Paris 2024 - Day 27 and 28 (August 12th and 13th) - Paris to Cupertino

Day 27 – Paris

When we are still in town at the end of the Olympics, we usually fly out the following day. But since we’re retired, we decided that we would take a day to pack in leisure and walk around with nothing particular to do. This sounded good in theory, but it is going to be in the mid-90’s again today and being on a jet where it is cool is sounding pretty good! The only thing that we have scheduled today is to see if we can get into the Olympic superstore on the Champs Élysées. We go over to our favorite patisserie for breakfast and find that they are closed on Mondays. I had wanted to go into the Gare de Montparnasse to see if it would be easier to shlep our suitcases to the Metro Line 13 tomorrow morning than going to the closer Gaité station where we know we’ll have to carry our suitcases down two flights of stairs. So, we pick up our breakfast there instead. It turns out that if we can get past the crowds getting on trains, we can take a combination of elevators and escalators to get to Line 13 if we go into the Gare.

I don’t have any pictures, but when we arrive at the superstore, there is only a 20ish person line as opposed to hundreds. I even trade a couple pins while we are waiting! Inside, I find a Paris logo t-shirt that I like, and Sean buys a couple of small gifts to bring back to his friends (refrigerator magnets), but Beth doesn’t find anything that she wants. Outside, we take in the view along the Champs Élysées in both directions that we were not able to see when the security barriers were in place.

We head back to the Airbnb and begin to do some packing until it gets to be lunch time. We decide to go into the mall across the street where we are sure to find air conditioning! Their food court is really interesting. There are ordering kiosks at each of the entrances. But instead of ordering from a single restaurant, you are ordering from dozens of restaurants. 

After completing an order and supplying a cell phone number, you receive a text message telling you that your order is ready. This is much easier for the individual restaurants because they don’t need to deal with the payment details. All they need to know is the name of the person or cell phone number of the person who placed the order. This also means that these restaurants need to hire fewer people – usually only a cook and a server, which makes it economically possible for very small shops to take advantage of places like this. It will be interesting to see if places like this pop up in the US.

After lunch, we kill some time walking around the mall and buy some chocolates to bring home for us and for gifts. Then we head back into the heat which seems a 100 times worse coming from an air-conditioned place. We do a little more packing and I try to take a nap to make up for how little sleep I got last night. Finally, the heat in the apartment gets to be intolerable so we head back to the same food court to get cooled back down until it is time to eat dinner. We take a really, really long time to eat (finally getting the French style of eating!) before going back to the Airbnb, opening all of the windows and trying to stay somewhat cool. It is another really long night. Steps for the day: 9,878.

Day 28 – Paris to Cupertino

After two days with little sleep, I’m beat and can’t wait to get out of here. Fortunately, our flight to San Francisco is in the early afternoon and it will take us more than an hour to get to Charles De Gaulle airport, so we are leaving for the airport right after breakfast. We roll out our suitcases, say au revoir to our favorite security guard and put the room key back into the lockbox on the traffic island outside the Airbnb. Then we go into the Gare de Montparnasse. We are slightly after rush hour, so we don’t have any problems getting through the train station, down the elevator and escalator and into the Metro. Now that the Olympics are over, there are not many people in the Metro, and we are able to get seats instead of having to stand.

The connection between the Metro and the airport is really efficient, and it is a short walk to the check-in counter. Along the way, we see the Iranian wrestling team checking in to their flight. I had been hoping that I would run into some athletes or officials with pins in their bag. I couldn’t really wear the whole pin vest, but I did have my hat and a lanyard with a bunch of pins on it in case I caught someone’s eye who wanted to trade. We get to the gate and the gate next to us is boarding a flight to Taipei, Taiwan. I really want the Taiwanese NOC pins so I make multiple passes past their gate hoping that one of the many athletes on this flight will want to trade. Unfortunately, while a few look at my pins, no one has any pins to trade in places they can access them.

Our flight home was uneventful except for the fact that I started running a fever during the flight. I had been having a cough and a runny nose for at least a week and I had put it down to the poor air quality of Paris air and my seasonal allergies. But once I developed a fever, I knew that I’d managed to catch COVID again and it was likely that Beth and Sean had it as well. Fortunately, we wore masks the entire flight and I hope that we were able to keep anyone around us from getting it.

Despite how it started and ended, this has been a great trip. The French people were great hosts, and we saw enough French culture and history to want to go back again sometime. Now, it is time to start working on my Italian for the Milan 2026 Winter Olympics! But before I go, I thought that I would post a few of my favorite Olympic pins:

I wish that I had all of these (I’m working on it!). Which ones do you like best? Anyway, I hope that you have enjoyed this blog and will tune in again in two years. Step for the day: 9,102. Total steps in Paris: 208,361 or about 98.4 miles!