Saturday 29 May 1999. Penultimate round-up of the day as we find ourselves out of the coach with a couple of hours to ourselves. We've already used a good chunk of it in a shop... So let's crack on.
We left the Galeries Lafayette and promptly got lost by coming out onto a different street than we had entered from! Well, not exactly lost, because all we had to do was circle the building, but a bit more of our precious two hours away from the coach tour was being eaten up. We found our way back to L'Opéra and made our way down the boulevards back towards the Louvre, which had been in silhouette when we were there in the morning.
Cafe de la Paix. We thought we had better wait until we were coming back to see if we had time left to lounge at a table with a glass, so we carried on walking. It took longer than expected to get to the Louvre and by then Fran's foot was sore. She thought her shoe had been rubbing but then found when she took it off that her sandal had left patterns of sunburn on her foot and the straps had been rubbing against that. She had seen a Scholl shop somewhere from the coach and has always liked their shoes but we hadn't been able to find the shop.
So we didn't exactly stay a long time at the Louvre. Just about long enough to take a quick photo and then we thought we had better head back, not knowing if Fran's foot would get worse and slow her down. We didn't want to miss the coach!
We passed this teddy bear, busily blowing bubbles, then Miss Franny saw the shop she had been looking for and dragged me in. Would my French be up to this I wondered... Fran found some shoes and I managed to ask if they had them in her size (which luckily she knew, continental sizes being nothing like our modest numbers).
So I ordered what to me sounded like a pair of clown-sized shoes and was told "Assayez la," which I knew meant either "wait" or "sit" over there so we waited for a bit then - oh no! She came back with a different pair! But my thanks to the lady on the ice cream van for reminding me of the word for "same"!
I probably mixed up my verbs a bit but, "Ces n'est pas la meme," elicited another look at them from the sales assistant, who drew a breath and tutted at her own mistake and she tootled off and brought back the pair Fran wanted. Phew! Success!
I felt ridiculously proud of myself, Fran acted as though it was nothing at all and she knew I would cope (huh???) and she changed into them straight away and by the time we were back at the hotel preparing for our evening out for a meal and night-time coach excursion she declared herself fit for a marathon.
Refreshed and changed, we got back on the coach and headed back into Paris for our meal, where we sat next to the resident musician. Now regular visitors to my site will know I play the odd instrument myself... So I know that playing to a totally unresponsive audience can be soul destroying and I made a point of applauding after every tune. Which was obviously appreciated and although he didn't speak English, I knew enough to get talking to him and we got on famously. I declined his offer to turn round and play the piano that was behind me as, although I play keyboards, if my left hand gets a rhythm going on piano, my right hand seems to want to play at windscreen wipers...
He played both clarinet and saxophone and was very good on both. I asked him how long he had played and he told me he had played since being a young boy. After the meal we parted with smiles and I even got the traditional French embrace and then a rather merry group weaved its way back to the coach to find Lucy and Elizabeth, two young girls on the trip who had not come for the meal, sitting waiting and tapping their watches at me with a huge grin on their faces - they had been 5 minutes late back onto the coach that morning and had a few comments from Les Miserables on the coach!
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