Here is information I want to write about regarding Glenda's and my departure and our arrival from Paris to Rome. Since the beginning of the trip I have been worrying about how I am going to lug this suitcase around. When I was driving it was easy as most hotels we had parking and an elevator. Coming to Paris vie cab to and from the hotel comfort inn worked out fine. But it was from the apartment with Genda and our two huge suitcases that I worried about the most. When John left we met a taxi at the Comfort inn on the Mouffetard street. It was a walk up the hill. It was a huff and a puff up the hill and even without a suitcase I was breathing heavy when I got to the top. I knew that I could not make it if I had to pull my suitcase up that hill. Also with the transportation strike being off and on I was worried that I might have a hard time getting a cab. We went up the hill to see if the nice man who had helped me before would help me again by ordering a cab and when we got the cab we would have the cab go to the apartment and then to the air port. I worried if the cab driver would understand. Anyway the nice gentleman at the hotel hardly recognized me and when I asked him if he could make a reservation for us for the cab he said " just come on the day and I will call and it will only take 15 minutes." I sort of felt like my request was looked at like I had overstayed my welcome( slag for he was tired of helping me) as the time before he had called and made me a reservation and the cab came on that date. But at least I felt I had the option of having me come up the hill on that date to get the cab. However it turned out that Glenda recommended a better solution. We had met the gentleman at the Tabac across from our apartment. She said maybe if we offer to pay him he will call the cab for us. we asked him on the night before we were to leave. He said sure and that it would take only 15 minutes.
I do not know if I mentioned that the apartment had two flights of spiral staircases to get to the apartment. Getting the suitcase up practically wrecked me the idea of taking it down frightened me. But amazingly by carefully bumping the suitcase down each step slowly was no problem at all. Glenda and I cheered at our ease of getting the suitcases down from the apartment and over to the tabac(store that is a little restaurant, bar sells metro passes, stamps et. al. The nice gentleman called the cab and I gave him some money. He tried to refuse my gift but I told him how grateful I was that he was calling the cab for us and that he deserved every penny. Just as he called the cab a truck came down the street and we thought he was going to stay and block off the street all day. It was a very interesting truck and a type of truck that Glenda and I had not seen in the states. The street in front of the apartment where we were waiting is a one way street, and narrow. It turned out that he was a tow truck there to pick up two cars that we parked illegally. The french really mean business of towing these cars away. The truck had a long arm that was place over the car and a cradle to put around the car. the truck then picked up the car and put it on the flat bed. He did this to 2 cars. A line of other cars were behind the truck waiting to get through and Glenda and I were worried the cab would never get down the street. However to our delight the tow truck did it's job and moved down the street. Our cab arrived and we were on our way to the airport. This was a great cab driver as he spoke pretty good English and pointed out building to us as he drove along. We got to the airport in record time. We were pretty happy with the fact we got there. Now we had about 4 hours to wait until the air plane would fly us to London then Rome. The place where we were to drop off the suitcases told us to come back in 2 hours as they were not ready for us. We could hardly wait to give up the suitcases but now had to pull them around with us. We had lunch which killed an hour. Then we did some shopping. It was on one of these shopping trips that Glenda encountered a man who took a nasty spill on the escalator. He somehow was getting on, tripped, fell backwards and was catch in the escalator. Glenda was right there but could not drag him off. A flower delivery person saw the accident ,dropped all his flowers and saved the man by pulling him off with all his strengh. Glenda said the man who had hit his head quite badly, reported he was okay and we hope that he is okay.
Time finally came for us to drop off our suitcases and we went through the gate with no problem. both flights went along fine. I was lucky and had a lot of room with no people sitting by me. Glenda had a Muslim Lady sitting in the same section and glenda had a nice chat with her. She was from Dubai. The Captain of the second plane announced to us because of the transportation strike in France that they could not fly the plane through France but take a different route though Germany. Interesting huh. We flew from Paris to England but could not fly over France going to Rome. We got to Rome late and went to pick up our suitcases. We waited and waited for them to come off the conveyor belt. Finally we were the last one standing and no suitcase. Oh no, what do we do? Well we felt sort of stupid when we found out that we had gone to the wrong carrasel. We went to the right one and of course there they were. We got out the door of the air port and found a taxi. Our driver did great and found the right address. At dinner we both had a cocktail.
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