Our Meeting at the French Embassy

Well... that was an interesting day.

As I mentioned yesterday, we got up at 3:30 AM this morning and flew to the French Embassy in San Francisco for our visa meetings, one at 11:30 AM and the other at noon.

We expected the Embassy to be a large ornate building covered with French flags and with crown moulding framed walls lavishly adorned with paintings by Monet, Degas, Matisse, Guaguin, and other famous artists.

How we THOUGHT the French Embassy would look

After being scanned, searched, and admitted onto the premises we thought we would end up sitting in an ornate hallway to wait for a heavily armed French soldier to lead us away to be interrogated interviewed.

How we THOUGHT the waiting area would look

At the appointed time we expected to find ourselves in a large office where we would be judged by a stern-faced French politician with a chip on his shoulder.

"You are not worthy to eat our baguettes!"

As it turns out the reality was quite different.

The Taxi driver got us to the Embassy by 9:00 AM and it was just an office in a S.F. high-rise.

The French Embassy was ACTUALLY a few rooms in this building

We were greeted at the Embassy doors by a rather bored-looking American security guard and an antiquated metal detector that didn't even pick up my belt buckle, which I forgot to remove. There was only one room and it resembled a small DMV office.

I don't have an ACTUAL picture but it was a bit like this... only with fewer people

We were obviously VERY early so we assumed we would have to wait for our late morning appointments, but after about 15 minutes a friendly woman behind a wooden counter yelled, "Next!" and up we went, together, papers in hand.

She said everything looked great (thanks to our relocation experts) and then asked us to step over to the next counter for pictures and fingerprints.

We were out of there and back at the airport by 10:00 AM... an hour and a half BEFORE our appointments. Unfortunately, we couldn't catch an earlier flight so we were stuck at the airport until the 4:30 PM departure time.

The Embassy took our passports and will mail them back to us next week. We left them a pre-paid Fedex envelope.

What a strange day! (Not that we're complaining.)