It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. We had planned to return to Paris and then visit other locations in Europe in 2020 to celebrate our 50th Anniversary on August 8, 2020. However, the Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing by then and international travel was all but impossible.
Fast forward to 2023 and the pandemic is mostly a memory. Pam and I had isolated ourselves at home for much of the 2020 as restaurants, theaters, sporting events and other public gatherings were shut down. Things were still uncertain in early 2021, so we postponed our big trip until this summer.
Then, this past March, I had to have a significant surgery that put me on the shelf for several weeks. By late May, I had recuperated enough that we began to plan our “50 plus 3” Anniversary trip. In early June we booked a flight to Paris and reserved a hotel there for about a week. Then we booked a flight to Copenhagen, Denmark and planned to spend four days there before coming home.
We were scheduled to leave from Cleveland the evening of August 7 and return on August 20. That way, we could celebrate our Anniversary on August 8 in Paris, visit several sites there and then have a few days to explore Copenhagen. We had spent one night in Denmark’s capital in 2017 and were looking forward to seeing more of it.
While I had recovered from my surgery, I was still concerned about my chronic asthma condition before the trip. I had gotten a respiratory infection at the end of our trip in 2017 and that messed up our three days in Rome. But we went ahead with our plans and scheduled several tours in Paris for this trip.
The day we were scheduled to depart, I received a text from American Airlines saying that our flight from Cleveland to Philadelphia had been cancelled. We were scheduled to go from Philly to Paris later that evening. Less than two hours later, I received another text saying we could take a flight to Chicago and then connect with a flight to Paris.
Brian had a work commitment that evening, so his girlfriend took us to the airport, and we boarded our flight to Chicago. That flight left about 20 minutes late and we only had about an hour to make our connecting flight to Paris from Chicago. We made a 20-minute sprint to get from one concourse to another at O’Hare but made our flight.
After the overnight flight, we arrived in Paris at about 11AM and took a cab to our hotel. They stored our luggage because the room wasn’t ready, and we found a nice sidewalk café to have lunch and then returned to the hotel to get our room. Our hotel was located near the Garnier Opera house and the St. Madeline church, and it turned out to be an excellent location.
That night we had a pleasant dinner at another nearby café and crashed at the hotel. The next day, we walked down to the Jarden d’ Tuileries and then to see the Seine River. The following day, we were scheduled for a trip to Giverny to see Monet’s house and garden. The tour guide met us at the hotel, and we boarded a van for the hour-and-a half trip. There was another young American couple of in the van with their five-year-old daughter along for the trip. As we started, I noticed the young girl coughing often, but she was wearing a mask. I put on my mask, and we proceeded to Giverny.
The tour went well. Monet’s home was impressive and there were plenty of examples of his paintings as well as those of his contemporaries on display. We then saw the extensive gardens that covered several acres and were the inspiration for many of his paintings. We returned to Paris with the same couple and their coughing daughter.
The next day, we toured the Musee d’Orsay and had a very good guide named Humberto. He was from Portugal and very well-educated about the artists. I also like the fact that because he wasn’t French, a few of his comments were somewhat “tongue in cheek” as he discussed the significance of some paintings as they were related to the French Revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The next day was a rest day and Pam wandered around the area near the hotel and went window shopping while I sipped coffee and watched people. That evening we went to dinner at a restaurant near the Eiffel Tower and waited until sunset to see it lit up. There were thousands of people on the plaza near the Trocadero with multiple food and souvenir vendors and a DJ playing pop music. It was a very festive site, and I took a selfies of Pam and I in front of the tower. After taking my last picture, I turned and stumbled on the edge of a step and fell, banging my knee.
We took a cab back to our hotel and I wanted to put ice on my knee, but there were no ice machines in the hotel. Fortunately, there was a small refrigerator in the room and placing a bottle of chilled water against my knee provided relief.
On Sunday, we got an unpleasant surprise. That weekend was the Catholic feast of the Assumption and nearly all the restaurants near our hotel were closed. Fortunately, about a block from our hotel, there was a small shop like a bodega and we bought ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch.
That afternoon, we were scheduled to meet our tour guide for our trip to see the palace and gardens at Versailles. About 15 of us met our guide Oscar at a Metro station near the Invalides. We then got on the Metro for a couple of stops before boarding the train to Versailles. Once we got off the train, we had a very taxing walk to get to the palace.
It was warm and humid that day and I couldn’t keep up with Oscar and the rest of the group. Pam tried to keep up with the guide but stay in visual contact with me. The station was 1.9 km from the palace (about 1.2 mile), and I didn’t think I could make it. We arrived at the entrance to the palace grounds and a new guide, Marie, was handing out the wireless receivers and headsets for the tour. She saw how late I arrived after the rest of the group, and she suggested I skip the garden tour and meet the group later at the entrance to the palace.
So, I went to the snack bar for a bottle of water and rest while Pam and the rest of the group toured the gardens. Pam said later that the garden tour involved a lot of walking, and it would have been very difficult for me. About 45 minutes later, I met the group at the gate to the palace.
The Versailles palace is very impressive, and Marie did a good job explaining the history of the palace and the art pieces there. What bothered me was the size of the crowd. We spent at least an hour crowded with hundreds of other people as we moved from room-to-room through the palace.
When the tour ended, we were told that we could board a train to Paris at a closer station. The ride back was more relaxed, and we took a cab back to the hotel. We found a Japanese restaurant close to our hotel for dinner and I bought a bottle of Cutty Sark Scotch at the bodega.
We awoke Monday morning, and I didn’t feel well at all. I had a cough and had awakened during the night covered in sweat. We had a cruise of the Seine River scheduled for that afternoon, but I told Pam I didn’t want to take it. She found a coffee shop near our hotel, and I spent a lot of time there on Monday and Tuesday afternoons resting while she explored the area around our hotel.
Wednesday morning, we were scheduled to fly to Copenhagen. Our hotel normally provides a complimentary shuttle bus to the airport, but none were available because of the holiday. So, they provided us with a free breakfast that would have cost 32 Euro. But we had to take a regular cab to the airport that cost 60 Euro.
Terminal One at Charles de Gaulle International Airport is a massive multi-level structure serving a couple of dozen airlines. It took us about 30 minutes to find the SAS Airline counter and then we had to stand in line for another 30 minutes to check our bags. Then we proceeded to go through security to get to the gate. But to get to security, we had to traverse an escalator and then we got on a long and hilly automated walkway. Yes, it was hilly and in my weakened condition I almost fell twice, the second time when we were getting off at the end.
As we waited in the security line, I noticed this one senior agent giving me the “skunk eye.” I was sweating profusely, and I was worried that he might pull me out of the line to check for Covid. At this point, I was beginning to believe I might have Covid, but I hadn’t tested myself yet.
When we arrived at our hotel in Copenhagen, we were able to check in immediately and we dropped off out bags in our room and went to the bar to have lunch. After paying 26 Euro each for a large hamburger with fries, we went back to room. Pam went for a walk around the hotel. I decided it was time for a Covid test and it was positive.
When Pam got back, we started to explore our options.
While she was out walking, I turned on the TV and one of the few channels with English was CNN international. Fortunately, there was a segment about the uptick in Covid cases around the world and Dr. Sanjay Gupta reviewed the current CDC guidelines for Covid—five days of isolation from the onset of symptoms and then wear a mask in public for the next five days. Since my symptoms started Monday, we figured I should stay in the room until the weekend and then wear a mask when we were scheduled to fly home on Sunday. So, I spent the rest of the week mostly in my room with an occasional visit to an outside patio off the bar area.
The Tivoli Hotel is about 14 stories and has 700 rooms. It also has the most phenomenal breakfast buffet I have ever seen that was included in the room price. I would put on a mask go to the buffet each morning and select my food making sure to stay as far away from people as I could. For lunch, there was a room service, which was expensive or some less costly prepared food at a small coffee shop.
Pam went sightseeing and did some shopping one day using the Hop-on-Hop-off bus. She also discovered that there was shopping mall about a 10-minute walk from the hotel that had a sizable supermarket with a prepared food section. So that’s what we ate for lunch and dinner during my quarantine.
Finally on Sunday, we checked out of the hotel and went to the airport for the flight to JFK. The Delta flight went well, and we arrived in New York about a half-hour early. After nearly 8 hours in the air, we had to wait another 15 minutes on the plane for a gate to open. We then spent an hour going through immigration, getting our baggage and the rechecking it before going through TSA security again.
We had about four hours before our last flight was scheduled to leave for Cleveland. Then there was a mechanical issue with the plane we were supposed to take, and it took another two hours to before we took off. Brian picked us up at CLE and we finally arrived home at about 2AM.
We left our bags in the living room, and I filled a glass with ice and Evan Williams Bourbon and sat down in my favorite chair. After the Bourbon, I promptly crashed until morning.
It was so good to be home!
