Where The Heart Is...

          Living in Hawaii, people laugh when I say I’m planning a vacation to spend several weeks elsewhere.  After all, Hawaii for many is their dream vacation spot.  But when it’s also the place you call home with all the daily grind of housework, garden maintenance and even trash pick-up days, it loses a lot of its luster.  So for several weeks of the year I try to venture further afield; somewhere different I can enjoy new people, amazing food and a different culture.

          That’s not to say my mouth is watering for insects lightly poached in toilet water nor do I particularly want to visit a tribe of people with suspicious looking bones in their noses.  But a nice civilized place with museums, art galleries, a new language to try out after weeks of Rosetta Stone type cramming…this to me is bliss.

          And so it was last year that my granddaughter and I were in Paris.  We’d had days of seeing all the touristy stuff and were looking forward to a quiet dinner in a pretty local restaurant.  I have this penchant for patronizing little corner shops and hole-in-the wall eateries, mainly to encourage the owners.  After all, it can’t be easy to start a business and then watch it go down the drain due to lack of customers.  So, since every little bit helps, there I am handing over my measly euros.

          But, perhaps I should have been a little more selective about our choice of restaurant that day.  At the height of the dinner hour there were only two tables occupied and we were at one of them.  The rest of the room yawned empty around us.  And it appeared that our maitre d’ was also the waiter, the cook and the busboy.  But hey, why quibble…French food is known for its greatness!

          I can’t remember exactly what I ordered as an appetizer, but I do recall it was okay, if a little sparse.  So I was really looking forward to my main meal…in this case a dish made up of beef strips and noodles.  It looked yummy.  Unfortunately it didn’t taste as it looked.  The first bite was a chunk of gristle, the second a lump of something fatty and the third was obviously the cook’s belt cut into bite size chunks.  The dish was truly awful.

          But what to do?  I didn’t want the owner/cook to feel discouraged about his culinary efforts, yet I was nearly gagging at the thought of eating any more of the cut up cowhide.  So, with a sleight of hand that would make Houdini proud, I dumped the pieces of meat into my table napkin and pushed the entire mess into my handbag, much to the amused horror of my granddaughter who was quite enjoying her main course selection…obviously not beef and noodles!   

          It was suggested to me later that I should have complained and perhaps ordered another dish.  The problem with that is, since I’m not used to French food, perhaps the dish was meant to be as it was.  Perhaps beef with noodles in Paris is meant to be eaten only with teeth as sharp as a buzz saw.  And I certainly didn’t want to be accused of being an ignorant American!

          We left the restaurant with my bag bulging with a purple napkin stuffed with meat strips and a few noodles, which I dumped into a trash bin a block or so further up the street.

          I wonder if one of the many homeless people in Paris, found it later that night?  Dinner – yum.  Not only steak and noodles, but napkins as well!  How very French!

         

         

         

Love is in the Air

          Gorgeous red hearts are fluttering everywhere.  On cups and saucers, on balloons and pretty cards; and on cookies and cakes in my bake shop window.  Even I have been the recipient of some lovely cards.  Admittedly they are from my dentist, my doctor and my insurance agent who wants to make me even happier with a new car/home plan, but why quibble.  It’s the thought that counts and a card is a card, isn’t it?

          The florists too are having a wonderful time making up vases, pots and baskets filled to overflowing with bright red roses to offer their buyers.  It will soon, after all, be Valentine’s Day, the day when men, young and older alike, can make their intentions known by delivering a card, a rose, or, if they’re feeling fairly flush, a gemstone trinket to the girl of their dreams.

          Of course not everyone follows tradition.  There are some who think Valentine’s Day is a dreadful commercial enterprise thrust upon an unwilling public by the Association of Rose Growers and Red Paint Owners.  Perhaps they have a point, for pity the poor man who didn’t send (or simply forgot to send) a posy of flowers to the office of his beloved.  It is after all an unwritten law that the more elaborate a Valentine’s floral arrangement sitting on your desk happens to be, the more loved you are by your husband or boyfriend/admirer and therefore the envy of the rest of the office staff rises exponentially.

          While in Paris with my granddaughter last year, we happened to be walking across the Seine along one of the smaller bridges from the Left Bank over to Notre Dame.  A bridge made of cyclone wire fencing rather than bricks and mortar.

          It was my granddaughter who pointed out the odd appendages fastened all over the bridge completely covering the cyclone wire.  We stood open-mouthed and amazed.  Hundreds and hundreds of padlocks with names painted or scratched onto the face of each, completely covered the bridge.  The padlocks were of all sizes and shapes, and of all colors, some had ribbons or tiny cards tied to them too.  What could they mean?

          The concierge at our hotel filled us in.  Apparently newly weds or starry-eyed lovers fasten the padlocks onto the fencing material and throw the keys into the Seine.  A testament to their everlasting love.  I can’t help but wonder though…what happens if or when, the ‘everlasting love,’ is no more?  Do the people concerned hire divers to search for the key to their padlock?  Do they appear on the bridge with wire cutters in hand and with one clip remove the now offending padlock? 

 

          I’d like to think that all those who placed padlocks on that bridge will indeed experience a wonderful and everlasting love.  Hey, this is Paris after all…the city of romantic love.  Where else if not there?

          Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone…enjoy it with your loved ones.

         

         

         

I Love Paris

          I see the dollar is getting stronger and stronger against the euro…or should that be the euro is getting weaker and weaker?  Either way, it should make American and Aussie travelers to Europe chuckle with glee as they load up with previously far too expensive goodies or gifts to take home.

          During my trip to Paris last year with my granddaughter, the exchange rate on our beloved dollar was so pitiful it was hard to enjoy many of the lovely sights Paris has to offer.  Well, if it’s a choice between the Louvre and lunch…?

          So of course, all this euro buzz brought to mind a previous trip to France some years ago.  After touring through Provence for several days, I’d made arrangements to meet up with friends in Paris.  Since we were booked into different hotels we agreed to meet outside Notre Dame early evening and figure out then where to have dinner.

          The cab from the station dropped me off outside my hotel.  A narrow street loaded with Smart cars and only a doorway into the hotel…hmmmm.  However, remembering how unimpressive some of the hotels had looked from the outside in Provence, I optimistically dragged my suitcase and roll-on over the threshold and smiled broadly at the rather fierce woman behind the desk.  I think working as a concierge was her weekend job…she probably works as a prison guard at the local women’s’ institution during the week.

          The prison guard spoke very little English and she apparently wasn’t too impressed with my French because she slapped a registration card in front of me, told me I was a half hour early for check-in and promptly ignored my presence for the next thirty minutes.  Not to worry, I was happy to sit in the lobby and peruse some of the brochures.  After all, I had hours before I was to meet up with my friends.

          Exactly thirty minutes later Madame Prison Guard advised me my room was ready for occupancy.  She apparently got this information through mental telepathy because the phone didn’t ring nor did anyone resembling a maid appear to advise the status of the rooms.  Ah, but why quibble over little details?  I was in Paris!  Let the fun begin!!

          It was then Prison Guard informed me that the elevator was not working and my room was on the third floor!  The elevator would not be fixed for at least 24 hours and so how do you like them apples?  I stood open-mouthed staring at the circular stairway that seemed to rise all the way up to heaven.

          Have you ever tried to get something big and heavy up a circular stairway?  The tread is not the same width all the way across…plus, in this case each step was only about ten inches wide anyway.  Oh, and Prison Guard was happy to tell me, there was no bellman, no janitor, no nuttin’ to assist me in lugging my bags up to the third floor.

          One might now wonder why I didn’t hotfoot it out of the place and find accommodations with a working elevator or at least a bellman…simple…Paris was more or less booked out…the French elections, Liberation day and the like.  So I was stuck.

          I tried to put a happy face on it and lugged my roll-on up the stairs one step at a time.  I was sweaty and exhausted when I finally got to my room.  I truly thought I was going to cark it right there and then.  But, I didn’t have time to drop dead…I still had to make a second trip dragging my very heavy suitcase.

          Back downstairs, I bent over my suitcase panting.  Madam PG apparently worried that I actually might become a corpse in her lobby, suggested I leave the suitcase behind her desk until the morning when, hopefully the elevator repairman would present himself for service.  I explained I was meeting friends for dinner, I had to shower and my change of clothes were in the suitcase.

          PG came up with brilliant idea…I should take my shower and then I could come back downstairs and change right there.  I had visions of me running down the stairs wrapped in a bath towel, rummaging in my suitcase for the appropriate items and then what?  Bobbing up and down behind her desk while I put on my clean knickers?  Heaven forbid that anyone else was checking in at the time.

          But, finally I was in my room, flaked out on the bed and wondering if I’d ever be able to stand upright again.

          That’s when I discovered the toilet didn’t work properly.  Flush and listen to the water running endlessly into the tank.  I located a maid on the floor above (who didn’t speak English of course…she didn’t speak French either, she was Jamaican) and with hand signs explained my problem.  She was so helpful, she showed me that by turning the water off at the wall all would be well.  So for whatever my euro outlay was per night, not only did I have to haul my own luggage up three flights of stairs, I also had to turn the toilet water on and off every time I wanted to pee!

          But I still love Paris.  I’ll just make sure future stays will have hotels with at least a bellman if not a working elevator.