Throughly Frenchified in Two Weeks
Bonjour, mes ami!
When I logged into Blogger, I was stunned to see how much time had passed since my last post to MMMLog. In fact, Blogger seemed surprised as well because it took more than a bit for my dashboard to drift up from the vast blogger ocean. In any case, here I am. Back from two weeks in France and seriously Franco-phoned.
By the time the DH and I boarded the Air France A330 nonstop to Seattle from Paris, we were almost convinced I could actually speak, if not understand, French. After all, I'd practiced the language asking for directions, a glass of white wine, the room key, the toilette, many other necessaries and usually got what I thought I'd ordered. Mostly. There were a good many surprise results of my communication attempts such as our lunching on a small, cold pasta salad that we thought was going to be a hot and hearty main dish. If I'd paid attention to where it was listed on the menu, I'd have noticed that it was under "fresh" stuff right after the aperitifs and starters. Ah well, my multilingual wine ordering skills proved salutary, as they often do. One thing I did learn was that if I attempted French, observing the pleasantries, the people I spoke to would rattle off French back at me. Sometimes, though, they would immediately speak English. Then I knew what I'd tried to say was so maimed as to be incomprehensible, perhaps bordering on insult, resulting in their taking the American polyglot in hand to save her from possible arrest, a bloody nose or starving to death.
This was our first Rick Steves tour--Paris and the Heart of France in 11 days. Rather than my detailing the itinerary here, I'll send you to his website. According to Rick Steves' "backdoor" touring philosophy, the more you spend the less experience of foreign cultures you have. Also, his tours are rated as to activity level with a lot of strenuous (five-six miles a day) walking. So I guess I was expecting a bare bones, near backpacker hostel experience. Our tour was anything but that. The hotels were usually three star, decent and clean. All had great bathrooms that looked as if they'd just been remodeled with new fixtures and tile. The beds were awful, low and hard. And small, sometimes seeming less than a double. All were noisy except our lovely rooms on St. Michele island and Arromanche, Normandy. Steves kindly supplies a great set of squishy and very effective ear plugs with his travel kit of excellent and entertaining phrase and guidebooks plus a money belt. The first three days in Paris, our room in the Marais district near the Bastille at the Hotel Castex was on the front, two stories up. Yikes. The traffic was LOUD all night. I put in the plugs and off I went to dreamland. However, I did awaken from a troubling dream where I was hearing impaired . . . good times.
I'll do more fun in France in later posts. Right now I've got to get back to the book. While in France I discovered that the book I thought I was writing was not the the story that needing telling. I've returned juiced up to create this new tale. That's just one of the benefits of travel--gaining a new perspective on the world, and if you're lucky, your life.
Ciao! (Yup, I actually heard French young somethings use that word!)
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMelinda
When I logged into Blogger, I was stunned to see how much time had passed since my last post to MMMLog. In fact, Blogger seemed surprised as well because it took more than a bit for my dashboard to drift up from the vast blogger ocean. In any case, here I am. Back from two weeks in France and seriously Franco-phoned.
By the time the DH and I boarded the Air France A330 nonstop to Seattle from Paris, we were almost convinced I could actually speak, if not understand, French. After all, I'd practiced the language asking for directions, a glass of white wine, the room key, the toilette, many other necessaries and usually got what I thought I'd ordered. Mostly. There were a good many surprise results of my communication attempts such as our lunching on a small, cold pasta salad that we thought was going to be a hot and hearty main dish. If I'd paid attention to where it was listed on the menu, I'd have noticed that it was under "fresh" stuff right after the aperitifs and starters. Ah well, my multilingual wine ordering skills proved salutary, as they often do. One thing I did learn was that if I attempted French, observing the pleasantries, the people I spoke to would rattle off French back at me. Sometimes, though, they would immediately speak English. Then I knew what I'd tried to say was so maimed as to be incomprehensible, perhaps bordering on insult, resulting in their taking the American polyglot in hand to save her from possible arrest, a bloody nose or starving to death.
This was our first Rick Steves tour--Paris and the Heart of France in 11 days. Rather than my detailing the itinerary here, I'll send you to his website. According to Rick Steves' "backdoor" touring philosophy, the more you spend the less experience of foreign cultures you have. Also, his tours are rated as to activity level with a lot of strenuous (five-six miles a day) walking. So I guess I was expecting a bare bones, near backpacker hostel experience. Our tour was anything but that. The hotels were usually three star, decent and clean. All had great bathrooms that looked as if they'd just been remodeled with new fixtures and tile. The beds were awful, low and hard. And small, sometimes seeming less than a double. All were noisy except our lovely rooms on St. Michele island and Arromanche, Normandy. Steves kindly supplies a great set of squishy and very effective ear plugs with his travel kit of excellent and entertaining phrase and guidebooks plus a money belt. The first three days in Paris, our room in the Marais district near the Bastille at the Hotel Castex was on the front, two stories up. Yikes. The traffic was LOUD all night. I put in the plugs and off I went to dreamland. However, I did awaken from a troubling dream where I was hearing impaired . . . good times.
I'll do more fun in France in later posts. Right now I've got to get back to the book. While in France I discovered that the book I thought I was writing was not the the story that needing telling. I've returned juiced up to create this new tale. That's just one of the benefits of travel--gaining a new perspective on the world, and if you're lucky, your life.
Ciao! (Yup, I actually heard French young somethings use that word!)
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMelinda
posted by MMMelinda at 12:30 PM
