“Travel is glamorous but only in retrospect” says Paul Theroux. I would change this slightly to say that travel is glamorous but only when told later in a story.
This past New Year’s Eve I was at the Eiffel Tower with a friend, Ruth, who is my age. She had journeyed all the way from California because it had been on her bucket list to spend New Year’s near this lighted tower (the most visited monument in the world!)and to watch the fireworks at midnight. I was with her and, with my new iPod, I took this (blurry) picture:
I sent it to friends thinking that this picture was telling a story that was a bit “stretched”. It might look to some as if we are having the time of our lives but the truth is that at the time we both did not see it quite this way. At 11 pm rain was pelting down and we were standing by the Eiffel Tower in the muck. I told Ruth I was not having much fun and wanted to go home (to spend New Year’s at the Eiffel Tower has never been on my bucket list).
I left on foot pushing through crowds and spent an hour looking for a metro. When I found one, it was surprisingly empty of traffic except for roving gangs of what looked like hoodlums to me (they were drinking and shouting). But I also observed some families with children on the train so I guessed that this was typical New Year’s behaviour and I didn’t need to be alarmed. It took me two hours to get home.
My friend faired similarly. She left the Eiffel Tower soon after I did because she was told that, for the first time in many years, there were to be no fireworks this night. “Well,” she said to me on the phone the next day, “if I’d known this, I wouldn’t have come to Paris!”
Here it is two weeks after this event and the memory of it is gathering veils of glamour as I retell the story to friends.
I tell them about not being about to see my way forward in the crowds. People didn’t seem to understand that I needed to get home and they didn’t make space for me (!) To get away from the hordes I started to walk down the dark narrow walkway through the Pont d’Alma tunnel. Suddenly I have an intuition that to walk alone in a dark tunnel would not be wise, plus this passageway has an unsavoury history (this is where Princess Diana met her fate so many years ago). I backtracked and found myself surrounded by people again. I pressed forward along a busy road by the Seine and finally located a metro entrance, went down inside and waited a few minutes for the train to come. On the train a few young men were whooping it up with shouts and laughter. I moved away from them and went to sit close to a family with two toddlers in tow. After another change of trains I was walking up Rue de Gambetta in the 20e and before long fishing for my key to enter the little studio apartment where I was staying. Soon after, I climbed into bed savouring the bliss of being warm and safe and sleepy.
Now that I think about it, I had a really exciting New Year’s – full of me having to navigate through disappointment then danger then on to security. What a good story!
