Heaven and Hell

The day has come.
We finally moved.
What started last July, has been completed.
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
We worked hard yesterday.
Sweated our hineys off.
In 100 degree heat.
Hottest of the year so far.
New house didn't even have air until after noon.
Thank goodness for the pool!
(never thought I'd say that...)


(I'll be on hiatus for a while. Catch you later!)

An American in Paris: Part VI

"Miser Brothers"
1975 was a good year for the Miser brothers. The Rankin-Bass hit, "A Year Without a Santa Claus" had just come out the Christmas before and they were on top of the world! Well, actually, Snow Miser split his time between the North and South poles and Heat Miser had the equator. Like most people, the fame soon got to them. Heat Miser did time in jail for beating his girlfriend Chiquita Banana. He lost his temper one night after somebody commented on her melons. Snow Miser became addicted to drugs - ice to be specific. He couldn't get enough of the stuff.
Eventually, the brothers went to rehab and worked through their demons. Today, they lead low-profile lives and work the front desk of a Paris hotel. Snow Miser works the day shift and Heat Miser works at night. Yep. Or at least that's how I explain the temperature in our room.
When I first got to Paris, Steve had a run-of-the-mill room in a Marriott by the airport. It was nice and looked like any other hotel room in the U.S. Once we were on "our" time, we had reservations at a Best Western in town. The room was quaint (realtor talk for small) but clean and it suited us fine.

We had a quiet room on the second floor off a small courtyard. We knew we would spend much time in the room so we weren't too concerned about it.

That held true except for the heat and air. Many hotels didn't even have air conditioning, so we were glad to have it, but there was no thermostat in the room. We were told the front desk controlled it. Well, during the day, apparently it was ON. It was so cold, you could have hung meat! So I went to bed with my PJs and my socks on with the blanket pulled up to my neck. I awoke a few hours later sweating like a Biggest Loser contestant hiking up a hill with Jillian on my back! Apparently, during the night, the air is OFF. I stripped off the covers and my PJs to get some relief. I enacted the fine, Southern tradition of flipping my pillow over to the cool side.

This temperature trauma was repeated for Sunday and Monday nights as well.

As for the Miser brothers...they had a deal in the works with E! to make a "True Hollywood Story," but then the shit hit the fan with Jon and Kate and, well, I don't expect their phone to be ringing anytime soon.

Commercial Break

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program, An American in Paris, to bring you this important message:
This is it peeps. Tomorrow is the final house inspection. The day where the fate of our house lies in the hands of some county employee. So I am selfishly asking you all to say a prayer, send good thoughts or whatever that it passes and we can finally move in our new house!!!

An American in Paris: Part V

"Royal Cheese"
Remember in the movie Pulp Fiction when John Travolta is telling Samuel L. Jackson about McDonald's in France? It's true. They do eat mayonnaise with their fries and the Quarter Pounder is the Royal Cheese. And it was damn good. Call me a redneck. Call me clueless. Call me tasteless. I don't care, but I was not crazy about the food in France. I had REAL French cheese, wine, quiche, and crepes and it was all OK. I love cheese: cheddar, feta, provelone, Swiss...but that stuff I ate over there just didn't taste right. Needed more salt or something. The wine: too sweet. The quiche: (see the note about the cheese). The crepe: it was good, but not a whole lot of taste besides the Nutella it was drowned in.
We ate dinner twice at local cafes. It was fine, but it took forever (culture thing) and dinner for 2 one night ran us about $90 U.S. We were just as happy to eat at McDonald's, KFC, Quick (fast food) and the corner bakery. We knew what we were getting, it was fast and it was cheap.
I will say the desserts and breads were very good. We had breakfast 3 mornings from the local bakery: A sweet roll and and bottle of water we could eat on the train hit the spot.
Any sandwich was served on traditional French bread and it was always good. Probably our 2 favorite things we ate were dessert from the cafe one night. Steve had dark chocolate molten cake and I had pistachio creme brule. Mmmmmm!

An American in Paris: Part IV

"The Wheels on the Bus"
I woke up Sunday morning and my legs were so sore and so tight. They were refusing to cooperate (I didn't blame them) but eventually I convinced them it would be OK. I promised that we would NOT do that much walking today. So, we decided to do the open bus tour. You know, you've see those double decker bus tours. The top level is open to the elements and you can see out really well. They had 4 different routes that covered pretty much the whole city.
Not great for pictures taking with the constant movement, but great for seeing a little bit of everything...

We did get off the bus to have lunch and walk around a little bit. I finally found Amorino's Ice Cream (gelatto, actually) and it was so good!! We also spent a good chunk of the afternoon at a large garden (I forget which one). This was the view from our chairs:
This is us in the chairs. So good to sit down!

FYI- I've got 4 more chapters planned of the Paris trip. Sorry if that's annoying, but I personally, would rather read a lot of short posts than 1 or 2 really long ones. And I just might finish it off with a giveaway! Stay tuned!