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Saturday, March 24th, Badalona, Spain
Here we are back "home" after a wonderful weekend in
Paris. Our
first class accommodations were located two blocks from
the Eiffel Tower, on the left bank of the Seine.
The view of the infamous Paris landmark, twinkling every
night on the hour, was breathtaking.
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Chris, Kim, Daniel (13) and Caroline (10) Sheehey have lived in Paris for
the last 18 months. Chris works as in-house
counsel for a French company that deals in aggregates.
Their luxurious corner apartment also afforded a view of
the river and the Trocadero,
seen here on a foggy day.
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The perks of the ex-pat life are evident, although
dealing with the intricacies of the French bureaucracy
and workplace are challenging for all of them. Kim
takes advantage of her days while the kids are off at
the American School by participating in several weekly
tour groups. We benefited tremendously from her inside
knowledge of Paris and her willingness to share her
insights; not the least of which consisted of some truly
fantastic meals at authentic French restaurants.
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We
also took advantage of having the older kids around to
baby-sit so the adults could share, count them, three
such evenings out. What a treat that was for Joe
and me, as we rarely get an opportunity for a night on
the town. One evening we were lucky enough to hook
up with another old friend, Dermot Cease, who has been
living in Paris for the last 20 some years. We
managed to get a hold of him while we were there and
celebrated Saint Patti's Day together at one of the many
Irish bars in Paris.
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It
sure is nice having friends to hook up with when you
travel. We also met up with Melora, a long time
friend of Joe's sister, Juliana, and her boyfriend
David, who treated us to a wonderful brunch at their
apartment on Sunday morning. Nothing like some
fresh croissant, pan au chocolat, omelets and French
cheese to go with your French champagne for brunch.
Our first day of touring started out with a bang,
literally. We traveled some 600 miles by airplane,
leaving our boat behind in Barcelona, only to experience
our first boating accident since we moved onboard!
How can that be, you ask? Given the misty, gray
conditions on our first day there, we opted for the
river boat tour in one of the well heated, glass
enclosed barges that give frequent hour long tours up
and down the Seine. Moments after embarking, while
listening to our guide's introduction of the tour in
five different languages (I think she was on her last
one), we noticed that the boat was veering sharply to
the right, heading directly towards the base of the
first bridge we were to go under. She was
speaking, facing backwards on the boat and looking at
all of our increasingly incredulous faces. She
finally turned around in time to see us plow directly
into the piling of the bridge. Luckily we weren't
going too fast and no one was injured, but the boat took
a nice little chunk out of the concrete of the piling.
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After all the excitement and hubbub, we wound up
switching boats, collecting another group of passengers,
and embarking on our voyage anew. Although they
never told us exactly what caused the mishap, we have to
assume that something went wrong with the steering
mechanism as there was a captain at the helm the whole
time. In the end, the trip was well worth it, both
for the wonderful views of Parisian landmarks, as well
as the incredible irony of the situation.
I'll post a photo page with more details of the trip but
suffice it to say, Paris is an amazing city.
Granted, it costs an arm and a leg to do ANYTHING, but
you have to know this going in and forget about it.
Our first breakfast of pastries and coffee at the
neighborhood boulangerie
cost us 26 Euros! After that, we stopped paying
attention to the prices. After all, you don't go to Paris to
worry about how much money you are spending. For me, the worst is when people ask me if it
was my first visit there. I have to admit that I
had been there on a school trip once in high school, 25
years ago. Damn I am getting old!
Upon our return to Barcelona, we knew we would be
spending our first night in a hotel and had reserved one
within walking distance of the girls' school. We had hoped
that our boat would be ready to go back into the water
on Wednesday. Never assume that the work you hire
out will be done while you are off on vacation.
Our contact informed us happily on Tuesday morning that
they had already applied one of the two coats of bottom
paint and would be starting the wax job as soon as the
paint was dry. We resigned ourselves to more money
and a few more nights in the hotel. Luckily, they
were able to finish in time to splash us before they
quit working at 5pm on Friday. Otherwise, it would
have been the whole weekend at the hotel.
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Instead, we are all thrilled to be back home. We
had a great impromptu party on Raiatea last night.
They had also been out of the water in a boatyard for
their annual maintenance and they pulled up to the dock
within an hour of our arrival. Of course our
neighbors Roland and Mar were also here to join the fun.
Sam had invited some of the marinaros
that worked on his boat to come for a drink and they all
took him up on the offer. It was a great
opportunity to practice my Spanish so I found myself
drinking wine and talking about everything from fishing
to kids to languages until midnight. My Spanish
would be a lot better if I had more opportunities like
that one to practice.
We
are thrilled to report that Joe's mom and sister are
coming out for a visit! They will come for about a
week in early April so it looks like we will be in
Barcelona until the middle of the month. We are so
excited to spend Easter with them and to show them
around our city.
Hope everyone's weekend is great. Drop us a line
when you have a minute. We'd love to hear what is
going on with all of you.
Next Entry
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Many thanks to our friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
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