Day 8 - The Louvre, and RACE TO THE TOWER!

Ahhh, a real night of sleep in our adult-sized hotel room! We don’t know if it was the triumph over our living conditions, or the fact that it never got dark in Paris until 10 at night, but we began to sleep in every morning until around 10am. Not the norm for us, especially not Katie. She’s usually a very up-and-at-‘em kinda gal. But, hey, it’s our honeymoon! Most mornings, we head downstairs for our hotel’s sad complimentary continental breakfast. Way downstairs – 2 floors below street level into a stone basement with low arched ceiling. It’s frighteningly similar to a prison cell. You can imagine being chained up down here at the king’s whim, with no hope of ever seeing the sunlight again. But there is some effort at décor down here amongst the condemned – a coat of yellow paint, which is universal color code for “cheery!” (Nicole and Erin, can you say “hostile hostel?”)



But today, we’ve had enough of baguettes and hard boiled eggs. Where does one go to get a real breakfast in Paris? That’s right, faithful readers, you guessed it, all together now - Breakfast in America to the rescue! Yummo!

drunk with pleasure at the thought of yummy American breakfast!

Since this was Katie’s second trip to Paris, she had already experienced a bit of the Louvre (not that one trip can do it justice). So we decided to part ways for a few hours. Jordan would go to the Louvre and Katie would sit to read and write at a little café or park nearby. That is Katie’s idea of a perfect French day.



We synchronized our cheapo watches and decided to check in at one of two meeting places in an hour, and each hour after that, in case one of us wasn’t done with our solo adventure yet. Katie sent Jordan off to the Louvre with a kiss and a hug and wandered off to one of the little fountain ponds on the nearby grounds of the Palais. She hunkered down in a metal slatted bouncy chair and dug into her latest Joyce Carol Oates novel, THE FALLS. It was overcast and spitting rain every now and then, but Katie was good and warm in the North Face microfleece she bought for the trip along with the Carrie-Bradshaw-On-A-Budget black rain jacket Nicole picked out for her back home. It was quite stylish, while also keeping the new bride dry.



Meanwhile, in the Louvre… Jordan knew himself well enough to predict an afternoon in an art museum would go like this: get in and start looking at every single thing on exhibit. At first everything is carefully scrutinized and appreciated, but then panic sets in as he realizes he can’t possibly see everything in the amount of time he has. So he begins to move faster, faster, and soon he’s hurrying through every collection just to be able to finish the task before closing time. It’s not a pretty sight and was something to be avoided, so this time Jordan decided on a new strategy. He figured out the highlights he wanted to hit and resolved to be out in a few hours. That means, the Mona Lisa, any sculpture by Michaelangelo, and maybe 1 or 2 other things. He went into the glass pyramid, descended by escalator the below-ground lobby, and started moving. (by the way, the glass pyramid doesn’t go upside-down like in the DAVINCI CODE. That’s a lie!)

Louvre admission ticket

The Louvre is absolutely huge, covering a few square blocks, all old stone buildings filled with artwork and tourists. It’s quite amazing. Unfortunately, the themes quickly began to grate on our atheist tourist… pictures of Jesus… pictures of Mary… pictures of Jesus and Mary… pictures of saints thinking about Jesus or Mary… centuries of the western world’s best artists, seemingly unable to depict any other subject. Imagine what work they could have produced if the church hadn’t had such a stranglehold on their societies… all that time and talent wasted. What a shame.



Upstairs, after a nice amount of time in the park, Katie decided to head back to the café in the Louvre courtyard and wait for Jordan. She ordered the most expensive cup of tea ever and enjoyed every bit of it with the Boursin cheese and baguette she bought that morning to prepare for a day in the city. (The bakery was truly a feast for the eyes, and we had to leave before Jordan started drooling on the pastries.)

Katie was planning to use the bread, cheese, and some tomatoes to reenact the lunch she and Nicole ate every day on the beach during her first trip to France over 15 years ago. Alas, she forgot her knife, so couldn’t cut the tomatoes. Unused, they ended up getting squished in her bag, oh well.



Downstairs, Jordan was standing in front of the MONA LISA and feeling… unimpressed. Enigmatic smile? Not by my lights. Perhaps a very early example of hype and spin… I truly don’t get what people think is so great about this painting. It’s possible that overexposure to the image has numbed me to it, but really, what’s the big deal? And here’s another question – why are all the guys in the statues naked? They’re doing tough, manly-man kinda stuff, like slaying dragons or killing their foes with mighty swords – all with their units hanging out. Isn’t that the first thing you’d cover if you were going to duke it out with a dragon? I’d cover it with asbestos, but these guys are letting it all hang out. Puzzling.



Katie waited ‘til a few minutes past the first meeting time and decided to explore the city before the next rendezvous time. She wandered just a few blocks away and happened upon a happy sight – the National Theatre! She could only get in to the lobby, alas the theatre was closed, but just being near it and soaking in the tribute statues to the likes of Moliere was good enough for her. She tried to find a play for her and Jordan to attend in Paris that would be in English, like Shakespeare or an original version of a classic, but there were none to be had. Outside was a beautiful square with pillars and checkered stone walkways, full of kids playing on large stone stumps. It seemed like a school trip of kids were there and they all sat on their stumps screeching and playing some kind of game.



Inside, Jordan was in the late 1600s / early 1700s and some images had emerged that actually had some human interest. Here’s the one he liked the best:

2 artists facing the camera (oops, I mean, the canvas) and one gestures proudly to his sculpture in the background. I like that. Two guys in the same field, comfortable with each other, taking a little pride break. That’s real life, something I can identify with, a lot more than pictures of a fat little baby being fawned over by everyone around him.



It was time to meet up again so Katie hightailed it through the spittle back to meet Jordan. She didn’t see him at first so she sat on the stone bench that had the slightest bit of cover to keep dry and started back into her book. Turns out Jordan was doing the same thing, a few alcoves over. Finally Jordan spotted Katie, and they had a nice reunion after their longest separation since they’d been married. AWWW!

Katie showed Jordan the National Theater. Hunger quickly set in, and we walked back to our neighborhood to find the next outdoor café to dine at. We settled on a cocktails place on the corner. Lots of people were sitting outside at little tables that ran the length of the sidewalk in front of the place, and they all looked like they were having lots of fun. Surely a place like that is going to have chips and salsa for our poor hungry tourists… right? Right? WRONG! And even more baffling, the back legs of the chairs were fastened to the table legs with immovable plastic ties, so we couldn’t get the leg room we wanted. Nonetheless we toughed it out, and were rewarded with some good food & intoxicating drinks.

Feeling tired, we headed back to the hotel room. Once again, there’s championship soccer on the television. There’s some Cup going on. European Cup? Maybe. We only get 3 channels, and soccer is the one with the best reception. We work on postcards and planning the itinerary for the rest of our trip. It’s mellow. But Jordan is still hungry, so he goes downstairs to a “trateur” – a restaurant specializing in take-out food – for a nice collection of curry Chinese food. Outside, it’s beautiful. The city is alive, full of promise and people. Jordan is invigorated, he catches a 2nd wind, and runs back upstairs. Katie is surprised by the burst of energy. Jordan proposes… THE RACE TO THE TOWER!



The Eiffel Tower is open for a few more hours, and the view at night will be amazing. Let’s race over there and get up to the top before it closes. Let’s go – right now! Katie catches the impulsive energy and moments later, we’re running through the streets to find the subway station. Katie’s got the route figured out because she’s the Queen of Public Transportation, remember? We run into the station, down the hugest escalator on earth, and find that – our train isn’t running. An announcement on the PA says the line isn’t running because of “a social problem”. Social problem? Like what – too many pregnant teenage girls? We have to find an alternate route – and quick. Again, the Queen rises to the occasion after the initial frustration – the Tower waits for no newlyweds! Soon we are running to another line in the same station. We take that train a few stops, then switch to another train. We’re sweating like crazy in the hot tunnels, consulting the sexy blue watch every few minutes.

We’re getting dangerously close to the cut-off to get into the last elevator to the top of the tower. WE MUST HURRY!



Our train arrives and we burst out into the station. We run at a mad tear for the exit. Emerging on the street, we scan the sky to get our bearings. There it is, barely visible behind by that block of buildings and the thick trees – the massive iron Tower. Which way should we go? We run down the street, panting, running as hard as we can, we turn the corner, and POW! There it is. Huge, bright yellow, covered with light, more enormous than you can imagine, the Eiffel Tower in all its glory. It’s incredible. It’s like turning the corner and there’s Godzilla looming over you. It was the greatest reveal we’d ever experienced!

We ran across a park and got in the line. We were among the last people to get inside. 

Eiffel Tower ticket

Remember that lady that pointed out the twinkling lights of the tower our very first night? Well, no, she wasn’t there. But, the lights were twinkling away our entire trip up in the elevator – sparkly, definitely sparkly! Up we go in a gondola car that runs up the massive leg of the tower. Below us we can see the massive cables that keep us from crashing to our deaths, and the even more enormous wheels that are cranking us ever higher.

please don't fail!

It seems like an endless ride. Finally we are there. Out to the roof we go. The city of lights stretches out below us. Our quest (THE RACE FOR THE TOWER!) is achieved, and we are the heroes!

Eventually the security people started shooing everyone back to the elevators so the Tower could be shut for the night. It’s midnight. Too bad the champagne bar was closed – midnight is the perfect time for champagne. Downstairs, we found a wonderful scene. Beautiful classical music wafting towards us from a large circle of people. We go closer, curious. We move through the crowd and see the source of the music - a circle of high school girls, all playing string instruments!

They are American girls, in Paris to play concerts on an exchange program. Jazzed from their formal performance, they came here for an impromptu street concert. It’s a magical scene under the Tower. After a few short minutes, the police reluctantly send the girls away. Turns out you can’t play at the Eiffel Tower without a permit.



Not yet ready for bed, we bought Nutella crepes and hot chocolate from a riverside stand, and ate them down on the quay, the water murmuring past us.

A great ending to a wonderful night. And, despite all the caffeine from the chocolate, we still slept 'til late morning the next day.

Day 7 - more touring, Rodin museum

Notre Dame is on an island in the middle of the Seine and it takes a whopping five minutes to walk there from our hotel. Somehow we recovered from the brutal journey and checked the place out. Guess what? The rumors are true - there’s lots of gargoyles on Notre Dame. A lot of ancient people spent a lot of time and a lot of money to build this place. Today is a Sunday, so there’s a service going on inside. The house is packed. Tourists are ushered to sides of the cathedral, where we can gawk and admire the ancient artworks without disturbing the worshippers. Unless you call hundreds of tourists snapping pictures of the priests with bright flashbulbs disturbing. There’s little areas off the main chamber that contain tombs and sculptures. Pretty grim stuff – no fun in religion here!



There’s an option to go up to the roof, where we could have had a fun game of hunchback-grabs-the-lady, but instead we went back outside. A quick trip to the crypts revealed they were a smelly basement full of dead priests, so no thrill there. Not even an animatronic skeleton to liven things up. Stupid French, no sense of drama.



We took one of our 2 remaining tour bus routes in the morning. No big highlights except this cool photo from the National Library:

… and this photo of a French dog:

There only seem to be 3 kinds of dogs in France, and this is one of them. They’re all carbon copies of each other. Very creepy to always see the same kind of dog everywhere. You’d think the communists were behind it to prevent freedom of thought. And to keep Katie from screaming “Doggie!” every 5 seconds in a foreign country. No fun at all.

The bus returned us to Notre Dame. We walked across the river to the Left Bank, an area packed with warren-like alleys and lots of restaurants.

We’re still sick of French food, so we picked Greek. Inside the restaurant they were playing a DVD of a Greek woman in her 40s singing at a dinner concert. The audience in the video seems comically torn between eating their food and jumping up to dance & sing. A tough choice, I’m sure! But you gotta love this place right away because there’s two cats strolling around the restaurant and if you’re nice, the kitties let you pet them. Yay!

The bad part is going to the bathroom. You have to go down a narrow stairway with an alcove on the side. There’s a statue in the alcove of a naked guy with a big uncircumcised penis and the stairs are so narrow that it’s in your face if you dare even glance in that direction. Maybe that plays well in Greece, but it tends to make us American tourists a little anxious. Luckily the two-button toilet calmed me down.



Wandering the neighborhood after lunch we saw this awesome car - THE INKY-DINKY MOBILE:

Katie took the picture while Jordan stood next to the car for scale. We were pretending that we weren’t taking a picture lest the dwarves inside became enraged and burst out to kill us with their magical +3 axes.



There was also a sign in McDonalds for their baffling new product:

What exactly is a Mythic Chicken? Perhaps it’s that legendary fowl which has been whispered of through the ages, a mighty uber-chicken that roams the French countryside, terrifying cornfields and small children. Apparently this horrifying beast has been captured by the great hunters at McDonalds, and has now been sliced into tiny pieces and deep-fried for your convenient eating pleasure. Thus does a legend die… for you, the fast-food consumer. You feel good about yourself now? PIG!



We got back on the bus for the last tour route. We got off at the Rodin Museum, which was highly recommended by many people, including Katie’s dad. And, oddly enough, it happened to be Father’s Day so how could we go wrong? It was pretty great. Makes you hate modern art even more when you see the great realism of the old masters.

Here’s a fun arty thing: group tours have a tradition of putting their admission stickers on the crosswalk lights just outside the museum.

All this touring around has made us sleepy!

Back home came the best news since we arrived in Paris! There was an available room in the hotel that was actually big enough for 2 people to live in! And it’s got a window overlooking the street - complete with FRENCH doors! HOLY CATS, CAN IT BE TRUE??? We raced to switch rooms, moving at a blinding speed. Here’s the awesome new room. Note that Jordan can no longer touch both sides of the room while lying on the bed!

Having a view and room to move around makes all the difference in the world!  We immediately became  more relaxed.  Relaaaaaxed.

Katie took a nice long BATH because now she could. Ahh, relaxed. To celebrate, we dressed up all fancy-like and set out to find a funky place in our neighborhood (the Marais) for dinner.  After much walking, we settled on a nice place on the Place de Voges.

Jordan had an astoundingly good chicken curry dish, and Katie took a culinary foray into some French duck dish. By the end of dinner, the Place was fenced in the night, so we walked around the perimeter of the square, looking into the windows of art galleries. Then we walked home. Nobody mugged us. It was good.

Day 6 - Paris missions & bus

Our first full day in Paris! Ah, what a joy to wake up in our tiny room and still be stumped by the design of the shower. Stupid, stupid French shower! After we’re done, the floor looks like a pool. I guess if we wanted precision engineering, we’d have gone to Germany.



We probably didn’t mention the toilets yet – those are actually pretty clever. There’s two buttons for flushing… one for if you peed, the other for if you pooped. The buttons produce different amounts of water. Pretty eco-friendly. Why aren’t we doing this back home?



Mission #1 – get a new watch.

The one we bought from the wandering African peddler a couple days ago has proven to be a total piece of crap. Shocker! Every day it gets slower. Soon it will be running backwards. Lucky for us, there’s a watch store right next to the hotel. Even though the saleslady understands that we want the cheapest digital watch they’ve got, and that we are planning on throwing it in the trash as soon as we get home, she still makes a big production of packing the one we buy in a special zip-up storage case and elaborately signing the proof of purchase section of the warranty card.

My sexy new watch

Mission #2 – get a new camera.

The waitress at Breakfast in America recommended a big store called “FNAC”, which seems to be a higher end Best Buy. Even though we’ve got pretty good directions, we can’t find the place. Why not? Because it’s underground – you enter through the subway station! Don’t ask why. No answer could possibly make sense, that’s why we didn’t ask. Once inside, the cameras can wait. First we gotta see what THE SHIELD DVD box sets look like in French. We were hoping that on the covers, Michael Chiklis might be wearing a beret, or perhaps have on a striped shirt and be threatening some perp with a baguette instead of his Desert Eagle hand-cannon. Alas, they look a lot like the American boxes do. I was thinking of getting one for the fun of it, but the regional encoding means we couldn’t play the DVDs back in the States. Plus, they’re way more expensive in Euros.

None of the salesguys spoke English, so we managed to muddle through the tale of why we needed a camera using our extensive mime techniques. We wound up with a new Nikon Coolpix, which we tricked out with a 2 gig storage card. We’re not missing the old camera at all – as Katie compassionately said, “it sucked anyway”. The salesman asked which color we wanted and, of course, Katie wanted the “rosé” (pink actually). The salesman looked at Jordan and just shook his head. Poor guy, must be married.



Back at the hotel, Katie’s ready to be a tourist, but all Jordan wants to do is read the camera manual. To thine own self be true, right? The camera has many cool functions that Katies doesn’t care about, so we’ll figure them out on the road. After a quick lunch, we’re off.



Mission #3 – find a tour bus.

Visiting the most amazing city in the world but don’t know the geography at all? Not sure which monuments are worth actually entering? Then get your bearings on a tour bus! Brilliant idea by Katie. We jumped onboard at the Louvre.

Jordan at the Louvre

The “L’Open Tour Bus” company has a fleet of double-decker buses that we’ve been seeing everywhere. The upper deck has no roof, so you can cruise around in the sunshine with a full 360-degree view of all the sites. They give you a pair of cheap headphones when you buy a ticket, and you plug it next to your seat, select your language from the panel (each button is marked by the flag of a different country), and the pre-recorded tour tells you all about what you’re seeing.







Of course, we choose to hear English, but you can’t choose English, you have to choose “Britain” to hear English. And the voice clearly has a British accent. Whatever, we only saved your country from the Germans and named some of our best food after you. No problem. It’s fine there is not an American flag to choose from. We get it.

on the bus

Arc De Triumph - built by an angry little midget

yeah, that's the Eiffel Tower behind us!

You can get on or off the bus at any of their stops, and buses arrive at each stop every 10 minutes. It’s actually a pretty great system. We rode around for about 3 hours and we saw tons of stuff. The company runs 3 other routes, so we converted our 1-day tickets into 2-day tickets with plans to ride the remaining routes the next day.



Jordan wants to point out that he ordered our dinner baguette sandwiches in French for the entire conversation (including saying “Coca Cola Light” instead of “Diet Coke”). Way to go, Jordan!



Riding on a bus all day is tough work. We were a little beat. Sitting around J-le-P for the last 4 days hadn’t gotten used to the tough schedule that young tourists must maintain in Paris. We needed a break, so we decided to see a movie. Our bus let us off in a slightly sketchy area near one of the train stations, far away from our hotel, so we knew it was subway time. You readers may not know that Katie is the Queen Of Public Transportation (“QOPT”, for short). Language is not an obstacle for the Queen. Any city, any language, and she will get you from point A to point B – even if there are transfers!



We got a local magazine and found listings for films in “version originale” – meaning, movies shown in their original language (not dubbed into French). We decided to see INDIANA JONES 4 at the Bibliotheque Nationale, which our guidebook said had a good modern theater. Off we went, with the QOPT leading the way. Unfortunately we read the listing wrong and arrived 90 minutes early, so we went to a nearby café for dinner.



It is at this very café that a momentous event took place:

We finally found chocolate mousse in France.

We also had good pizzas and beer and chatted with a really interesting Australian named Nick, who spoke a bunch of languages and was teaching at the Sorbonne while pursuing a comparative literature degree.

INDY 4 was pretty bad. The print wasn’t great, nor the projection, which didn’t help, but the movie never grabbed us and was frankly disappointing. The big reveals were given away at the beginning of the movie. The part with the ants was pretty good, but otherwise, it was a snoozer.

Night of Day 5 - magical night in Paris

OK, so we’ve eaten dinner. We’re all dressed up (Jordan’s getting some mileage out of that wedding jacket!) and in the magical city of light and love, Paris. We’re infected with a feeling of being alive and being in an exciting new place. We knew that everything was up the river from us, so we decided to start walking north and see the magical city at night.

We had no idea how magical it would be. It took about 35 seconds for Jordan to fall in love with Paris, and another 2 seconds to start bitching about how shitty the city planning is in Los Angeles.

If only we had a camera with us that night to capture the beautiful light and the sunset, lighting the monuments and classical architecture with red and orange highlights. The river, slowly moving through the heart of the city. Young couples everywhere. People coming home from work, or dinner with friends. Scooters zipping by. People chatting at sidewalk cafes. Cobblestone squares. Art deco Metro stations. As we walk, we pass amazing old buildings on all sides. They are so elaborate, made of huge stone blocks, intricate and permanent and just incredible. Impossible to build today. Soon we are at the Louvre. We walk the grounds, into the Jardin des Tuileries. Large expanses of grass in the dark evening. Quiet pools. Statues in the darkness. Behind us, the guards are shutting things down, closing down the property.

Katie remembers that there’s a ferris wheel on the river, so that becomes our new mission: to ride the slow ferris wheel on the bank of the Seine. We talk to several people who ought to know, and none have any idea what we’re talking about. Apparently “Ferris wheel” isn’t a term that the French use. In the end, Jordan sketches one in the dirt, and a security guard finally realizes what we’re asking. Bad news – the ferris wheel won’t be set up for another month. Mission denied.

That doesn’t stop our night. We walk off the grounds to a bridge across the Seine – the Pont de la Concorde. We sit on the stone railing of the bridge and watch the water go by… the people having dinner on the roof of a houseboat below us… tourists wave from a boat that slips under the bridge. Paris has an entire city department devoted to illuminating the city at night, to making it beautiful. Does any American city have something similar? The Parisians are clearly masters of the art. We are calm and rested and at peace in a beautiful city. Can life get much better?

Finally the hour catches up to us and we grow tired. We decide to head back to the hotel. We get on a local bus and ride, the Seine not even a block on our right. The city rolls past us. A woman on the bus is eyeing us. Yes, we’re American tourists. You can probably tell us from a mile away. But tonight, we don’t care. We’re just people, appreciating a beautiful city. Only one more stop to go. The woman gets off. She stares at Katie from outside the bus. Katie stares at her, worried she’s about to be insulted. The woman turns and points. Katie looks – the woman is pointing to the Eiffel Tower. It’s lit up, with flashing lights running all the way up and down the Tower. It’s breathtaking, an incredible sight! (they do it for 10 minutes at the beginning of each night hour.) The woman smiles at us and the bus pulls away. Not an insult at all, she just knew we were new to the city and that we would appreciate those magical, twinkling lights – she was right. Thank you, strange French lady!

Finally, it’s our stop. Apparently in France, you get off the bus by using the rear doors. Ignorant of the basic protocol, we tried to get out the front and messed the whole system up!

Day 5 - Paris at last!

We take a taxi from our hotel to the train station. We’ll take a local train to Nice, and then get on the high-speed TVG train for a 4-hour 1st class trip to Paris! Our taxi driver tells us a great story about how his parents were supposed to emigrate to America from Russia in the 1920s, but they got sick and had to get off the boat early – in France. They never finished their journey, and now their son is in his 60s and thoroughly French. He said he still has their visas to enter the US!



All of our great plans fall apart when we get to the local train station and find out we’ll miss our rendezvous with the TVG high-speed train if we follow the original plan. There’s a huge line of people behind us and the clerk speaks very little English. She’s insisting we take the local train to a different station to meet the TVG. We freak out, but take a chance that she’s not exercising an instinctive hatred of Americans, and follow her advice. When we get off, a helpful train guy tells us that we’re going to be fine. He says we’re picking up the TVG one station later than planned. WHEW!



The TVG is a 2-story train and we’ve got reserved seats on the upper deck! The French countryside races by. Fields, lakes, hills, farms, towns, cities… it’s amazing to look at the things we pass and wonder if they were built by Romans, or Gauls, or someone even earlier. What’s it like to live surrounded by so much history? Wish we had pictures to show you… read on to find out the terrible tale of why we can’t!



Arriving in Paris, we step out into the most amazing old train station you can imagine. Iron girders soaring high into an arched roof, massive trains lining the endless platforms, the hubbub of people everywhere – the Gare de Lyon station was incredible. Jordan was so excited he wanted a picture – and that’s when we discovered the camera was missing. We’d taken photos of each other on the train and that’s the last we saw of it. Jordan races back to the train to search it before the cleaning crews start work, but the camera is nowhere to be found in our car. It’s a total mystery.



Stepping out onto the street - SK’DOOSH!! - the feeling hits that we are truly in Paris! In front of us are streets crowded with Mercedes cabs, scooters zipping madly around them, and huge avenues of classic Napoleon-era apartments. You know the ones – pointy roofs, little round windows on the top floors, wrought-iron balconies – there were posters of them on the walls of every girls’ room in your dorm at college. Jordan is gawking and oohing-and-ahhing like the tourist he is. Katie’s the old pro and secures us a cab. Driving to the Marais, Jordan is still slack-jawed. Tourist! Good thing there’s nothing in the cab to trip on.



Our hotel is perfectly situated in the heart of everything, on Rue de Rivoli near the Hotel De Ville (not to be confused with Cruella DeVille, she lives somewhere else where they allow dogs). Unfortunately, our hotel is narrow and tiny. Even ants think it’s tiny. Only one of us can fit in the elevator with our luggage and our room is on the 5th floor! Once we get up there, it’s like a rental in Alphabet City – TINY TINY TINY! We can barely fit.

(yes, that's Jordan touching both walls simultaneously! And he's not even stretched out all the way!)



The shower has a 6-inch high rim on the floor to keep the water in, but the curtain hangs far beyond the rim, which guarantees we will soak the floor every time we shower:



But the biggest stumper is how to turn on the lights! We click all of the light switches in every possible combination for at least 20 minutes, in the dark, to no avail. Two college educations, gone to waste. Eventually the desk clerk solves the mystery – you stick your square plastic room key into a slot above the light switch, and that “approves” the power in the apartment. Really? That’s your design premise? Really?









































It’s time to for a laundry trip, so the minimum wage student working the front desk (an Asian girl with bright purple contact lenses) gave us the card of a nearby laundromat. Inside was a kind fellow who didn’t speak much English, but did speak the universal language of yes-I’ll-wash-your-undies. Love you! We left him with a couple bags of filth. Our way of making a good name for Americans.



Now it’s dinner time and we’re ready for something satisfying. No more baguettes, please! We need something new. We wander our Paris neighborhood, checking out the many restaurants. Just like in J-le-P, all the menus have a section for salads, pizzas, and main courses. I thought a place like France would scorn pizza, but it’s more common on the menus here than it is in the States. Unfortunately, prices in Paris are just as expensive as J-le-P – about $35 per person. Just when we thought we’d die of hunger and frustration, there it was in front of us – BREAKFAST IN AMERICA! (that’s the name of the restaurant – really!)



It looks like a classic American diner. Could it be? Please? We walk in. The waitresses are speaking to each other in English. One is even wearing a Ramones T-shirt! The menu’s in English and it’s all the food we want! – burgers, chicken sandwiches, fries, nacho chips, beer! The answer to all our prayers! Much gluttony and satisfaction ensues. Plus our waitress is a great source of tips – including where to find movies in English. That’ll come in handy in couple days…