Once Upon a Time... At the Paris Police Station

There are many stories in our lives. This is just one of them.

November 2, 2017 Friend of ours visited us when we lived in Toulouse, France during August of 2017. The couple and their son spent some time with us in Toulouse, then continued on to Paris where the husband unfortunately lost his wallet. It was possibly stolen on the metro. They filed a police report, but nothing was resolved before they returned to the United States. Weeks later, the police contacted him and said it had been recovered. We fabricated a letter in English and French to authorize us to retrieve it.

Then, during the kids' school break in October/November, we initiated a trip to Budapest-Vienna-Prague-Munich-Paris (as you do). Dan joined us in Budapest. The Budapest-Vienna-Prague part of the trip included my parents. The Munich-Paris leg was just me and the boys. I know there is a Dracula story in there that should be told as well, but that is for another time.

When we finally made it to Paris, we stayed at an AirBnB that was a bit off the beaten path, but located near the police station where we needed to retrieve the wallet. We went to an amazing restaurant for breakfast while waiting for the police station to open. As it was off the beaten path, there weren't tourists, so the proprietors of the restaurant were actually nice to us:) And the food! It was the best French breakfast we have ever had. It was necessary to get this picture out into the world to show you the amazing breakfast. I apologize for inducing drooling.

After breakfast, we went to the police station, put our bags through the metal detector and found that Alex was carrying like 8 bottles of water. I have no idea why. For those of you who know Alex now, this will not surprise you. The police officer who was on metal detector duty just kept pulling water bottles out of the backpack. I shrugged, made incredulous hand geustures, admonished Alex, and tried to say, "He is a crazy child." in French. It probably came out, "He is fire."

Once we got inside and were actually able to wait in line, it was so slow that the guy in front of us a few places actually fainted! Emergency services had to be called. Turns out we were in the wrong line on the wrong floor, which we found out after we left the crazy line to investigate elsewhere. We got the wallet back, minus the cash, obviously, and saw the ambulance leaving when we departed. But at least we had been fortified by the earlier amazing breakfast!

If you can be a well-behaved tourist, I highly recommend the restaurant Café Arthur et Juliette in Paris. It looks like it is still there. And, according to recent pictures, they have other meals beyond breakfast!