Travel tips. Who doesn’t love them? I’m going to chuck in the odd thing I’ve learned along the way … I’d love to hear your favourite travel tips.
Travel tip #1 – Flying – My advice is to reserve your seats early, but the day before your flight review your booking and look for sections of the plane that may be emptier than others – change seats if there is a better option. When reserving your seats spread out your group. For example, for the four of us, we reserved the window and aisle seat of a window row and the same in the row behind leaving the middle seat up for grabs. If the plane is full you might get a single stranger stuck in the middle of two of you, but if you’re lucky they’ll be left free and you’ll have some room to spread out. None of us like sitting in the middle seat so this works for us. Apologies to the lovely young men from Italy and Saudi Arabia who were sandwiched between Scott’s for 17 hours.
Day 3 was in many regards a waste of a day. With a 2.40pm flight and needing to be at the airport at 11.40am there wasn’t really enough time (or energy to be honest) to do anything in the morning other than pack, chill and try to drink through the 12 enormous bottles of water Murray had purchased the day before. A bargain 19 AED taxi ride saw us back at the very modern, sleek and functional Dubai airport, the only glitch was again the smart gates did not like my face and I needed to go through the ‘open your eyes’ debacle of our arrival. Before long we were buckled in on our 7-ish-hour flight to Paris. While we were seated within touching distance of the pilots alas we were still in the economy section, with all the luxury parts of the plane agonisingly close, but out of reach upstairs. Our seat booking strategy worked and with the kids taking a window seat each, Murray and I on an aisle each pair had a spare seat in between to spread out a bit.
While the flight was uneventful we all agreed that this flight dragged more than the 17-hour flight of the other day. We decided it was due to the fact this flight was all in broad daylight, with no darkness to put your body into a go-slow mode. Between meals, breaking my enforced two-day Dubai Dry July with a G&T, half-heartedly starting and abandoning about nine different movies, Christian and I played a heated Yahtzee challenge which saw me come out on top with a win rate of 11-5, better luck next time Champ. Great to see all my time spent rolling dice in the 80s has not gone to waste.
Arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport was a 30-year backward timewarp. After disembarking the plane we walked for miles before joining a queue where there was a grand total of two immigration officers. Thankfully an actual human could tell that I looked enough like my passport to not have to take off my glasses and hold my eyes apart. Another long walk, this time on undulating travelators, and through a perspex tunnel across an atrium where we could see many other of the same tunnels cutting through the open space at random angles in a very Jetson-like formation. The tunnel spat us out at the baggage claim where we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. When finally our luggage arrived at about 9pm we tried to interpret the instructions that our transfer driver had sent by text chain that went as follows:
8.09pm ‘Hello, I’m your driver.’
8.18pm ‘You see terminal 1 is located in Ardygul. Yes, come in, it’s the elevators, when the luggage gets it, press this number three button and get off 24d, text me, I’ll be there soon.
8.29pm *Murray lets him know we are at the baggage carousel.
8.48pm ‘My name is kivo, Georgy Zhorzh. Where are you know? Did you receive your luggage?
8.53pm ‘Where are you? I’m more private, I have to wait for you like a cheese plane. I When the hour has passed I must wait no longer for you. Please tell me where are you?
At 9pm when we had our luggage, we worked out we needed to exit and go down to level 3 and walk about another mile to find door 24. All’s well that ends well, but it was a bit fraught for a while as four tired Scotts tried to follow the instructions of a Ukrainian French immigrant. Georgy Zhorzh got us safely to our dodgy, Paris fringe hotel, the Hôtel Ibis Budget Paris Porte de Montmartre in a heavy rainstorm. Check-in was smooth, the most frustrating part was tired and grumpy me having to explain to tired and grumpy Murray that the hotel has ‘Porte de Montmartre’ in its name which doesn’t mean we are staying ON Montmartre. Given the dark and rain, we couldn’t even see Montmartre, just traffic whizzing along the Peripherique.
We were soon checked into our two shoe box rooms which together cost more than our Dubai palace. This morning as the sun shines we have a lovely view across the Peripherique and past some industrial-type buildings at the back end of Sacre Coeur.
Day 4 – with another change in time zone we were all awake reasonably early so had breakfast and were out the door by 9am. Our plan today was pretty simple – walk. Even though it’s been 27 years since I trained as a tour manager and 28 years since Jude Cathcart and I spent a few days walking around Paris backwards practising to be tour managers, I still know my way around Paris better than I do Auckland.
We headed to one of the nearby metros and bought le carnet, a stack of 10 paper tickets which cost 1.90 Euro each. Although if you Google it says that these old school tickets are being phased out before now there was no sign of them not being accepted anywhere. One ticket gets you on a metro or bus journey within Paris. Tickets in hand we boarded the underground and headed to Île de la Cité. After viewing the back side of Sainte-Chapelle we ambled to the front side of Notre Dame. I’ve always loved this grand gothic building which was constructed between 1163 and 1260, its elegant flying buttresses have held the walls steady for nearly 800 years but they couldn’t protect it from a devastating fire that took hold in 2019. This was my first visit back since the blaze destroyed the wooden roof and central spire. The place is smothered in scaffolding and repairs are underway, which I can only imagine will take a very, very long time.
I couldn’t help but switch into tour manager mode and started regaling my offspring with some of my retained interesting facts, like how Charlemagne’s, whose statue we were admiring, foot gave us the current measurement of a foot, 12 inches. Kennedy said, ‘Mum, I love your enthusiasm, but please shut up.’
People used to pay good money for my insights, but now I can’t even give them away to my own family. After being humbled by my child we continued walking on the Left Bank along the side of the Seine following it all the way along until we were nearly at the Eiffel Tower. Proving that the world is indeed a small place as we were waiting at a crossing to traverse the road away from the river the family sound of a coach horn rang out. Looking up to make sure we weren’t about to be run over, who do we see but Julie Hanham waving madly from the front seat of a bus as it whizzed by.
(The backside of Saint Chapelle – I love the Art Nouveau style of the metro signs – Notre Dame – me being appreciated for my vast knowledge and experience)
We ducked and dived in a couple of blocks before passing a boulangerie that was Christian’s dream stop. He purchased a croissant and a huge macaron that he desired to eat while looking at the Eiffel Tower.
(Just a boy and a croissant enjoying a big building and other shots of the tower and offspring).
We had thought we might try to get tickets to up the giant mecano set but we couldn’t even be bothered working out how to try and get in to ask when we saw the entire area of the structure surrounded by a high glass wall. Quite different from when we used to rock up to the base of the tower in a Contiki coach and park for a few hours. Crossing the river we climbed to Place du Trocadéro for a photo back to the tower before ambling down Avenue Kléber and finding another boulangerie to stop for lunch and a desperately needed café au lait.
Fuelled by caffeine we made it to the Charles de Gaulle – Étoile, found the subway to get to the middle and joined the queue for tickets to climb to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Murray, with his problematic hips, opted out of the climb, I foolishly didn’t. Less than halfway up I was regretting my decision as the never-ending spiral staircase loomed tauntingly ahead of me. Gasping I made it to the top and it was all worth it to see the magnificent view of Paris again.
After finding Murray we headed downhill on the Champs-Élysées, sheltering for a time under a line of trees to escape a random rainfall. As we circumnavigated Place de la Concorde Kennedy spotted the logo for the Fédération Internationale de l’automobile (FIA) and as a F1 fan was drawn in. There was a hall of fame with F1 memorabilia and a chart with all the winners which both Kennedy and Christian enjoyed.
While we had planned to keep walking to Montmartre and back to our hotel we were by now all feeling a little weary. Our pace slowed as we walked through the Jardin des Tuileries until we reached the final thing we really wanted to see, the Louvre and its famous entry pyramid.
Once ticked off, after avoiding scammers and pickpockets, we headed to the nearest metro and returned to our shoe boxes for a bit of a rest.
After giving some time for the fluid to drain from our cankles we headed back to the metro. After a photo stop at the Moulin Rouge, we made our way up to Sacre Coeur before finding a restaurant to sit, watch the world go by and eat. Kennedy was the bravest ordering escargot, the rest of us stuck to the tried and true. A lovely evening for a promenade we decided to walk the half-hour (ish) back to our shoe boxes before tucking up for the night.
After covering 22.35km à pied (on foot) today, I don’t think sleep will be hard to come by. Tomorrow we are off early in the morning to catch a train to London. À bientôt.
Gillian Scott Creative 