Back to Ugh, I mean, Paris

Waking up to Paris was like getting hit in the face with a tennis racket.

Ben woke up again, but this time he only cried a little bit, and that halfheartedly, and was back asleep in about twenty minutes. Then the garbage guy woke me up at 4am. Then my alarm went off to run at 5:30.

I was sleepy, but luckily the garbage that engulfs the city at all times helped to wake me up. So I had a good run and came home to take a nice army shower in our curtainless sit-down hold your own shower nozzle Parisian shower.

I needed a rest from the city already, so Ben and I just played inside most of the morning. However, I thought we might be headed to Disneyland this weekend, or very soon at any rate, and Ben really needs shoes. Bad. So we went out looking for shoes.

Since we live in the shopping district, you’d think this would be an easy task, but you have to remember that Europeans, in my personal judgment based solely on what I’ve witnessed, hate their children. We walked through much of the shopping district and did not find a single children’s shoe store.

Before we left, I tried online. Beth had told me before, and she was told this by several Frenchmen, the French don’t like email. Judging from how easy it is to find stores online, and how they don’t post their opening or closing hours and how much help they offer you once you are in their store…they also dislike customers.

After walking around in the cold and cigarette smoke for a while, doing our best to avoid feces and garbage, we headed to the big Monoprix to see if they had anything. They didn’t. On top of that, when I asked the cashier if she spoke English, she said, no, accompanied by the ol’ rapidbreatheoutthroughthenose and went right back to work. She’s lucky there was a child present.

Let’s review. Love that we have the opportunity to be here and get to see cool things, have fun experiences and take cool pictures. Hate Paris.