You are SO lucky that I am writing the blog instead of Ann. We took our first subway ride in France this morning. If she had been writing, you might have heard words from her that you did not know were in her vocabulary. This was way worse than the subway in New York. We all crowded into a FULL car. Ann and another guy were the last ones in, and his coat was stuck in the door when it closed. We were so tight that you could pretty much feel the heart beat of the person you were next to. To make matters worse, another guy squeezed in at the next stop. Everyone groaned. We could hardly breathe. Ann was having a stroke. Can't you just picture it? At the next stop, she had to get out to let other people out, and I was so scared that she wouldn't get back in before we took off. It was awful! Then we had to transfer, but the next one wasn't nearly as bad. Then the guide told us we would be responsible for getting ourselves home after the tour. That did not go over very well with Ann, but I figured we'd deal with it when the time came. We had a nice tour of Sainte Chapelle with all the stained glass windows and also Notre Dame. Ann lit a candle there. We all walked to the Latin Quarter for lunch. Before we got to France, we were a little afraid we wouldn't find anything we liked to eat, but we figured we could just eat crepes--and we have. We shared two crepes for lunch--a mushroom cheese and a banana, nut, raspberry sorbet and choclate ice cream one with chocolate sauce on top. Yum! We're happy. After that, we had to get back onto Paris mass transit, this time on the RER, a train. That was OK too. It took us to the Orsay museum. By then Ann was really tired, so she sat and waited while I looked around. I saw loads of art from some of my favorites like Monet, Manet, Van Gogh--and my very favorites Degas and Renoir. They had Whistler's Mother there, and I told Ann she should go see it, but she didn't want to. She said it was probably a fake, and why would they have an American painting there. She's such a skeptic! While I was busy enjoying my art, she had an experience. There was a little snack bar in the museum, and she wanted to get something to drink. You know the soup nazi from Seinfeld? She said there was a table nazi there. He wouldn't let anybody sit down at a table and wait while someone else was getting drinks. He chased a whole family of Japanese away and dragged an American over to a sign which laid down the law. She said if there were old or handicapped people waiting, they could sit in a chair against a wall for a short time. She was a little intimidated and was afraid to sit at her table too long because she was afraid he would kick her out too. On the way home, we took a bus, and I was afraid we were going to have another Queens moment like New York when the two of us were going to take a short subway ride in Manhattan and ended up in Queens. This time we were busy studying the names of our tour members and weren't paying attention to the stops. Once again, a nice Parisian came to our rescue. We went to Rue Cler again and picked up cheese, bread, veggies, fruit and wine for dinner, but not before we had our dessert, of course. We got the macaron cookies that I had heard so much about, but they had sorbet and ice cream filling, so we had to eat them right then and there. I liked the passionfruit and carmel the best. Don't worry, they're pretty small. Ann has a new favorite drink that she tried in Holland. It's Panache, a French beer mixed with 7-Up. I know...it doesn't sound good, but she likes it. I didn't get into too much trouble today, but I came close. I tried plugging my hair dryer into the outlet built into the hotel's hair dryer. It made a grinding noise, and then I read that it was just for shavers. Oops. But it's OK, the lights in the hotel stayed on. Last night I had a little problem also. We were at our first meeting with our group. The tour guide was talking for quite a while, and he seemed really nice. I had had a mole burned off my ear lobe right before I left, and now I had a scab. At the meeting, I scratched my ear, and it loosened the scab. I decided to help it along, and suddenly my hand felt wet. I looked at my hand, and it was covered in blood! Luckily I had a tissue in my purse, but it just wouldn't stop. When it was time for everyone to introduce themselves, I had to do it with my hand on my ear! What's strange about this is that probably 75% of the people in the tour are in the medical profession. The people on the tour seem pretty nice. One couple had gone to London first and got to see Kate's wedding bouquet and wedding flowers that were still in Westminster Abby. Today was probably one of the most active days on the tour, and Ann hung in there! And she's really good at learning the names of the people on the tour. French is easier to understand on the street because many of their words are the same or close to ours--like avenue, boulevard, librairie, etc. so you can figure it out. Dutch is harder in that regard (I wonder if the washer would have been easier to figure out in French!), but with Dutch you have to be careful when you speak it because with some words (like "hrunten" which means vegetables), you run the risk of bringing up phlegm. Tomorrow to the Louvre, and then we're on our own for the rest of the day. Subways here we come!