Blondie gets Europe'd

I woke up to a rainy Paris this morning, and was proud to pull out the umbrella I've doggedly lugged from DC to New York to Georgia to Florida to Paris and actually USE the thing. I'm sad to say that the novelty soon wore off.

While Daddy is in meetings, I was tasked with finding a post office, making sure housekeeping replaced the soap and tissues (you really have to keep on top of housekeeping, according to my father), and creating an itinerary for the weekend. I left the room to housekeeping, relatively positive that the woman who entered with a vacuum cleaner did not understand a word out of my mouth concerning soap or tissues (and really too lazy to be bothered by pulling out my phrasebook and trying to translate), and found myself on the streets of Paris with a Vera Bradley umbrella (picture the ugliest umbrella you've ever seen, and multiply it by a Vera Bradley pattern, and you have my stupid umbrella. It was on sale in DC for about $5 on a rainy day, probably because even on a rainy day it was too ugly and ridiculous for most people to buy. I, unfortunately, am a sucker for sales).

After a good walk around the Luxembourg Gardens, I eventually found a post office (first real accomplishment of the day) and began to look around for a cafe where I could have lunch and study my guidebooks. Paradoxically, the worst time to look for a place to eat lunch is, in fact, lunchtime, and so I got a crepe from a street vendor and chose the nearest Starbucks as home base for guidebooking. My EXTRAORDINARILY SMART AND TALENTED SISTER, who can also be a bit excitable when it comes to all things European, gave me a BlackBerry Messaging lashing about my location, but just as I decided to stop being "a lame o American" and "soak up the culture", I was waylaid by a large Frenchwoman who wanted to use me to practice her English. I guess it was the guidebooks that gave me away. It took me a good fifteen minutes to edge away and think of an excuse to leave so I could dart to the next Starbucks (less than a block away, which makes me wonder if, in fact, being in Starbucks is soaking up the culture).

I worry about running into this woman at Starbucks. She kept talking about how she scouts out tourist attractions to find people who will speak with her in English, but I still haven't determined whether Starbucks counts as a tourist attraction. Her appearance there seems to speak to it being one, but perhaps she just went in for a cup of coffee and serendipitously found me there. At any rate, I have not yet found a French cafe where I can hide out, as all of them are flooded with waiters suspicious of my lack of interest in the cafe food, and I am avoiding the hotel for a while since I know that my return will result only in an afternoon of playing with Sputnik (which would also result in my accomplishing only one of my tasks today - an embarrassing statistic even for me). Since I have only a few hours left to detail the next few days for my father (who, I'm relatively positive, would still be at the airport if I hadn't been there with him yesterday morning), I have found a sequestered corner in which I can only hope the Frenchwoman will not find me.

Au revoir -
Lee Catherine

P.S. The title of this post is for Bradley Messervey, who apparently believes that my blog needs a little spicing up. I take requests lightly.