You can take the girl out of Scranton, but you can't take Scranton out of the girl. Paris, Part Une.

I just got back from Europe. Not literally, but close enough (last night). I have to say, outside of the history thing (Europe is OLD!!), it's a whole different world over there.

The first stop was Paris. We get to the hotel and holy cow, our room was the size of some bathrooms in houses. It was small. You could walk around, but only if you didn't have to put your luggage anywhere. So I squeeze over to the bathroom, and there's a shower, but no curtain. ??? Apparently most Europeans take baths, and as we all know, anytime you're in the bathroom, "yourapeein'. " For the 4 nights we stayed in Paris, I inadvertantly sprayed down the whole bathroom every time I took a shower.

Obviously, I didn't spend the whole time in the shitter. I did wander out every so often, and on one occassion I went to the Louvre. I get up to the ticket counter and say, 'Deux billets, s'il vous plais' (Two tickets, please). Mr. Ticket rattles off something in response and I say, "Uh, Je ne parle pas francais tres bien." (I don't speak French very well). Then he says something else...in GERMAN. We go a few rounds and eventually I get my tickets (he just wanted to know if I was a student or not). But apparently, the fact that he kicked into German now makes me realize I speak French with a German accent. Sprechen Sie...aw hell. Just give me my tickets.

Stop # 2: Eiffel Tower. I went up to a guard and asked if he spoke English. He asks in return, "You speak Spanish?" Uh, no dude. We're not bartering languages here. It's English or nothing. Nothing won, and it turned into a miming gig, which is damn near impossible. YOU try miming, "Can you buy tickets in advance?" It's hard, but a few high kicks and a double axle later, I found out you can't - tickets must be used immediately.

In true French fashion, I ate a lot of French onion soup. My last bowl was by far the best...it was even served by a waiter who looked exactly like Richard Gere circa mid-1980's. Then I found a rat turd. In my awesome soup. Gross. There I was, munching away, enjoying all the frenchy goodness, when I spooned a little black...thing. I pulled it out and asked for a second opinion. "What does that look like to you?" I asked J. He inspected it and said, "Uh...a rat turd." Yup. That's what I was thinking too. I pulled it apart, mashed it up, and tapping into my own personal experience as a former hamster owner, I was able to confirm that it was definitely a rodent turd of sorts.

I was good about it, though. I didn't puke; I didn't even gag. I was pretty goddamn stoic, really. And remember that part in "Pretty Woman" when Richard Gere feeds Julia Roberts the rat shit? Yeah, neither do I. We didn't leave a tip.

So there's Paris in a nutshell-of-a-blog. It was incredible. I was speechless for a lot of it. And on our last night, we walked along the Sienne River and watched the Eiffel Tower's light show. It was beautiful. Then we saw two rats ripping into a bag of trash. We called it a night.

Thanks for the memories, Paris. And in the words of Mark Twain: In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."