OK, I’ll admit it. I had some preconceived stereotypical notions of Paris and what it would be like. But I’ll also be the first to admit that I was wrong. For the most part – some people really haven’t discovered that miracle of science we call deodorant, making metro trips a mixed bag of poorly ventilated nasal sensations. That aside, I can’t believe how friendly everybody has been. Granted we’ve been trying to make a (poor) attempt at speaking French – something we’ve barely done this entire trip. In fact in most places we didn’t even bother to learn the name of the local currency, referring to it only as “thingies” or “funny money”.

We’ve done a ton of stuff here. Dinners with family, dinners with friends, walking around aimlessly, shopping, eating. So much eating. They really do know how to do food here, especially cheese and pastry. And my second favorite food in the entire world (burritos are my favorite) – French onion soup. I’ve had probably a dozen different samplings (and by sampling I mean enormous bowl) now, and I feel like I’m just getting the lay of the French onion land. I’d like to do a year long French onion sabbatical one day, and try each and every one. Perhaps I could write a book about it. Oh and we’ve gone to museums.

A lot of museums. I hate museums. Unless they’re about food or video games or television, and unfortunately I haven’t come across very many of those. I just don’t understand art. To me either a picture looks like what it’s supposed to look like, or it’s not art. These random crayon scribblings of what are supposed to be boobies just don’t do it for me. I honestly couldn’t tell you if I were in the Louvre or a Holiday Inn art sale. Except that in the Louvre people stand around and use big words to describe what they’re looking at and have very serious expressions on their faces so it must be good.

It’s also been nice to be somewhere for more than just a few days. We’re six months into this thing now, and this is the longest we’ve stayed in the same city. It will be a total of ten days, and I think it really helped recharge our batteries a bit. The constant blur of planes, trains and automobiles catches up with you in weird ways, and a lot of times you don’t even realize just how tired you are until you take a moment to sit down and breathe. We’re also really looking forward to a summer filled with meeting up with friends and family. That way we don’t have to talk to each other as much.