The past two days I've become expert, or at least much more knowledgeable, about mass transit in Paris. On Sunday afternoon I met Meg and Jason's train from Geneva at Gare du Nord, a station I was familiar with from my trip to Vaux-le-Vicomte. What I didn't realize was, in addition to the blue series of platforms where we had taken the train, there was another whole series of yellow platforms. Because of station renovations, you had to walk around the exterior of the station to get to them. Once their trains' arrival platform was finally posted, I walked all around to meet a herd of people getting off the train already. Weaving through the crowds in the opposite direction, I kept going and going, to find the family and all their luggage next to the very last car, #18. When we started back towards the station, Ollie was so busy looking around at everything, he kept walking right into poles and benches and anything else that got in the way. The taxi line zigged and zagged and looked to be at least an hour wait but, it turns out if you've got a baby with you, you can go straight to the head of the line. Thank you Minna for getting us our taxi. Once we got to the apartment, we did go out to a nearby playground for Ollie to get in some running around, but otherwise stayed in, unpacking and eating dinner together in the nice big kitchen.
The next morning I was up early to catch the RER B to the airport and meet Peter. I chuckled along the ride out, remembering the disastrous and humorous attempt to meet him on another Paris visit. If we had only had cell phones that time it would have been easy to handle the mishaps; this time since we did have cell phones, of course there were no problems. After napping, we hooked up with the family, found another playground for Ollie's boundless energy, did some more grocery shopping and stayed in again for dinner together, this time with Grand Pere Boppie joining us. I only got a couple of photos but Meg has some nice ones of their morning adventures while waiting for us.