Package

Reeses
Originally uploaded by oiseau.

Remember this? Well, for the Great International Secret Blog Exchange, I had to prepare a package for a woman living in NY. I remember selecting and wrapping the items, and running to the Post Office to zip it off in the combined, capable hands of La Poste and the American Postal Service. (All irony implied).

I never received my package from whoever was selected for me. I am not bitter. I'm sure that the responsibility lies with the lovely American/French customs/post.

Well, this wasn't the end of this GISBE story. Because she was coming to Paris for a vacation with her husband. So, a couple of emails, train timetables referenced, phone calls to a Parisian hotel room and we had a day trip to Reims sorted!

I trotted off at 9:45am this morning to meet the train. I didn't take a board with their names on, but I did hang around on the platform to watch people get off the train, and leave and... Where are my Americans with the recognisable polka dot bag?

No Americans. No next train for hours. No phone call. No other mobile to call.

I ambled home, phoned the hotel, got no answer and conferred with the Frog. We decided to go for lunch and I checked my phone nervously for a couple hours.

It was weird. I knew something must have happened. Had I got something wrong?

2:30pm, Jenny called me. They'd found an internet café and looked up my phone number, that they'd forgotten in the hotel. Having arrived at Gare de l'Est for the train I'd promised them, they were told it didn't exist. (I know I watched it arrive!). Several hours, a slow train, a wander around Reims and braved calls to French Directory Enquiries, they'd managed to find a solution.

A quick jump in a car, and we whisked them off for the couple of hours that were left of the Sunday. A whirlwind tour of the house and vines, we then sat in the late autumn sun, sipping glasses of champagne.

We waved them off at the station a couple of hours later. So, in the end my package had finally arrived, accompanied by a lovely, funny couple. I think that the two bags of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, two fabulous bridal magazines and new friends, more than make up for the delay!