Dear Mrsatroxi,

Okay, okay, Paris already! Geez, am I ever lazy.

If’n you wanna see the pictures, the link is in the post below this’n. Merci.

Paris!

Paris is bigger than life. Oh, look, the Louvre! (twenty minutes walking…) Oh, look, still the Louvre! I also found it very difficult to comprehend that I was in fact in Paris, actually touching the Eiffel tower, and the Arc de Triumph, and all the other wonderful things that I’ve seen many times in movies and on TV, or had to study in school.

Paris is friendly. There were really only two people we had a problem with, and they were not all that bad, no worse than the lovely bored girls who work at Express. As long as you made a bit of an effort to at least say hello in French, folks would help you out. You know those oh so tolerant bumper stickers that say, you’re in Amurrica, speak Amurrican? When in France, at least make an effort to speack French. The Parisians seemed to find it very amusing. And every waiter/waitress we had was a character. Nobody just dumped the food and ran. One waiter gave us postcards and showed us pictures of his little daughter. A waitress after noticing one in our party straighten the placemat, mock-carefully made sure everything was symmetrical.

Paris is yummy! The food was soooooooo good! And the coffee. The coffee was really good. Oh, and the hot chocolate! The hot chocolate was out of this world. And the wine! And the silverware! And the napkins! And the suger packets! And the salt! And! Oh, never mind. But the food is very different from American food. Plants are bred for taste, not looks or shelf-life. They don’t use a lot of preservatives. And the dairy products are not pasteurized or homogenized. (Did you know that if you feed a calf pasteurized milk, it will die? Something to think about.) After eating, (and we ate a lot!) I never felt bloated or icky, like I will sometimes here. It was a good excuse to eat more.

Paris is disappointing. Well, some parts of it were. Most everything we really wanted to see was closed. Like most of the Louvre. And the Musee de Orsay. And the very top of the Eiffel tower. And most of the monuments were undergoing restoration. Like the Arc de Triomphe. And Versailles. But hey, it’s still Paris!

Paris smells. Oh dear sweet lord in heaven it smells. It stinks! I thought the whole not bathing thing was just a stereotype, you know, like everyone being rude, or the food portions being small. It’s not. People reek. The city (especially the Metro) has its own special aroma, a mixture of urine, fish, exhaust, unwashed private parts, cigarettes, farts and wine. And I really don’t have a good sense of smell at all. I cannot properly express my sympathy to someone who does.

Paris smells……good! Well, I guess I should say France, not Paris. Because the countryside smelled so good. So fresh, and sweet, and clean. I didn’t smell fertilizer or pesticides or anything like that. Just dirt and plants….it was beyond wonderful.

Paris is not germaphobic. They are much less concerned about germs than Americans. Ice cream is dipped with bare hands, ice cream cones have no paper wrappers. Food is placed right on the bare table. Took some getting used to for me. I sort of cringed inside each time a unwashed hand touched my food. But I never got sick. In fact, I felt better than I have in a long time.

Paris smokes. Don’t go if you are allergic to cigarette smoke. Non-smoking pretty much just means they take the ash-tray off of the table. When I got home and finally got my suitcase, upon opening it all I could smell was smoke. Yikes.

Paris is fashion! Well, duh.

I can’t think of any more “Paris is” thingys. But we had a really superb time. I learned a lot. The only sad spot was missing my atroxi. But hey, that’s a good reason to get to go again!