Finally: Paris

At last, on a Monday morning, after wandering around Europe for days and days, David and I drove into Paris. 

I had a map.  I went directly to the tourist bureau, just off the Champs Ellise, and asked for a reservation at the least expensive hotel available.   Beware what you ask for!  We were sent to a little hotel on the left bank which looked as if it had not been remodeled since the 1700's.  Very romantic looking. But . . .

I handed the slip from the tourist bureau to the woman behind the desk and asked if she spoke English.  She lifted her chin and shook her head disdainfully.  

I took two semesters of French during my freshman year at Texas State College for Women.  Then I went to summer school at Texas Tech, where I sat in a class with World War II veterans trying to complete college as quickly as possible on the G.I. Bill.  We crammed “second year” French lessons into twelve weeks in courses taught by a visiting professor from Princeton.  He was a handsome young man, not much older than his students.  However, among those Texans in their jeans and cowboy boots, the Princetonian looked strange wearing a white suit with white shirt, tie, and shoes.  I did not learn much French. 

Thirty years later in Paris, facing that formidable French woman, I had to try.  I knew in European hotels the first floor is a reception area.   What we call second floor, for them it is the  first.  I bravely asked, “Premier Estage?”  (First floor?) meaning I hoped for a room on the second floor. 

Again, madame shook her head negatively.  She handed me the key and said, “Deusieme.”  (Second floor)   Yes, I can not speak French, and I can not spell it either.

David and I picked up our suitcases and hoisted them up the corkscrew of a winding iron staircase, so narrow I could barely get up with one suitcase dragging behind.  David followed.   We discovered between the reception area and the first floor was a mezzanine.  Our “second floor” room was actually four flights up. 

We entered a plain, square room.  The air was choking with dust.  Two iron beds were spread with cotton covers; if they ever had colors, they faded years ago.  At the foot of the beds was a small, rickety wooden table with two plain wood chairs.  In one corner was a closet with a washbowl and bidet.  Down the hall was a toilet which we shared with a group of jolly Dutch tourists.  If there was a bathtub or shower in that hotel, we stayed five nights and I never found it.  Our Dutch neighbors were cheerful and friendly, but it they found the shower, they did not smell like it.

But we were in Paris.  And on the Left Bank!  It was not exactly Gene Kelly in “An American in Paris” but those narrow streets and quaint hotels still evoked Hemingway and Fitzgerald and that wild group of ex-pat Americans who lived in this neighborhood in the 1920's. 

David and I put down our suitcases and washed our faces in our closet.  We were in Paris, ready to go sightseeing.