We walk out of the train staton and it's raining. And chilly. Justin is thrilled, because even though he hates getting wet, he hates the intense summer heat even more. I am perturbed.
We had four nights in Paris and the temperature didn't get above 65 degrees until the last day, with intermittent rain. I brought only one pair of pants on this trip, and I wore those pants every day. And the only long sleeve top I had was a bathing suit coverup, and that was slightly diaphanous, but it was the closest thing I had to warm. One day I wore a long skirt over my pants, and my toes were cold when I wore sandals, so I wore my running sneakers as well. Traipsing around Paris, dressed like an Orthodox Jew. Grumpy.
I studied french in junior high and high school. I was really good at it. I was the first person in the history of my junior high, so they tell me, to get a perfect score on the citywide French test; I even got all the accent marks right. I remember distinctly writing my accent marks with questionable slope so that the graders might not be able to figure out whether I meant è or é, and choosing words that had no accent mark at all when I could, but still. There was a lot of chatter that year about who was going to win the award: me, or Helene koshefsky. It was neck and neck and there was a lot of speculation, I recall, as to who was going to get it, but that citywide exam sealed the deal. I won the award and it was pretty much one of the proudest days of my life until then.
Then I got to high school, riding the high of my French victory. My teacher, who was actually French, with an accent and everything, never made us speak. No conversation. She made us memorize answers to questions she'd already asked for exams, and well, the failing grade I got on the AP Exam was the official end of my French.
Yet, I remember a lot. I can't really form a sentence, but I remember a lot of words for things, and some simple phrases, and I was happy about was the possibility that I would be able to at least take care of myself in restaurants speaking some French. Justin felt the same, and was excited to finally know some shit, because I studied Spanish and Italian, and now he'd be able to finally have a leg up.
Yeah, NO ONE understands what we're trying to say. We say three words, and they ask "do you speak English?" That whole thing about french people sort of being rude to you if you don't try to speak some French? That is le bullshit. At least in Paris. Everyone wanted to speak English to us instead of trying to wade through our crap French. And, justin and I keep saying things to each other in French, and neither of us understands the other either, which I'm sure is pissing him off as well.
Good thing is that the only stereotypical "rude French" behavior happened when we witnessed someone trying really hard to speak French instead of her english. We were at a thrift store, picking up a denim jacket for me to get through this fucking cold, and some chick was in the changing room. The store clerk, in French, said to her that she could only try one more thing on before she had to give the cabin to the next person in line, and then she gets a snotty little attitude and follows it up with, in English, "do you actually understand what I'm telling you? Because you keep saying oui, oui, i understand but you actually don't," which was pretty obnoxious but really funny. And somehow it didn't stop me from telling her I was ready to pay, in French. I didn't get yelled at, so we're going to call that one of two successful French transactions I had the whole time in France.
The B&B was on the 6th floor (no elevator.... Oops) of a building very near to sacre-coeur and not so close to much else. The location didn't matter so much, as sight seeing wasn't super high on the list, except that yeah, I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower again, cause it is awesome, even if it's trite. And I did, and took a selfie of justin and me smooching, which he was horrified to find out about days later, because it is actually corny as shit to do that. I even changed it to black and white, to add an extra dose of trite. Horrified.
The apartment was the smallest apartment I had ever been in. Immaculate, and was outfitted with the smallest appliances ikea has ever made including a two-burner stove. The mattress was on the floor, and because we were on the top floor, the ceiling was sloped, and you hit your head on the ceiling if you weren't too careful. But the piece de resistance was the bathroom. The toilet was right under another slope, and even me at 5'2" only barely cleared the ceiling with my head when I sat on the toilet. We don't really need much, and none of that really bothered me as much as the shit weather, but this was the second place we went to that advertised air conditioning when there was none. Luckily enough, it was so chilly it was completely unnecessary, and I would have been much more annoyed at a 6-floor walk up with no aircon in the heat than I would have been just being a bit cold for a couple of days. So we'll call that an over all win.
I guess we were looking forward to just being in Paris and checking out the nightlife, because we really hadn't done any of that up til now. But yet, that didn't seem to happen, either. I guess you really need to know what is going on what night, because the only thing we caught happening was a salsa party with some really lackluster dancing, and no room to sit to enjoy the music, at least.
We didn't even go to any museums. I mean, if I want to go to a great museum filled with foreigners, I can do that shit at home.
My fondest memory is when An Australian woman with her two kids approach an ATM machine at approximately the same time. I go ahead of her, because I don't really know how to say "you can go before me," and really, I don't care enough to let her.
The boys are being loud and obnoxious and she tells them to stop, to no avail. She's The boy all of a sudden pops over pretty much right next to me, and startles me a bit, but I realize that he's no threat and I'm not about to get robbed; he's just a bored kid.
Mom now yells at him in her accent, which somehow makes it funnier to me. "That's completely inappropriate getting that close to that lady. That's what people do when they're trying to steal your PIN number. Get over here and stop it."
I start cracking up. Quietly, and I'm hiding my mouth because I don't want to ruin this moment of discipline. I turn to her and smile. She rolls her eyes a bit.
The kid catches me hiding my smile and says, "mom, it's fine, she's laughing." Mom instantly retorts, "no, she's not, she's crying. That's how much you scared her."
I'm now trying my best to cover my face, and I look at her as I walk away. She says to me, "don't take those sunglasses off," so she can't continue this rouse.
I loved this woman.
We also had an exceptional meal in an unassuming little restaurant called Chez France (the woman's name was France.). We were the last couple in the restaurant, and we asked her if she had an aperitif... She only had what they have at most restaurants. Instead of amaro, it's calvados, cognac, pastis, grappa. I'm not a big fan of any of those, especially the grappa, so she brings justin a calvados and brings me a limoncello off the menu, because "it's for girls." She didn't even charge me for it.
So, Paris. Ate some great food, and a lot of cheese on baguettes. Fin.
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