This is why.
In 2014, I completed a course of advanced studies in France. The curriculum kept me hopping, and in fact I was barley able to keep up. But, through persebeerance I was able to soak up all the required courses and even drink in some of the electives. It’s a heady feeling!
Le Bar à Huîtres
The impact of a pilgrimage lies more in the journey than the destination, and Chuck and I enjoyed the journey sitting around telling our old Paris stories last night.
As to the destination, the well-known Bar à Huîtres, where he has been several times over the years, it was good, but I’ll remember the journey more.
I think you should go there:
—- with your fiancée, because gazing in her eyes you won’t notice the slow service
—- after your first big promotion, because at that moment money is no object, and
—- while on your first foreign vacation, because then you and the people on the street gawking at you will be equally delighted by the giant crustacean platter billowing dry ice smoke.
Will it ever be worth $20 to have a beer and a soda at a sidewalk café in Paris? But will we ever stop doing it?
This is the front window of a shop simply called “Dépannage” which translates literally as un-breaking. Who knows if the old man inside can actually fix anything, but he’s sure willing to give it a try.
L’amitié international
Each of our two AirBNB stays has now included a long boozy evening with the hosts. We all know just enough about each other’s country to empathize across linguistic and political lines with our poorer choices in Presidents, celebrate the better ones, and agree that the world is generally going to hell except of course for evenings like this one.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, little Hercule (appearances notwithstanding he is named after the Greek hero and not the Belgian detective) decided that Chuck was an acceptable port in the conversational storm, and another new friendship was born.
La queue
As an American I know I don’t have much experience standing in lines. I mean, we have Disneyland and airports and so on, but you sort of expect it there. In my daily life, they just open another register most of the time.
French lines might not be as bad as stories I’ve heard about Soviet Russia, but they’re still in a different league than I’m used to playing in. Four people buying train tickets last evening was nearly an hour. Everyone has a problem, and a story, and their own ideas about how the whole thing is supposed to work.
And there’s only one window, one clerk, and her job is to make sure every customer gets her full attention.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 