Since we all got to bed so late Saturday night, we decided to scratch any plans to go anywhere Sunday moring in Paris. We had hoped to visit the catacombs, but it would have been cutting it too close with our return trip, especially knowing that the Tour De France was coming into Paris that afternoon. We predicted if we waited too long to get out of the city it would be a traffic nightmare.So, we had another huge breakfast at the Mercure hotel, packed up, and left around 11 am or so to head to Brussels for our return flight. My Dad did all the driving this time, which was just fine with me!! One thing we decided during this trip is we need to get a GPS! It was so nice to have Maria's when we drove down to southern Germany, and to have my Dad's going to Paris!
On our way, we stopped in some small French village for lunch. The weather was lovely, sunny and 70s or so ... figures it gets nice when we're leaving! We ate outside at a restaurant in a marketplace. Daryl ordered some random dish off the menu because it had a very funny name. We joked about how he may wind up with pigs feet or chicken gizzards or eel or something. Well, when the foor arrived, he would up with this cold ham loaf in gelatin - it looked so gross, but he ate it :-), fortunately there were also lots of fries!
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| Daryl's mystery lunch! |
Just as we were leaving, Daryl and my Dad watched this elderly gentleman with a walker fall and hit his head into the side of a car in the parking lot. It happened so fast, Daryl said her knew he was going to fall, but it was too late to do anything to stop it. Well, the poor guy seemed to be unconscious and was bleeding from the forehead, laying all twisted with his walker under him, so of course being a nurse, Daryl went to help. It was hard, because we know no French, but Daryl used napkins to put pressure on the bleeding wound and I grabbed an old blanket from the trunk of the car to put under the side of his head to stabilize his neck somewhat (Daryl was using his knee). Of course a group of people had gathered by this time and within a few minutes the ambulance arrived and the paramedics took over. I was proud of Daryl for helping out. It was one of those unexpected events you couldn't just ignore and keep going.
After taking the long lunch break, we got to the Brussels airport just about in time! We took a 7 pm departure to Helsinki, Finland, arriving there after 10 pm, which was 11 pm local Finland time. The sunset from above the clouds was really beautiful!
Fortunately we were all used to staying up late and the airport Hilton hotel was only a walk away. Being the frugal people that we are, we had never stayed at a Hilton before ... wow! The only reason we flew via Finland in the first place is that it saved us about $400 PER TICKET to go on Finnair. It actually made our flight quite a bit longer. Daryl pointed out we were closer to Moscow than Hamburg when we were in Helsinki! Anyhow, the savings on the flight justified the Hilton hotel :-) and our room was pretty impressive! We even had our own personal sauna in the bathroom!! Must be a Finnish thing!
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| airport Hilton hotel in Helsinki |
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Daryl wearing the hotel bathrobe and slippers
in front of the sauna in our bathroom! |
We would not have minded staying there longer, but of course, the next moring after another gourmet breakfast buffett, I decided to blog about Paris rather than taking a sauna! Then we had to catch our flight to Chicago, which required going through security at least 3 times ... I'm sure everthing is extra tight right now due to the Norway attacks. At one point, the whole airport observed a moment of silence and all activity froze in observance of the tragedy. It was actually pretty impressive, how all the activity and noise just fell silent for a minute.
The return flight was 9 hours, but pretty uneventful. Thanks for the book, Lauren (Sophie Kinsella: Can you Keep a Secret?). I read the whole thing on the trip and enjoyed it, reminded me of the Pretty Woman story a little! We had cool views of icebergs along the way over Greenland, etc. Also a clear view on the bridge from Michigan to Upper Peninsula, then a nice view of Chicago coming in. We could have spent the night at LaQuinta where we had parked the van, but even though it was midnight European time, we just wanted to get home. So we tackled Chicago rush hour traffic (left there right at 5:30 local time!) and made it home by 9:00 pm in Middlebury - not bad!
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