Excuse My French

#38: [Day 7] Or Lack of It
Paris, France 9:36 pm

Before I begin, let me just say that French keyboards are worse than Swiss ones. Numbers, letters and punctuation marks all over the place, it's a miracle I still haven't tossed the keyboard out with a quick, "Bah. Not worth it."

My main complaint about France is not that people only speak to you in French whether you understand it or not (with "not" being signified by a dumb touristey look - furrowed eyebrows while trying to keep the eyeballs from wildly rotating in different directions); it's that it always rains when we're checking out the good stuff. It was raining like mad when we went up the Eiffel Tower. With winds at 80 kph and fat, cold drops slapping your face, it's not that easy to enjoy our visit there. At Champs-Elysees, as we were taking night shots, the sky started pelting us with, say it me, fat cold drops of rain. We had to practically dive underground and jump into the Metro to keep ourselves from taking an unscheduled shower. Heck, if the Louvre didn't have such a nice roof, it would've rained on us while we were viewing the Mona Lisa too.

So here I am. I just popped out of the subway. We still have 2 blocks to brave before we get to our warm beds. We're actually waiting for the rain to subside lest we catch pneumonia and die. (Although I know there are some people who would rather do just that - catch pneumonia and die- than learn the French language.)

Dinner is (er, will be, as soon as we get to the hotel), takeout from the nearest Vietnamese place selling semi-French food and being manned by an Indian guy. How sad is that? (And to think that this is our last night in Paris!)

Anyway, Paris is beautiful. No amount of rain will change that. And I will definitely want to come back... if only to see how it is in drier weather.

Remind me to learn French before then.