day 5

All good things must come to pass, or so the proverb says. I've always suspected that it was actually meant for vacuum cleaner salesmen (with apologies to the vacuum cleaner salesmen of the world) that the most exciting thing they may ever do is have a weekend in Ibiza. Why must all good things really end? Chaucer, who coined the saying, was a party pooper. In any case, we've all got responsibilities that had been put on hold for a few short days and today this very good thing was about to pass.
But not before breakfast at the local brasserie and then a tour of the Ile de la Cite and its environs. We found our guide, Pierre, from Culturefish tours http://www.culturefishtours.com/ and with one other girl from California, set off to learn a bit about the original birthplace of Paris mixed with a lot of cultural and other info. Our man Pierre is a clever businessman, not setting a price, but telling his customers that they should pay what they want. For us, this presented a slight problem. We always have a communal pool (kupa) on our trips. We have never counted pennies in relation to each other and it seems natural and easy to pay for everything together, since we do everything together on these trips. Since Yoni is the official tour guide, Mummy and Daddy and benevolent despot on our trips, it seemed natural that he would also be the Yair Lapid of the group. Similar to the Israeli treasurer, he would have actually rather have a different role, but was left with no choice. I think this kupa idea is a leftover from our youth movement days, when we spent hours worshiping the political enlightenment of Lenin, Marx and Engels. We have since come to realize that there can be serious discrepancies between theory and practice, and that socialism might be ok if it weren't for the fact that it deals with humans, but for 4 guys holidaying together, sharing the means of purchase by way of kupa seems to be a good fit.
 And here lies the problem.  How much do we pay Pierre? My view of what he was worth was lower than Yoni's. Garry, even though he liked the tour and stuck it out to the end, was more to my end of the pay scale. In the end, as is often the case when socialism meets the real world, Yoni paid Pierre only as much as we had left in the kupa. After that, the co-op went into liquidation, the kupa filed for chapter 11 and the socialist dream was put into mothballs until our next planned trip, Vietnam, or a shvil yisrael walk, which ever comes first.
As for Pierre's other customers, I'm certain that they end up paying more than what they might otherwise pay. I'm sure he's a psychology major. The tour passed through Paris's original area, Notre Dame, Place Dauphin and Pont Neuf. It was interesting enough, but after almost two hours my attention, rather than my feet, was starting to wander. I've been to Paris before, but on this one morning we had there on this trip, a tour de cuisine probably would have had me a bit more enthralled. Unbeknownst to me, Phil was having the same attention deficit difficulties as I was. I had the words "I'll meet you in an hour at the steps of the Pompidou" on my lips when Phil went up to Pierre, mumbling something about an early flight. In truth, Phil and I were leaving earlier than Yoni and Garry, and Phil, who had never been to Paris, was eager to see a little more than just a one square km of historic real estate. I decided to at least give him a short tour of a few of the major sites, other than Notre Dame. But not before a cup of coffee and hot chocolate. Priorities. After that up to the Louvre, its courtyard and pyramid at the entrance. We continued down through the Tuileries as far Cleopatra's Needle and the Place de Concorde. Funnily enough, we bumped into our original troupe of Pierre et.al. in the Tuileries, but didn't rejoin the group.

 Between our last trip and this one, Phil is in much better shape, having spent many hours riding nowhere on his cycling machine. But he'd done very little walking. This trip, in stark contrast to previous ones, we had done quite a lot of walking and Phil was starting to feel it. I feel that I must point out here, at some risk of getting into trouble, that Phil's fatigue and aches and pains may also have other contributors, such as 2 litres of cola zero a day and a low thresh-hold of pain. We had more to see and not that much time, and by now Phil was starting to resemble Master Yoda. As we exited the Place de Concorde, the solution was presented to us. I was almost embarrassed to suggest that we take a pedicab. If he'd been able, he would have jumped for joy. It was a first, and will almost certainly be a last for me, having Didier from Senegal cycle me around a city, but under the circumstances, it was a good idea. But please, don't tell anyone. It'll ruin all my travel cred. So Didier pedaled us up the Champs Elysee, took us along the grand Hausman boulevards, we passed the Place de Opera and disembarked at Galeries LaFayette. Poor old Didier rued the day that we got into his pedicab. Phil, for his part, was as happy as a tourist in a pedicab. He'd gotten to see far more of Paris than he would have been able by foot and far more comfortably. True, Phil only saw the grand Paris and there's so much more to see which is very different, but that will perhaps tempt him to come back and complete his Paris education.
 It was getting on to mid afternoon and approaching the time that we had to make our way to the airport. But not before one last meal. I don't know if it was ironic or apt, but Phil and I found ourselves in a Chinese restaurant a few minutes from our hotel. My last meal would reflect the first... a Paris Chinese restaurant, though this one was light years ahead of the one we ate in at Roissy. Phil and I didn't manage to see Garry and Yoni before we left for the airport. Rumour has it that Yoni had for his last meal the best Vietnamese pho this side of Saigon, which is sort of prophetic, given that our next trip is the Kumbh Mela of reunions, in Vietnam.

So another trip has come and gone. The next one, as mentioned, to Vietnam, is already in the planning. And why not? It's a hard life, but someone has to do it.