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The Travel Journals of Matt & Mary Capps
September 16th 2005
This was the strangest day of the trip. Today’s agenda was supposed to be a tour of Paris, lunch at the Eiffel tower and then we were to go to the Louver. But thing looked bad from the beginning. Our driver, his name was Peter arrived 20 minuets early. He was an immigrant from Hong Kong, and his French was just as bad as his English.
Upon leaving the hotel he presented me a card that suggested that he worked
for the C.I.A. on the back of the cardholder was two pictures of his children.
Peter informed us that he was married to a Russian girl, and that he only gets
to visit his hometown of Hong Kong once every 10 years.
Mary and I had become used to the narrow one way streets, crowded cercal squares
that traffic from all directions seamed to merge all at once, and the crazy
drivers that seemed to fill the Paris streets during the rush hours. But Peter
was by far the worst driver we had ever seen.
Not very long after that we arrived at the second stop. We picked up to nice
people from Australia named Barry & Heather. After visiting with them for
a few minuets we discovered that we had two different agendas for the day. They
were supposed to go to Versailles in the morning and the Louver in the afternoon,
were they were supposed to have lunch. When we questioned our Chinese driver
about this he would just turn around, stair blankly at us and say yes!
We did not ask to many more questions after that because it just seemed to make
his driving worse. So any way we all ended up at the louver where we spent the
better part of the morning. Around noon we were ready to leave the louver but
our crazy Chinese / French guide and driver first got lost in the louver and
then when we helped him find his way out he could not find the van. Mary finally
stepped in and pointed out to him that it was down stairs. So 10 minuets later
we could hear the unmistakable sound of a Chinaman burning the clutch out as
he came up the ramp to pick us up.
After another 20-minute hair rising ride through the tight, narrow, congested,
streets of Paris, he finally brought us to a nice little restaurant some where
near the shopping district of Paris. We had a really nice meal and the wine
was excellent. Mary was beginning to acclimate to the French food a lot better
than she was a few day ago. But we decided to abandon our driver, and Barry
and Heather, and strike out into the city on our own. We had already got a really
close up view of the Eiffel tower and had no desire to go up init on such a
cold day. The temperature in Paris that day only got up to 62o and Mary was
looking for a coat.
After a lot of walking we found a nice little black coat, some more souvenirs
to take home, and another bottle of wine then we went back to the hotel to start
packing for Rome.
The next morning we had a little time before we had to catch out plane so we
made one last shopping spree in Paris. Chocolate’s wine, and more pictures
of the city. At the time I was glad to leave the hustle and bustle of a major
European city behind, but I must confess Paris has a charm all to it’s
own and some day I hope to go back to the city of lights. Though next time I
hope to have a little bit more time and a lot more money.
For those of you who are a Dan Brown fan and have read the Da Vinci coed you will find this picture interesting.
The French take their airport security very seriously. I got in a lot of trouble taking this picture.
Paris 1778
After a full year of deflecting requests for an alliance, the French were suddenly impatient as 1777 drew to a close. They were prodded not only by Americas success at Saratoga and completion of there own navel rearmament program, but also a new gambit by Franklin. He began to play the French and British off against each other and to let each side discover (and here is where he relied on the spies he new were in his midst) how eager the other side was for a deal.
After the French discovered that Franklin was meeting with the British ambassador
in Paris to consider a deal with them the French made every effort to accommodate
all of Franklin’s requests. Then at last he had it a date to meet with
Louie the XVI at Versailles.
Louis XVI made the Franco-American treaties official by receiving the
three commissioners at Versailles on March 20th 1778 Crowds gathered at the
palace gates to catch a glimpse of the famous American, and they shouted “vive
Franklin” as his coach passed through the gold-crested gates
It was customary back then when you came to see the king visitors would
ware there best wigs, powder their faces and rent swords to ware at the kings
courts along with other items of official dress. The two other commissioners
from America dressed to the hilt in all the glory of the kings court. But Franklin
did not; he wore a plane brown suit with his famous spectacles as his only adornment.
He did not ware a sword and, when he discovered that his wig he had bought for
the occasion did not sit well on his head, decided to forsake it as well. “I
should have taken him for a big farmer,” wrote one female observer, “so
great was his contrast with the other diplomats, who were all powdered, in full
dress, and splashed all over with gold and ribbons.”
When Franklin was ushered into the king’s chamber at noon, after the official
levee, Louis XVI was in a posture of prayer. “I hope that this will be
for the good of both nations,” he said, giving a royal imprimatur to America’s
status as an independent nation. On a personal note, he added, “I am very
satisfied with your conduct since you arrived in my Kingdome.”
After a mid afternoon dinner hosted by Vergennes, Franklin had the
honor, if not the pleasure, of being allowed to stand next to the queen, the
famously haughty Marie-Antoinette, as she played at the gambling tables. Alone
among them at Versailles, she seemed to have little appreciation for the man
who, she had been told, had once been “a printer’s Forman.”
As she noted dismissively, a man of that background would never have been able
to rise so high in Europe. It is said that Franklin turned to the queen and
with a wink of his eye and a pleasant smile said, “ I proudly agree madam,
I proudly agree. “