Les Flâneurs: Detroit

Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts

Leaving Paris

May 3. Going home.

Although our return to the United States made for a very long day, the flights were on time and uneventful with very little turbulence.

We were up at 6:00 am, showered, dressed and finished tidying up the apartment before we left. Our Uber driver, a very nice man from Mali, was on time and we sailed through the suburbs of Paris. The only stall came as we neared airport grounds. Traffic slowed to a painful crawl due to traveaux (works). As we approached the departure gates we soon realized another reason for the congestion: cars/shuttles/taxis had to pay a small fee of €1 to get to the lanes to drop their passengers!

That was only the beginning of a series of absurd incidents trying to get to our gate. Upon queueing up for the check-in desks to drop our bags off and get our boarding passes, there was a man asking oddly irrelevant questions of each person waiting in line. How did you get to the airport? Where did you go on your trip? How did you get there? How long did it take? Why were you here? Why are any of us Here? What is quantum physics? Mind you he wasn't writing any of this down or keeping any sort of account of our answers. He was just there to apparently annoy everyone and hold things up.

Then it was a series of more showing the passports to a variety of individuals who may or not have had anything to do with anything but whose task was simply to slow things down, look at papers they may or may not have understood before scowling and allowing us to move to the next absurd station.

We eventually cleared all the hurdles and made our way to one of the new concourses at Charles de Gaulle airport where we settled in to await our Delta flight to Detroit.

The flight took forever to board, as our passports had to be checked one more time, we had to go to another station to actually scan our boarding pass and finally we were on the plane.

After nearly 8 hours of sitting in a chair at 38,000 feet, with only the occasional screaming infant to mar the otherwise tranquil mood shared by a couple hundred strangers, we were soon back in Michigan.

The absurdities concluded once we reached Detroit airport. Get this, once we cleared passport control, we had to wait for our bags coming off the plane, then schlep them about 100 feet to an area that said "Recheck your bags" -- the bags were already checked through to our final destination -- hand them to a guy who then just placed them on the conveyor without looking at anything and we moved on to our final gate.

We had about 2 hours to kill and kill it we did with a glass of wine and a cheese board.

Our flight to Grand Rapids left right on time and after a short 20-30 minutes we were down and heading for baggage claim. Our neighbor Sandy had kindly agreed to pick up us and she was waiting in the cellphone lot for our text that we were curbside.

Once home we unpacked a bit but mostly just enjoyed being able to relax after a long day of flying. Sandy had kindly left us a delicious pasta cucumber salad which was the just the perfect thing to help welcome us home. It was then off to bed early for a much-needed night's sleep.

Departure and arrival

April 11-12.

The day began overcast and rainy and pretty much stayed that way all day -- and in Detroit, too! That would all change by the time we got to Paris.

Susie finished packing this morning (she works wonders with packing cubes) and we had plenty of time to relax before having to leave for the airport. One of our neighbors, Don Trap, took us to the Grand Rapids airport Thursday afternoon.

After checking our bags we went through a very quiet security check -- most TSA agents were just standing around wondering where the onslaught was, I suppose. Anyway, one TSA officer did pass along his theory that most folks were burned out from the recent spring break travels.

After getting to our gate we settled in with a couple of coffees in the brand-new concourse A while we cooled our heels for a couple of hours.

genuinely comfortable chairs

lots of wide open space with work stations everywhere

Eventually we boarded the small and quite narrow Bombardier aircraft. The plane was full, the ride bumpy but we were in Detroit in about 40 minutes. Plenty of time to find our way to another concourse (via a tunnel with out of order moving walkways thank you), a distance of some miles it seemed. But we found our gate and once again settled in to await further instructions.

The plane to Detroit

The Air France flight left on time and proved uneventful. The food was not bad and the flight attendants never stopped smiling, were solicitous of those who needed an extra hand or two, and were always willing to help whenever possible. To top it off we had the whole row to ourselves! It was the second to last one in the plane, but it was all ours!

Our plane landed in Paris slightly ahead of schedule. After queuing for about 20 minutes to get through passport control -- which will be absolutely crazy during the Olympics we thought -- we located our bags. Off we went to the RER line B train station and wound up queuing again, this time to get tickets for the ride into the city.

We got off at the Gare de Lyon and walked across the street to our hotel for the night, Citizen M.

Next: how we handle stepping forward to the future of hospitality. . .

May 2017 update from Grand Rapids

Our wonderfully mild winter has been followed, as you have probably already suspected, by a gorgeous spring. So, we a couple of weeks ago took the opportunity to go across the street and stroll in Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, savoring blossoms, sun and blue sky. . .

"Baboon with chimpanzee" 1996 by Marshal Fredericks

"Juggler clown, acrobat clown, lovesick clown" 1991 by Marshal Fredericks

We were fortunate to have Easter dinner with the Ten Have Chapman Galloway clans out at Clear Lake -- there's always plenty of lively conversation and great food at their gatherings. We returned just last Sunday to join them all for lunch as they welcomed Berenice's parents who were visiting from France.

Berenice?

OK, here's the backstory: Berenice is from France. She began her American phase of life as an exchange student living with the Ten Have Chapmans and decided to try and make her way in the world from here rather than there, if you get my drift. And just a week ago she graduated form Grand Valley State University here in West Michigan and will spend the summer studying for the CPA exam before heading off to Detroit to work for an accounting firm.

Now, put yourself in her shoes -- even though your feet may be bigger than hers -- you're a young person living in a foreign county, no family, although the THCs have pretty much got that covered now, and you're learning a new language and culture and then decide, "Hey, I'm going to make my way in the world right here and right now." Would any of us be able to do that as an 18-year-old American right out of high school plopped down in Normandy or Brittany? Few if any, I suspect. What she is doing is nothing short of incredible.

Matt, Berenice, her mother and father

Berenice with her parents and John Ten Have

Garrett Ten Have Chapman

The other day we joined a tour group from Aquinas College's Osher Lifelong Learning Center and took a bus to visit the Detroit Institute of Arts. Visiting the museum had been on our to-do list for some months now and when we heard that the OLLI folks were planning a trip we took advantage of letting someone else drive there and back.

We left Grand Rapids at 8:30 in the morning and were back home by 5:30 -- and since it's about 6 hours there and back we spent about twice as much time on the road as we did on the museum. No matter, we had plenty of time to savor the treasures of all three floors and since it was raining the entire time it was good to be inside anyway.

The building's architecture is fantastic, well-represented by two of the main halls: