Paris with Kids

Our trip got off to a rocky start. The van from my office arrived on time to whisk us off to the airport, but I think everyone was a little taken aback and didn’t quite know what to think when they sent an armored van. I guess they wanted to make sure we got there safely.

We’ve always been told to arrive at the airport three hours before our flight, but every time we do, we end up spending two hours in the terminal waiting to board the plane. This time, I got us to the airport two hours before our flight, assuming we would have time to spare, maybe even get breakfast and a coffee at Starbucks. When we walked into the terminal, we instantly realized something was different this time. 

We had never seen the airport this busy before. We fell into the queue at the Royal Jordanian counter and waited. After about 30 minutes, we made it to the front only to be told there was “something wrong” with our tickets.

“What do you mean, ‘wrong ‘?”

“There was a change made to your ticket, but a new ticket was never issued. You need to go over there.” And the woman behind the counter wagged her finger in the general direction of the RJ sales desk. 

After explaining to the guy at the sales desk that my office bought the tickets for us, he said he knew Yara and would call her. I sent a frantic email, knowing a phone call to my office would go unanswered on a Friday morning. 

We waited 15 minutes for Yara to work some sort of magic on her laptop at home, and voila! We had tickets. We squeezed our way back to the front of the line, but we were running out of time fast. When we got back to ththe front of the line to check our bags we were told the kids car seats counted against our luggage allowance. We knew this to be patently false and tried expressing this to the young woman behind the counter in no uncertain terms only to have her evacuate the scene, presumably to quit, have a cigarette, or find back-up. When she finally deigned to return, she go into an argument with Elise for putting two car seats on the conveyor belt at the same time instead of just one when all Elise was trying to do was help her reach the car seat so she could put the luggage tag on it. 

We checked our bags and dropped the car seats off at the oversized baggage drop and got into the customs line. We usually breeze through this part, because there is a separate lane we are able to take advantage of that is always empty. Today, however; the lane was filled with “Fast Passers” like at Disney World, people who paid an extra five JD to slip into the lane reserved for crew. 

The clock was ticking and flight crew after flight crew cut in front of us. The flight crews of a dozen airplanes cut in front of us until I went to the woman supposedly in charge of directing the queue and told her we would literally never make it through customs if every single crew membe is able to freely move to the front of the line. When that didn’t work, I told Elise and the kids to follow me and went to the front of the line. I know the customs agent was channeling some choice Arabic words about Americans, but at that point public diplomacy was out the window. In all seriousness, there was nothing I was going to do to sour U.S.-Jordanian bilateral relations.

We had one hurdle to go, but it was a biggie... security. Without fail, the security agents at Queen Alia airport regard Elise’s cameras as though she were trying check a bail of marijuana, elephant tusks, or live explosives. Without fail, they make her unpack her entire backpack every time. They must recognize her by now because for some reason she was finished before I was done putting my belt back on. 

We ran to the gate, just making our flight. 

Fortunately, the flight and getting out of the airport at Charles de Gaulle was uneventful...smooth, even. We were soon checked into our hotel in the Latin Quarter, one block from the Sorbonne. 

The skies were dark and thunderstorms threatened, but we set out nonetheless for dinner. We returned to one of the restaurants Elise and I had gone to on our honeymoon 12 years ago, Au Vieux Paris d’Arcole.

Elise and I had stumbled upon it purely by happy accident. We had just finished visiting Notre Dame and were headed to dinner. We had gotten a restaurant recommendation from somewhere, but when we arrived at the restaurant, we discovered to our mutual horror the menu had pictures a la Denny’s and an English translation. We politely and discretely backpeddaled into the cobblestone street, but having no back-up dinner plan we meandered mostly aimlessly back in the direction of Notre Dame. 

We passed a dark alleyway when something there caught our eye. It would be the Au Vieux Paris d’Arcole, then a tiny hidden gem in the mammoth cave mine that is Paris. We sat on the sidewalk and shared a bottle of wine, in love, like true Parisians. 

The opportunity to return — 12 years later with our three children in tow — was the thing of dreams. And while the visit was very different in so many ways, it was no less memorable. 12 years has brought changes to the neighborhood. Not bad, but not all necessarily good, either. 

The street from Notre Dame to the alley where Au Vieux is located is now completely covered with sidewalk hawkers and cheap tourist shops selling bottled water, t-shirts, postcards, and tiny Eiffel Towers. And sadly the restaurant, though small, was entirely filled with Americans, which was not the case at all 12 years ago. Elise and I had trouble figuring out what could have happened. Did it get a write up on TripAdvisor? 

As I mentioned, the evening was dark and stormy, and no sooner had we paid our check and surrendered our table did the skies open up and begin to drop large hailstones. Waiters and busboys darted into the street to wheel their mopeds to safety as the hail pinged off metal car hoods and roofs. 

It stopped as quickly as it started, and we were given enough of a respite to make our way back to the hotel for the night.