After scrimping and saving for 75 straight weeks, our long anticipated
day had finally arrived. We were going to Paris! With me on my second journey
to France were my wife and three teenage daughters. Unlike my first business
trip however, this journey was to be strictly a family vacation.
Our itinerary called for departing Orlando, FL at 12:05 AM,
and unwinding in our Paris hotel rooms, along the awe-inspiring Avenue de
l’Opera, by nightfall.
Travel plans changed however while we were in the air, delays
that required we stay a night in the French town of Metz. While my family slept
that first night, I stood at our hotel room window, gazing out across a sleepy
town plaza to a darkened Metz railway station. My thoughts were of events experienced
a few hours earlier, and of an earlier trip to Paris, as well as how both
events could make for a great mystery novel.
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| Metz, France Railway Station |
Two
journeys merge:
Paris by Happenstance, Part 1 of this 2 part series, tells of
my strange journey to North Africa in 1983. The perception for three American
visitors to that country had been that we had become trapped in a terribly
scary situation. Our distressing ordeal required an ingenious plan to escape
this inhospitable nation quickly.
Having escaped, as disclosed in Part 1, proud hardly did
justice for describing how we felt upon landing in Paris. We were in France,
but our return flight to the States was to be out of Belgium, three days
distant. That was a concern however for another day my boss decided. During the
interim, we’d relax a few days here in Paris
Our English friendly hotel, viewing the magnificent 19th
century Paris Opera House, had been recommended, so by late afternoon we had
checked in, showered, and were ready for a celebratory dinner. We dined in
style at a charming sidewalk café on world famous Champs Elysees, enjoying cocktails on the rocks, with lots of ice!
During dinner we recounted events of a crazy African
adventure, only instead of tears of fear we laughed about a very weird journey.
Following dinner we strolled along the amazing avenue, viewing
awesome sights such as the Arche Triumph, before returning to our rooms to sleep
like never before. The next morning my employer invited me to join him and his
wife for a soothing massage, but I declined. I was not about to pass up an
opportunity to walk the streets of Paris.
Leaving my travel companions back at the hotel, I stepped out onto
Avenue de l’Opera, viewed the opulent Opera House, and then strolled south to
the Louvre, Tuileries Gardens, Concorde Place, and walked along the iconic
Seine River.
I had never planned to visit Paris, yet once here, I couldn’t seem
to get this city out of my mind.
That evening, we enjoyed an extravagant dinner aboard the amazing
Bateaux Mouches dinner boat, cruising the River Seine from Notre Dame in the
east, west to the Statue of Liberty replica just beyond the magnificent sight
of the Eiffel Tower.
As my boss and his wife decided to vacation in the French
Riviera, I explored Paris on my own for one more day before boarding a train
for Belgium, where I then met up with my return flight to the States. It was during
my train journey, while looking at the plush green French countryside, taking
in the sights of quaint little villages, that I began to concoct a new plan. I
wanted my family to share in this awesome experience.
One Family's PARIS journey:
And so 18 months later, after pinching pennies and reminding
three teenage girls daily that we on a strict budget, my family, in the summer
of 1985, boarded a trans-Atlantic flight bound for Luxembourg. In hand were railway
tickets for completing our journey from Luxembourg to Paris.
Flight delays however caused us to miss the last train to
Paris, and the language barrier that ensued placed us on an alternate train, and
on a text-book path for my novel’s plot.
Awake in the middle of the night, staring out across a sleepy
town plaza to a mammoth, albeit dark Metz train station, with its tall dimly
lit clock tower, Dennis, brother of murdered Jonathan Lynch, wrestled with understanding
what little he had learned as to how his brother arrived in France.
36 years in the making, In His Brother’s Memory is a mystery
novel inspired by true-life encounters. Dennis Lynch, an American alone in a
foreign land and unable to speak the local’s language, is determined to resolve
the mystery behind his brother’s death.
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| Click on Book Cover for Amazon Book Page |
Mystery and intrigue unfold on the streets of Paris, and Metz:
In His Brother’s Memory, a novel by Richard Lee Cronin.
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