Life Skills, Paris rush Hour Traffic and Gay "Gay Paree"

my mill on the outside
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Friday, October 12.

Today is just a driving day, a long driving day. It is a little over an hour to get back to the mill and meet Ian to check out. I have taken a picture of the mill and the wheel in my bedroom for you. Now I have to drive to Charles De Gaulle Airport to return my car, so I program the GPS to take the fastest highway, with tolls. It will still take almost 5 hours to the airport which is far away from Paris, and then a taxi back to town. I can’t program the GPS for an airport or a landmark, so I plug in the nearest town, Roissy. The problem in France is that there is often the same town name in other counties? Provinces? ( how ever the country is divided up), so there are two Roissys. I pick a second town to see if it’s in the same province, and so on like a brainteaser until I find a likely match. The provinces are not on my Michelin map, so how do I know where “Aude” is some other unknown name? Hopefully I am going in the right direction!

I abandon my now empty red rolling suitcase with a note taped to it "libre, gratuite, pour vous"

the wheel in my bedroom
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It is an uneventful drive. But since we’re on the subject of driving, I want to take a moment to point out that I think it is a great skill to be able to comfortably drive a stick shift. A lost art, if you will. It has allowed me to drive in foreign countries, where most cars are manual. So, thank you to that Ole Miss boy who let me drive his souped up mustang through that sloped intersection in Oxford, Mississippi, until I no longer laid scratch for fear of rolling backwards down the hill instead. And also to the boys that summer in Arkansas, who let my cousin Debi and I drive their little red MG. I also give a small credit to a lime green Volkswagen that I drove for 6 months in NJ before trading it in for a ford. I think I will give Megan some driving lessons when I get home.

man in pantaloons
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The other life skill that I am proud of is being able to open a beer bottle without a beer opener. Any sharp edge will do, such as the metal window ledge in my room in Roscoff. Rest one edge of the bottle cap at an angle to the sharp edge, and rap firmly down on the top of the beer with the heel of your hand. Voila! I’m so good at it, I don’t even spill! A word of caution, though…if your edge is soft wood, like a picnic bench, you will leave little dotted beer cap perforations behind, so don’t open your beer on anything that you truly care for.

the mill entry
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Back to my drive. I have figured out the toll roads here at last. There are lighted signs above the pay booths, and I need to aim for one with a picture of a human ticket-taker, to avoid getting stuck in the truck line again. I only stop once for gas, and once at a forested roadside stop where I abandon my now-empty red rolling suitcase with a note taped to it “libre, gratuite, pour vous” (free for you). On highways there are national road signs with pictures of the local castle, church, beach, or whatever sight or sensation the town has to offer, drawn in shades of burnt sienna, browns and beiges. I pass one for Vive- with a picture of a tall straight church spire and a huge sausage on a plate. Huh? Hmmm, very phallic. I almost stop there…This reminds me of a story. My cousin Karen and my sister Devon driving past a dime store  obviously owned by Dick, but his sign  read “Dicks 5 (cents) and 10 (cents)” (sorry, my keyboard doesn’t have a “cents” sign, isn’t that weird?) And Karen turns to Devon and says “ooh, let’s stop. I want a 10 cent one”. Okay, okay, remember I’m on a long and very boring drive.

the mill living room
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So I’m bombing down the super highway, and you know what? It’s not so bad and scary. Yes, you can drive faster (130km), but everyone is very polite and orderly about it. NOBODY hangs in the left lane, it is for passing only, and they are extremely obedient about it. You pass a truck, you move back to the right lane. If there are three trucks, you pass one, and move right, pass the next, move right, in this way moving to the front by scalloping your way down the road. If there is anyone in the left lane, they are going faster than you! I actually quite enjoy it.

my mill pond
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And my last thought on driving, which is actually a story from earlier this month that I forgot to relate. I was driving those great back roads, and getting use to the one lane bridges. I was pretty much in the middle of nowhere and had just crossed a long long single lane suspension bridge, that I wasn’t feeling very safe about. I could see another bridge ahead, but this one was short with metal side rails, and I approach it at a decent pace. No one is coming, but I never considered that I might not fit on this bridge. Whack! I guess I should have folded my mirrors in. I backed up to survey the damage, because from the sound of the impact I was thinking I had just scraped the whole side of the car off. No, unbelievably, I have just knocked the housing off the side mirror, exposing the wires and the guts. But where is the housing? I retrace my steps and there it is…perched precariously in the branches of a tree about 20 feet above the water. I lean over and pluck it out. Not a scratch on it! It snaps back on, and you can’t even tell. I was feeling very lucky about that. Yes, I have insurance, but who wants to deal with it!?

old version of pantaloons...see, some things don't change
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I hit rush hour traffic around Paris, and I might as well have been in New York or any other metropolis. Thousands of cars feeding in, lanes going from 4 to 2, its a mess. The speed limit sign posted is for 90km, but I would be happy to be going 9! Motorcycles zip up the middle of the space between the lanes, which is perfectly acceptable, like we are standing still. Oh, wait, WE ARE standing still! I am an hour late returning my car, but nobody seems to mind. I catch a taxi to Paris, and I get to do the rush hour thing again!

I'm beginning to understand why the cars are so small, so you can park!
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I am finally in “Gay Paree”, and I mean that literally, because my hotel is in the Marais, the gay area of Paris. I did this on purpose. It is artsy, and funky, like SoHo in NY, with lots of shops, markets, bistros and things to do. I’m staying at 3 star Hotel Des Chevaliers, and it’s very cute and right in the middle of things. I’m starving, so I quickly change and walk to find a restaurant. I am only a few blocks from the Bastille and Place des Vognes, but I walk 4 blocks in the wrong direction. Of course I do. Meg and I have a standing joke, that as good as my sense of direction is when I’m driving, when walking I always go the wrong way. And I mean ALWAYS, even though I have a 50-50 chance of picking correctly. My remedy for that is to sit down at a sidewalk café and have a beer while I look at my map and figure out where the heck I am. I also watch the people go by. Bicycles with chinging bells, handsome boys carrying their scooter helmets with them, stylish girls with belted sweater dresses over tights, wearing short boots, high heeled boots, suede knee boots, and the requisite scarf knotted artfully around their necks. I now know where all the skinny girls in France are. They are here in Paris!

I made it to Paris at last!
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I finally get myself turned around and have a lovely dinner. The way the service works here, is that the customer is NOT always right…the customer will get their food when the server gets around to it. Enjoy yourself, we are busy, you are in Paris, what’s your rush? I think because the gratuity is included in the price, the fewer servers, the more money they make. Two guys served the whole restaurant of, I don’t know, 30 tables? I leave there at midnight. If I were a big party girl, it definitely looked like things were just getting started, but I have been up since 6am, and I’m tired. I have French doors that open out onto the street, so I open them wide to let the cool night air in. I have a soft chenille sleep mask to keep out the light, and if there was any noise, I didn’t hear it. I slept like a baby.