
To him, this coincidence was cause for a celebration so he asked for more scotch for him and for me. His wife, without looking up from her knitting, said something in Italian which I did not understand but took to mean something like "You're drinking to much."
After three scotches I was feeling woozy so I excused myself by saying I had to call home to let them know I had arrived safely. The man thought I was calling my wife and I didn't disabuse him of that idea thinking it would be embarrassing to clarify that I was calling my mother. I was only twenty-three at the time.
After I called mom, I set up the travel alarm clock my sister had given me. I set it for eight o'clock, and as a measure of safety, I called the front desk and asked for a wakeup call for fifteen minutes past eight. It turned out that I didn't need either because I was so excited about the trip that I woke up at seven. I showered and shaved (showers took longer than the shaving in those days), and I dressed in a freshly pressed suit that came promptly as eight thirty as I had ordered room service to do so.
I was at the airport a half past nine, way too early in those days even for an international flight. The KLM people had coffee service at the gate, so I asked for a cup and a newspaper and then sat down to wait for the boarding call. I had just taken my first sip when I heard a booming voice behind me say, "Ah, we meet again!" It was the man from the bar. He was walking up to me with an outstretched hand. Behind him was his wife. She was knitting.
I put the newspaper down and managed to put the coffee on a nearby table so I could shake his hand. He told me he had had a headache when he woke up and that he thought it was due to the fact that the scotch we had been given the night before wasn't "the real stuff." He asked if I had had a headache. I hadn't but I lied and said I did out of a strange sense of solidarity. He and his wife sat down next to me and when he saw my boarding pass sticking out of my suit's handkerchief pocket, he asked where I was sitting. I showed him my boarding pass and he noticed it was marked "First Class." He slapped me on the back and said loudly, "You must be a rich young man, traveling first class." I felt myself blushing since he had said that loud enough for all the people in the waiting area to hear. I managed to stammer that, no, I wasn't rich but rather that the corporation I worked for insisted that people traveling on business using the corporate name must stay in certain hotels and travel in first class when available. (Sigh, those were the days!)
He started to say something when the announcement for first class passengers to board came over the loudspeaker. I got up, a little relieved that I was going to be free of this boisterous man but then I was quite surprised to see that he got up and his wife got up as well. Then, as if all of the past coincidences had not been enough, he said, "You know what? We are sitting on the same row! I think you are sitting just across the aisle from us! What luck!"
Indeed, he asked his wife (who never stopped knitting for a second) to sit on the window seat, and he sat on the aisle side seat, just across from my aisle side seat. Yes! What luck!
Even before we took off, the stewardess came along asking us if we wanted something to drink. Before I could say "no," he had ordered scotch on the rocks for both of us. "Now we'll get some of the real stuff," he promised.
It was a long sixteen hour flight, in those days, because KLM made a stop in Houston, Texas before heading across the Atlantic to Amsterdam. But, I wasn't aware of that because the entire flight was a blur. The man kept ordering scotch for the both of us throughout the flight. When they brought us food, I hardly touched it because he kept insisting I drink wine and then an "liqour." His wife knitted the whole time but kept saying things to him in Italian which I think were warnings that he was drinking too much and making me drink too much as well. Through the haze of alcohol, I remember that he showed me pictures of his son and of a red Ferrari. He told me his son had crashed it into a lake and that he was going home to buy him another car, also a Ferrari. I think he said he was the owner of a famous bicycle manufacturing firm, one well known for it racing bicycles as well.
The landing in Amsterdam was one of the roughest I've ever experienced. We landed amidst a terrible snow blizzard. Thank goodness that the KLM pilots knew their stuff because outside the windows it was a complete white out. We only knew we had landed when the plane hit the runway with a sharp "thump". Some people clapped in relief. I was so drunk that the plane could have crashed and I would not have noticed.
I stumbled off the plane and into the busy airport lounge. I looked at my wrist thinking I'd find my watch there but to my annoyance my wrist watch was missing and I only had a white band of un-sunburned skin on my wrist. I looked around and saw a sign pointing to the duty free shops. So, I followed the signs and went into the a shop that had wristwatches on display. I bought a cheap digital watch, which were a novelty in those days, and I had just paid for it when again, behind me, I heard the now familiar voice of the man from the bar, and from the plane--and his knitting wife.
"Ah, my friend, what are you buying there?"
I turned and managed a smile. "I just bought a wristwatch. I think I left mine in the hotel room in Mexico City.!
"Ah, don't worry. They will keep it for you. When you go back you can claim it." He moved closer and put on a mock sad face. He said, "I am afraid I have some bad news for you."
That cheered me up a bit because I thought the bad news was they would have to leave right away.
"Our flights have been canceled!" He said and laughed. I had no idea why this made him laugh. I was annoyed, although again, out of some silly sense of friendship, I managed a not-to-convincing chuckle.
"The good news is, we can go into Amsterdam and have a drink!"
This put the fear of God into my heart,
"But, what about our flights?" I blurted.
"Oh, they said that maybe in the late afternoon, when the storm is less, we can go. So, come on, we go to Amsterdam."
He took me by the arm and rushed me through the crowded airport. Before I had a sense of where I was we were rushing along in a taxi that was slipping and sliding over the snow. Although the windshield wipers were on, I could not see where we were going. The taxi just rushed along through the heavy snowfall. I think that taxi driver knew by memory where the turns and stops were because he barely looked forward but rather kept turning toward the back seat. He was having a lively conversation with my companion in what I took to be German.
When the cab came to a stop, we got out in a narrow street that had lots of signs announcing bars, cafés, and restaurants. People were about despite the snow. The bars, cafés, and restaurants all had windows cheerfully lit up. We went into the nearest bar.
This time he did not order scotch but rather large pints of beer. He said that the dutch and the belgians make great beers so that is what we should have.
We did. We had lots of beer.
When we left the bar, it was nearly dark. "What time is it?" I asked, forgetting that I had a watch.
"Oh, it's early. Only four o'clock."
"Aren't we going to miss our flights?" I asked not out of worry but rather out of curiosity. I was way past any sort of worrying by then. I was numb from the alcohol and the cold.
We didn't miss our flights. We got back to the airport just in time to get on board. I really don't remember much of how I got on the plane or anything about the brief flight to Paris. I slept most of the way. The stewardess woke me up to tell me I had to bring my seat back up because we were about to land. I looked out the window. The sun shone on the Seine: it looked like a flow of molten gold.
I smiled as the thump of the wheels of the plane hit the tarmac. I was in Paris.
Next posting: 2. Paris--the ride into town
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