An Aleatoric Harangue

Lost in the City

It took all day to drive from Switzerland to Paris, 10 hours not including lunch and pit stops, and everyone was exhausted by the end of the journey. The bug going around the bus has been spreading even further and all of the tour group is happy to find their rooms and their beds; everyone but me of course. In true me fashion, I had to explore tonight because going to sleep at 10 PM when there is still a bit of light out seemed a traveler’s sin to me since I hadn’t gotten sick. Our hotel isn’t in Paris proper but in an area called Le Defense which is the business area of Paris so there really isn’t much to see around our hotel. By this time of night everything seems to either be closing or closed in the area and the streets are rather deserted. I left the hotel and went right a few times on some curvy roads and a couple back alleys until I realized I had no idea where I was or how I got there. Now, most people tend to panic a bit when this happens to them, but I’m more adventurous than most, which is a nice way of saying I’m a little crazy, so I took this as a chance to try my skills at adapting to a new and unfamiliar area. I realized that I mostly took right turns so I thought I should try a few more of those and see what happened. That didn’t exactly work as I ended up in a dead end with the only recourse being to join the freeway, not a viable option as you might imagine.

Then, by some twist of fate and dumb luck that I always seem to have when trying to find places, I noticed a staircase that seemed to lead up to a courtyard of some sort. It ended up that this was where I wanted to head as just past the courtyard was a sign pointing towards our hotel, Hotel Mercure, and my path home, or rather to my temporary home substitute. As I arrived at the hotel, I realized that it was still only 11:30 and not quite late enough for me to drift to sleep so I decided to explore the hotel amenities.

As I took the elevator up, I noticed that there was a fitness center on the top floor and decided to see what this hotel offered as its “fitness center” as compared to the other pitiful excuses of broken treadmills and rusting elliptical machines that we had seen in most of the hotels we had stayed in to this point. After wandering around and finally stumbling upon the gym I found it to be exactly the same as any others that we had been to before this. That wasn’t what made this area of the hotel noteworthy, however. As I walked around this top floor of the hotel, I found a door that led to a patio area and a beautiful view of the surrounding area. As I came out and looked left I saw the Eifel Tower, lit up and beaming, in the distance nestled between the view of two nearby buildings and standing tall over the illuminated city of lights. I spent almost an hour out on the roof enjoying the cool night air and a nice conversation with an Australian tourist who had also explored and found this roof patio.