The Who the hell saw that coming tour
18 September - 23 September 2014
The Eiffel tower as taken from the Palais de Chaillot
Wow, this trip was so far out of
left field that when it came at me it hit me on the right side of my face. In
my mind I had already pre-judged 2014 to have been an entirely ‘travel barren’
year, but as I also know in my heart of hearts, you can NEVER say NEVER.
Circumstance can be odd and sometimes can
conspire for doom, and sometimes, conspires for the force of BOOM! (yeah, I said
that).
Hence, in the tradition of all my
other kick-off write ups such as ‘Life in a year full of Saturdays’, ‘The wing and a prayer tour’, ‘Don’t call this a comeback’, ’43: The tour of awesome’ and ‘The two-timer tour’, I bring you ‘Paris: Who hell saw that coming?’.
There are so many components to
my Parisian jaunt, elements that conspired to fashion my express saunter
through several glorious early Autumn days in city of lights, that had I have
even attempted to have planned the eventual route that was taken, nothing would
have manifested, nothing at all.
I think the best place to start
is to provide a flavour of some of conversations that were held in the hallways
of the Federal Court when questioned as to what I’d be doing with my entire
four days of leave that I had requested. Most conversations were structured
accordingly;
Random work colleague – ‘You’re taking a few days off H, are you up
to anything?’
Me – ‘Yeah, I’m going away for a few days’
Random work colleague – ‘Oh nice, where are you going?’
Me – ‘Paris’
Random work colleague – (insert
incredulous look) – ‘For how many
days!?!’
Me – ‘I’ll be in Paris for the weekend mostly’
Random work colleague – (now
looking at me like I’d been smoking too much tutti-frutti) – ‘Ummm – Why?’
Me – ‘I’m there to surprise my parents, oh, and I have a date lined up, a first date actually’
Random work colleague – ‘Can I get some of the stuff you’ve been
smoking??’
The ‘who the hell saw that coming’ tour had so many iterations prior to
where it settled that it easily could have been called ‘World Cup Rio’ or ‘Living la vida en Latin Europe’, but as
the reality and demands of working for the Federal Court drew down on the
mental time credits that I’d assigned myself in earlier months, it became all
too obvious that the only travel I would be doing was via the 6:27am all
stations ride from Seven Hills to Town Hall.
Let me commence however with an overview
of what would be my greatest Criss Angel impersonation, aka - the Le Restaurant heist on Rue de Beaux
Artes – Thursday, 18th of September, 2014. As you know, the best
laid plans of both mice and men quite often go astray, and so too, my plans for
making it to the World Cup in Brazil and also a France/Spain tour sadly sank
into the murk of the shallow marshes, induced by merciful euthanasia. The
family resistance gene to ‘required work’ however is still carried by my
parents and that resistance equated to both travel fortune and opportunism.
Theirs now is a life of retired bliss created on the foundation of purchased
time as credited from the Bank of Life. So, as unbelievably cool a son that I
am, I hooked these old-timers up with a two month holiday and also threw in an
all expenses, kick-arse four day excursion to one of the most loved
destinations on the planet. I give you
these lines in order now to set the foundation as to what additionally was to
play out in my mind after I created their itinerary.
In the early months of this year,
sitting back one night and contemplating
my handy work at playing the role of ‘legendary
family travel agent’, I had one of those lightning bolt thoughts where the
alignment of stars brought on the phenomena of brilliant inspiration acquired through pangs
of what I thought would inevitably be travel jealousy, that was of course underpinned by the lead tenets of ‘crazy’
and ‘cool’.
Now ‘what if’, I thought, ‘what
if whilst they were in Paris I flew in, all covert, cloak and dagger style, and
met them at a five star Parisian restaurant that I had pre-booked for them?
What if Henry…what if you managed to pull off that stunt without so much as a
word to anyone?’, and thus the planning for who
the hell saw that coming commenced in earnest.
Part two of this now breathtaking
story has a lot to do with the entry details in ‘Riga - Latvian night moves. And whilst I have made a promise not to discuss in
public what should really be kept private, I will mention that the idea of a
first date, four years removed from a
random, innocuous meeting in a Rigan bar, that had me wandering the streets of
the Old Town like a hapless, ill-fated nomad , somehow germinated within the
midst of these two sentences;
Ms Pop – ‘You know, if you could fly into Europe, anywhere, I would be able to
meet you there’
Crazy man – ‘What about Paris on the 18th of September, I’m there for the
weekend’
Ms Pop - No comments to be added, just refer to the
line offered by Random work colleague
as outlined earlier dialogue regarding the same escapade.
…And there it was, random events,
bonding to form an epic atom of awesome. It was to be Paris like a Rockstar! It
idea had now somehow been dreamt, all that was left was for the dream to be
realised!!
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