Favorite memories of Paris, a hot town

    We saw the Eiffel Tower from the plane while flying over Paris. All the tower's lights were on. Many years before, we had seen the island of Manhattan in the same fashion.  Seeing Paris and New York from a plane all lit up and bright is an unforgettable show.
    Paris was part of our second trip to Europe. We were in Madrid on our second visit and while promenading (what a neat word!) along La Gran Vía, a wide and beautiful boulevard in the center of Madrid, we entered a travel agency and bought a package including a round-trip flight from Madrid to Paris and a hotel for a week.
    Next morning, we rode a tourist bus to Notre Dame. We stayed a while and continued the bus route. In Europe, it is common for tour buses to stop every hour at points of interest, and you may stay longer and take another bus later. The ticket is good for a week.
    Notre Dame startled us, like other visitors who climbed its eroded steps. It's a place where peace and faith has created an ambiance through the centuries.
    We walked the River Seine’s Left Bank. Many movie scenes have been filmed there, mainly love scenes. We visited Montmartre and La Place de la Concorde, the Museum de Louvre and the department store Le Printemps.
    Now a comment abut my French fluency. At the Printemps, I was trying to ask for the rest room and instead I asked, "Where may I take a shower?" Before the trip, I told my husband we wouldn't have any problem with the French language in Paris because I had had three semesters of the language. Quelle idée! (What an idea!)
    My mistake at such a store — smelling of French perfume —reminded me of a movie I had seen many years before in which Red Skelton, the old favorite comedian and movie star, attended a college and took French. All he could remember was a line from the beginners’ book, which read "J'ai perdu ma plume dans le jardin de ma tante." (I lost my pen at my aunt's garden.) Skelton and I might have used the same beginners’ book.
    The travel agent told us that Paris in June was like "April in Paris," with nice spring weather. Not at all! Our first two days, the weather in the city was as I had imagined Paris, a fine drizzle and about 60 degrees. The rest of our Parisian days were 90 degrees (as in Fahrenheit and Kansas) and as golden and sunny as French toast.
    It was our third day when we walked up and down the Champs Elysées and admired the Arch of Triumph. We felt very elegant and Parisian until we had to stop at a McDonald's (yes, the international hamburger stand) and ask for two giant drinks. We were sophisticated but dehydrated.
    The movie theatres showed good American and other foreign movies, but they were all in French, so we decided instead to go to a bakery and buy French bread. In Paris, it is common to see people with a long loaf of bread — half of it out of the bag — walking on the streets.
    Since the internationally famous cabaret Le Moulin Rouge was more expensive than our budget permitted, we visited its entrance in the afternoon when it was closed and had the opportunity to see dancers and singers’ photos. The women were all wearing bikinis, feathers  or less. Suddenly I felt bored, but not my husband.
    Vive la France!