France: The Prequel

Following several days of painful anxiety, the kind that makes you feel like you're going to throw up, and major sleep deprivation, Charlie and I jumped on a flight to San Francisco to grovel before the French authorities for our precious last item needed for our hopefully-impending journey: our student visas.

I had spent the last week painstakingly copying, scanning, organizing, checking and re-checking that all of our documents were in line.  Everything seemed to be in order.  We were confident that we had all we needed to be approved, but were still scared shitless, everything having gone so smooth up until now, wondering if some awful bureaucratic distaster might dash our marvelous plans altogether. It was unlikely, but not impossible.

As I finished up packing and checking for the umpteenth time that all of our documents were in order, something occurred to me: Charlie's only valid form of ID was his passport.  Furthermore, when one applies for a visa one surrenders his or her passport and it is returned later. Finally, we were flying to San Francisco.  I realized that without his passport Charlie would not be getting back on the plane to come home.  I informed him of this.  He panicked.  I said it would be no big deal because we could rent a car and make the long drive home to Seattle - it was a nice drive anyway.

The next morning he went to the department of licensing to try to obtain at least a temporary form of official identification and was successful in getting a paper copy.  The next step would be to see if it worked on airport security.

We worked all day, feeling nauseous with anticipation the whole time, and arrived at the airport separately.  Finally, the time had come to test Charlie's temporary ID.  The man at the security gate barely flinched, and waved us on.  Success!  One flight down.  Now we just had to make sure they would let us back through in San Francisco.

It was nearly 11:00 PM when we arrived. We grabbed a taxi, manned by a young, olive-skinned man in a dapper hat who silently and shamelessly flirted with me in Charlie's presence.  We told him where we were going and, although he didn't seem sure, got us there without any problem.  Thank you, GPS!  On our way we realized the taxi was a hybrid, as it sounded like it turned off completely every time we stopped.  I had never been in a hybrid car before and somehow it didn't make me feel so bad about not taking public transport instead.  When I knew we were close to the hotel, we started getting a little nervous about the place I had booked, seeing that the surroundings were not at all hospitable.  Fortunately, our hotel turned out to lie just beyond this insidious zone, and we felt safe enough there.

The Mayflower hotel is old and looks like something out of film noir with a large lobby and a gaudy carpeted staircase. We checked in, climbed the stairs and fell into bed, hardly sleeping a wink thanks to our anticipation of the next morning.

We got up early enough to have breakfast and to get prettied up for our interviews. Charlie wore a tie and I wore what I refer to as my "first lady" dress. We walked the four blocks to the consulate, found the appropriate door, and just stood there are waited until it opened.

As always, we were ridiculously early. Finally, other people started arriving and after about an hour the door opened and a security woman began ushering people in, searching their bags as they entered.

The room where the "interviews" took place was small and had several chairs set up facing a television. We were instructed to sit down. After watching the three people ahead of us have their interviews, we relaxed a little. We had pictured being grilled in a private room by grim-faced French authorities. All we had to do in this case was pass our documents through a hole in a plastic window, much like at a bank. They reviewed our documents, made sure everything was there and then told us we would receive our passports back in about a week. The whole ordeal took less than 10 minutes.

We walked out, feeling light as air, and made our way back to the hotel where we promptly took a three-hour nap. When we woke up we decided to go out and explore. First, we stopped at the front desk to consult the receptionist about the best way to get around and to obtain a map. She pointed out several places on the map and put a large X through the less-than-desirable area that we had driven through the night before, instructing us to avoid that neighborhood. We set out walking and made our way to Market St. where one is supposed to be able to catch the beloved trolley up to Fisherman's Wharf. After an hour or so of standing in line among obnoxious tourists, trying other bus stops only to be cut in front of my more obnoxious tourists, and being taunted by an asshole trolley driver, we said SCREW THE TROLLEY!

Taxis are faster anyway. We got up to Fisherman's wharf and found it to be much like Pike Place Market in Seattle... loaded with tourists. We don't really have much tolerance for them nor do we like to do the sort of things they generally do. We wandered around a while but didn't see much except a guy disguised as a tree scaring people as they passed by him on the sidewalk. We ate lunch, visited a rude tobacconist and then made our way to a beachy area where people were jogging and swimming. It was relaxing and there was a cool boat. The cigars were not worth smoking, however.

Observe:

After a nice rest in the perfect weather, we made a quick jog up the hill to the Ghirardelli factory and bought some chocolate. Once again, we stood in line for a while for the damn trolley but, being at our wit's end with tourists already and adding in the auricular assault of the street band, we once again said screw it and caught a regular bus.

The following day we made our way down to the infamous Haight-Ashbury district. We didn't make it there until almost 11:00 AM and even then almost nothing was open yet. Apparently the hippies running the place don't like to get out of bed before noon.  Truthfully, it wasn't much to see. It was mostly a lot of head shops. But there were also other quaint little interesting stores, some decent-looking restaurants and a great music store (Amoeba Music). At the corner of Haight-Ashbury itself there was only a Ben & Jerry's store.

Me and the cow.

When we had shopped as much as we could on the quiet street, we decided to make our way to the beach for a while in order to give the shops we wanted to visit a chance to open. We grabbed a bus that circumnavigated Golden Gate State Park and wound up on a nearly deserted beach with burning hot sand. We mostly just sat around staring at the waves but also did a fair amount of treasure hunting.

Ahhh!

Charlie hunts for booty.

Treasure! A petrified sand dollar.

On the way back from the beach we also noticed this sign bearing the graffiti of an obsessive surfer:

Uggggggggg. I'm getting tired of writing this blog entry. In short, the rest of the trip consisted of getting my hair did by my Auntie Glenda at Acabello salon. Check her out if you are ever in SF: http://glendadarling.com/ She is magic! Then we went to the Fillmore Jazz Festival where Charlie had some yummy barbecued oysters that he has re-created twice since. Then we went home without any problems with the temporary ID.

A week later we received our visas!