Paris: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Thursday, July 2nd

The "look": So far, the French have not lived up to their reputation of being rude, Aloof? Subdued? Yes, but not rude. I read that when you go into a store, it is like going into someone's home, so you say "bonjour" when you arrive and "au revoir" when you leave and you don't just start touching everything. We passed by a bookstore yesterday and immediately started picking up, turning over and generally manhandling the books on the table on the sidewalk. That's when we saw the "look" for the 1st time....a serious, no nonsense face. The man who owns the hotel with his wife, has a reputation on the travel site I use as being very unfriendly, and basically being in the wrong business, Yesterday I approached him with a question, The "look" came over the top of glasses that were resting low on his nose and eyebrow raised. I matched him with my "look" (Joel, you know the one I'm talking about). I think I detected a bit of a smile from him.

We started the morning slow and easy with breakfast across the street at Cafe du Marche. It is a good way to start the day...outside, watching the well dressed folks head off to begin their day. It is no exaggeration...people are so well put together here. Dresses, skirts and very nice shoes, Simple yet chic I fit right in :) Of course there is always one person who goes overboard.....

We decided to start at The Arc de Triomphe at around 11am this morning, which is the start of Des Champs Elysees. We were told it was an easy bus ride. It was and we took the elevator to the top.

We then started our walk towards The L'Orangerie Museum. It was SO hot. 95 degrees is not good walking weather. we stopped along the way at a park and ate our sandwiches we had brought with us. We checked out our maps and finally found the museum BUT we couldn't figure out where the entrance was. We finally did, but the heat had me at a melt down stage. After leaving the museum we walked and walked looking for a bus or taxi. We are finding more of a language barrier than we expected so it was hard to get help. A cab finally stopped and I was ready to pay anything. The cab driver didn't really want to take us, as he said it was close. It is only close if you know where you are going ! When we got back around 6pm, we sat and had a cold beer. Paris is huge and I felt eaten alive. We decided, as long as we were at the cafe we should eat dinner and go collapse in our rooms. We wanted to see if we could rally for a night boat ride down the Seine.

Amazing what a shower and rest will do. At 8:30pm we were back on the bus heading to the Seine. Paris redeemed itself. We had a wonderful 1 hour cruise seeing all of the sights. I love how people gather at the river bank. There was music, dancing and artists. The Eiffle Tower s beautiful at night and twinkles on the hour. On our way back to the hotel we saw a flame that was a tribute to Princess Di. Tonight felt like an apology from Paris for the afternoon

Again, thanks for the comments, i love hearing from you.