The Return Back to the United States

There were some stresses on our return back to the United States.

At first,  everything felt good and seemed to be going well. We had visited Paris the night before,  and gotten some very decent pictures,  and even some video. The one thing that had been missing from the one day visit two weeks ago was that it had been exclusively during the daylight.

But Paris is known as the City of Lights for a reason. It really needs to be taken in during the night for a fuller,  richer experience and appreciation for what the city offers.

And our visit that night helped to take care of that quite a bit.  It was not as complete or all-encompassing as the day two weeks before had been,  nor was it as thorough as I had wanted it to be.  Our flight to Paris had been delayed,  and so we arrived late.  Then, it took a long time to check in the car rental and leave the Airport.  We went to the hotel and checked in, and then dropped our bags and stuff off.

Only after all of that did we finally head off to Paris.

By then,  however,  it was well past 11pm.

We went straight to the Eiffel Tower,  because I wanted my son to see the sparkling lights,  which I had believed  - mistakenly,  as it turned out  - to go on each hour on the hour after dark,  until 11pm or 12am.

But we saw the sparkling lights go on at midnight,  and again at 1am. Had I known that they would still go at 1am, we would have held off a bit on heading straight to the Eiffel Tower,  and tried to get other fantastic points at night,  such as the pyramid of the Louvre,  or the Sacre Coeur Basilica in Montmartre. But I didn't know.

Yeah,  we went straight to the Eiffel Tower,  and stayed there for about one hour.  We got ice cream (at the request of my son) and some drinks,  and I wound up getting a chocolate crepe,  which my son had a few bites of.

We also took in the Arc de Triomphe and the Charles DeGaulle Etoile,  and soaked in the atmosphere of the world's most famous avenue,  the Champs-Elysees, which was still busy even well after 1am.

The city still had considerable life even as it got later and approached 3am, the time when we finally decided to wrap up our visit. The only other major landmark that was still largely well-lit was the Hotel de Ville. So,  we headed back to the hotel and got a few decent,  and much needed,  hours of sleep.

We had a decent breakfast at the hotel,  and everything seemed to be going smoothly at first.  We showered,  and most of the packing had already been done the day before.

We left around 9:45, and the airport was supposed to be a roughly ten to fifteen minute drive.

And in fact, it probably was not much longer.

But getting gas to fill up the rental took a ludicrous amount of time.

So did finding the place where we were supposed to drop off the car.  By then,  it was getting uncomfortably late.

The car inspection took longer than I expected and wanted,  and then we struggled through unbelievable congestion within Terminal 2 in order to get our shuttle to Terminal 1, so that we could check in to our United Airlines flight.

By the time that we arrived and checked in,  we had about an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave! The United Airlines representatives chastised us for being late. But we got through that and the security check,  and finally got to our gate,  where it was packed with people standing,  waiting to board.

I was sweating from all of the running around,  and had just enough time to go to the bathroom and cool off.

But we had made it,  and finally boarded the plane that took us back across the ocean.

Once we were actually on the flight,  things finally calmed down a bit.

I looked out the window and took in the last views of France as we flew over the coast.

Then,  watched as we flew over the United Kingdom.  Then Ireland.

Watched two movies,  with a nap sandwiched in between.  The first movie was Bohemian Rhapsody,  about rock band Queen.  The other was The Front Runner,  about Gary Hart's political collapse following revelations of an affair.

Now,  as I write this,  we are at Washington's Dulles International Airport. We are about to board our final flight for this trip  - the eighth flight! A new record,  and not one that I will try to break anytime soon.

See everyone again soon!

A rainbow Over Newark Liberty International Airport greeting us just after arriving back:

This was our set of wheels on the last day in France, a kind of sporty looking Citroën. These were the pictures that I took just before returning it, to make sure that it was in tip-top, without a scratch on it. But I figured it would not be a bad idea to share them here, too: