Paris Days 1 & 2, June 6-7

Days 1 and 2, June 6, 2026     Departure from Atlanta and Arrival in Paris June 7, 2026

Today, Patrise and I left home around 2:30 p.m. to take a 6:00 p.m. flight on Delta to Paris.  I am going to perform with the Trey Clegg Singers (TCS), and Patrise is traveling to accompany me.  This will be my 3^rd trip to Paris and Patrise’s 4^th, but I feel that you see and learn something new each time you go to Paris. Thus the title for this trip and series of blogposts: Paris 3.0 or 4.0.

The flight is expected to take about 8 hours. For this trip, since the flight was not double digits in transit time, I chose to not purchase first-class tickets.  We managed to make it to Paris okay, but neither of us were able to get much sleep, being so cramped up.  Oh well, we did save some money! Still, the flight was not without a little drama, although it did not involve us directly. One of the Trey Clegg Singers (name withheld for privacy) had a severe asthma attack and their usual prescriptions were not working. At some point in the flight the pilot used the intercom to ask if a medical professional was on the flight; the crew needed assistance with the distressed passenger. As it so happened, another of the TCS members is a family medicine doctor. He came to the aid of the passenger and within an hour or so, the person was in much better condition. Thank goodness!

From a flight quality perspective, the trip was relatively smooth, with only a few isolated, short-duration periods of turbulence. Patrise remembered it as much smoother than our last time flying here, roughly 5 or 6 years ago. For that trip, I was attending an airport conference, and Patrise, our then daughter-in-law, Rashida, and our oldest granddaughter, Lael, were joining me. The flight was a bit rougher, but the trip was fabulous. However, that is a story for another trip blog. Now back to our current journey...

When we arrived, it was just after 8:00 o’clock in the morning. As Patrise and I came off of the plane, to load the transport bus to the baggage terminal, we came upon two prominent Atlanta civic leaders with whom we are well acquainted. David Edwards and Ayesha Khanna are a husband and wife, who have been active in Atlanta government, community and civic life for many years now. Ayesha served as the Deputy COO during Shirley Franklin's administration and is now the Executive Director of a national philanthropic organization named the Tides Center. David is currently working in Mayor Andre Dickens' administration and is a professor at Georgia Tech. They arrived in Paris to begin a curated biking tour of France, going to Normandy. We were so surprised to learn that we had been on the same flight.

(View from the plane, approaching Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport)

(Ayesha Khanna and Dave Edwards, TCS crew waiting for the rest of the group and bus.)

It took the group awhile to clear customs for those 22 of us who traveled on the same flight. Apparently there was a lull in the customs processing and about five of our group were delayed in being seen and cleared, as the entire process came to a complete cessation for about 20 minutes. Those of us who had already cleared, were at baggage claim obtaining our luggage, totally unaware of what was delaying the remainder of the group.

Here are several scenes of Parisian life I vewied from the bus as we were headed to the hotel:

We were both exhausted and hungry.  The food served for breakfast was awful -- at least by the Delta standards we have been used to in the past. It just wasn’t very appetizing. Our chartered bus arrived at the hotel, Les Jardin du Marais, around noon, but we had to wait until after 3:00 p.m. to check into our room. While we waited for our room to be cleaned to be able to check in, the two of us went to a neighborhood restaurant to have lunch.  The restaurant is called L’etincelle, and it serves Vietnamese food. (Recall that Vietnam -- Indochina as it was then called -- was a French Colony for many decades, and so there are a lot of people of Vietnamese decent in Paris.  We are very familiar with and really enjoy Vietnamese food, so we easily were able to find dishes on the menu that we liked.

(Lunch at L'etincelle, the Vietnamese French restaurant, near our hotel.)

Patrise had arranged for us to upgrade our room to a junior suite.  It is a very spacious room and allows us to have separate space in the morning for me to sleep later.  Needless to say, after being up for over 24 hours, we immediately crashed on the bed when we got into the room.

(Views of the Hotel Jardin du Marrais, our room, and the hotel courtyard at night.)

When we awoke from our “nap” hours later, we found another local place to have dinner, an Italian restaurant called Italian Style Café on the opposite corner from L’etincelle. We were joined by several of my choir colleagues – specifically, Wendell Johnson, Bill and Janet Permar, and Velda North. (Velda is also a member of the church we attend, First Congregational Church of Atlanta, and was previously our assigned deacon. As our assigned deacon years ago, she began sending us personally handcrafted cards for holidays, birthdays, and just to say thinking of you. Even though she is no longer our assigned deacon, she still sends us these cards and notes and they are very special. We treasure each one and the thoughtfulness with which she designs and notates each of them.) All of six of us enjoyed our meals, enlivened by the wonderful conversations we had, getting better acquainted with one another. 

(1st Photo above is L'etincelle at night. 2nd photo is the dinner group on night one. From left to right: Patrise, Wendell Johnson, Janet and Bill Permar, Velda North, me.)

After dinner, Patrise and I called it a day and finally got a chance to rest.  Tomorrow will be a busy day, and it starts with early breakfast and a rehearsal at 8:30 a.m. Ugh!