El Camino 2014 . . . Part II: First stop . . . Paris

The first European stop was Paris but due to a hiccup by Air Canada, I arrived a day earlier than Margaret Anne. On Monday, June 28th, Liz McCaughey dropped me off at Pearson Airport in Toronto. I was early and our flight did not leave until 7:30 pm. Around 4:30 I began to wonder where Maggie was. Did she meet friends from Toronto and visit with them? Was her flight from Calgary delayed? So I went on Air Canada's website and looked up the flight status and saw that the flight was delayed and was supposed to arrive at 7:10. I talked to the ground crew and they were not very helpful. According to the woman we should be better communicators and not expect Air Canada to help us out when they have technical trouble and delay a flight by an hour and a half! Hmm. Finally she agreed to leave a note telling Maggie to phone me on my cell. Then she told me that they had no idea which flight Maggie would go on . . . Maybe she would go on a different airline. Maybe to a different European city. Of course to me, an amateur, the next Air Canada made sense but the ground crew thought that was just ridiculous. 24 hours later, on the next flight to Paris, Maggie arrived with bells on. Incidentally, the Air Canada information people in Paris let me know Maggie was on that flight! Later in the day I received an email and a phone call from Maggie.

In the meantime, I walked all over Paris from Place de Clichy to Printemps and Galleries Lafayette, to the Louvre, to the Orangerie, to Notre Dame, the rue de Rivoli, up Boulevard Hausmann, to place de Clichy and the hotel just off Avenue de Clichy. 25 kms. The Weather Network said that the weather would be dreary and it was. There were several downpours! I figured that Rick Steve's theory that fresh air and exercise were the enemy of jet lag would work and it did even though I was awake between 12:00 and 1:30.