merci …Bonjour…cankles

A little bit of foreshadowing to start out our adventures…on every single one of our flights we were in very close proximity to a crying baby, child, or adolescent for that matter. We both tried to sleep on the plane to Paris as much as possible but excitement and our 2 hour delayed departure made that a bit difficult. We arrived in Paris at 140pm and HOPED to be back at the airport by 6pm so we were short on time but the mission was to get a picture in front of the Eiffel tower and get a crepe and we were doing everything to make it happen. As we were making our way through customs we were getting our passports stamped by the fine French immigration gentleman and he says to me “merci” to which I replied “bonjour” then he says “merci” to Rachel to which she replies “beaucoup” (needless to say neither one of us took French in high school or college). Had we landed in Spain both of us would have known the perfect reply. At that point it was best to just leave the conversation before anything else could be done or said. On to paris we go! We got some great news at CDG that our bags would be meeting us in Kilimanjaro and we didn’t have to do a thing about them before then! Sigh of relief for sure! We made it to the train and rode into Paris where we were lost immediately. We both blame it on our lack of sleep because we are excellent navigators in real life! So after a 40 minute, 17 euro train ride we got off at the wrong stop and walked aimlessly for some time before a lovely Parisian lady informed us that 1. Its called tour de effel and 2. It was far too long of a walk. Insert taking a taxi to the Eiffel tower. Once there we had about 30 minutes to get all the pictures we wanted and we were privy to an “Americas best dance crew style” street performance. Rachel recalled there being crepes on every corner but alas there were none to be found anywhere that we needed to go. There was also no starbucks to be found so no mug from paris for rach L. We never found the ever elusive Parisian crepe and I waited for a good 15 minutes for a one person self cleaning bathroom that should have been cleaner for all the time it spent cleaning itself, but did nothing but give me a wet toilet to sit on. From there we determined the correct train to get us back to CDG but of course that’s not the train we decided to get on, nor was it one of the next 3 trains we decided to get on. After some following of other people who had bags and looked like they were going to the airport as well we did finally make it on the right train. Let’s keep in mind that Rachel has a 40lb backpack on and I am lugging an awful duffle bag that is circa 1972 and has wheels that even under the smoothest of pavement doesn’t like to stay on both of them. We were exhausted at this point to say the least. Not exactly the best scenario to be getting on yet another 7.5 hour flight overnight. We did some stretches in the airport and then it was time to board Kenya airways aka “the pride of Africa” and Rachel and I were delighted that we were sitting in the ‘safari class’. That means next to last row by the engine surrounded by more babies. We did manage to sleep a lot on that flight due to the glorious humming of the engine lulling us to sleep.