Paris, France, E.U.– Paris is many things to many different people. To some it’s the city of lights, the city of love; a place of history still haunted by oppressive Sun Kings, underfed and murderous peasants and hunchbacks of Notre Dame. For me that’s great because I came to Paris to see some history, some love and, I hope, at least a couple of hunchbacks.

For a bit I strolled down the Champs-Elysées; gawked at the giant Arc de Triomphe and then took a ride up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which is a hundred year old monument now functioning as a radio tower. Of course, this city is also famous for its cafes, which is where they serve coffee, which they call café.

I ended up in a café because the Paris bus map looks like spaghetti. That’s pretty odd, right? Because spaghetti’s Italian. I took a seat outside on the sidewalk at the nearest café and the waiter brought me a glass of wine which I promptly downed.

See, I was thirsty. Luckily he brought a lot more. The French love their wine. Then he brought me this awful crap called anisette. It’s like Robitussin without the fun of having a
cough. Though the waiter was a bit rude when I complained about it, he changed his attitude attitude when I pointed out that America saved France’s ass back in World War II.

Realizing that, but not for America, he’d be speaking German, he apologized for his behavior and brought me a couple more bottles of wine on the house. Fortunately he didn’t bring up any of that French navy baloney from the American Revolution, otherwise I might have had to smack the taste out of his mouth. There’s no sense of joy or accomplishment in smacking the French.

Trust me.

Soon after I was joined by a couple of young guys from England; Charles and Dogbody, who said they were in Paris for business. We had some more wine and they offered to let me help them with their latest business enterprise. All I had to do was show up at the Louvre the next day at opening time. They even offered to give me a thousand euros, which was disappointing until I learned that euros could be traded in for real money.

The next day was bright and I got up and headed right toward the Louvre, which is a famous museum filled with old stuff. Dogbody walked by, but didn’t say hello, all he did was drop a folded piece of paper on the bench next to me and then he just walked away. The paper had my instructions on it. All I had to do was wait for their signal and then run up to the guards; I was supposed to cry and act hysterical and tell them I couldn’t find my little baby.

Sure enough, a half hour later, I heard the alarm; that was my signal. So, I ran up to the guards and cried and cried and told them I couldn’t find my baby. I did a really good job, you know “I’d like to thank the Academy.” The guards were really confused and didn’t know what do. After a bit I just slid off and then got an ice cream cone because you just can’t find nachos in this city. Funny, they’ve got snails but no nachos. And they call French cuisine famous.

Back at the hotel, Charles and Dogbody stopped by with a couple of friends of theirs. Yeah, they totally had brought some champagne and we had a few toasts. The bubbles tickled my nose, but the champagne was great. They gave me a thousand euros in a brown envelope and showed me the painting they got from the Louvre. It was this little thing with an ugly lady in it and her smile was kind of weird looking. It wasn’t even new. I didn’t think it was that good a painting, but they seemed to like it. Then we turned on the news and guess what? We were all actually on the news. It was in French, so I wasn’t sure what it was about, but still it’s nice to be a little famous.

Back at Charles de Gaulle airport, I had a couple more glasses of wine and said a quick goodbye to the city of Paris. My trip here was fun and I’m glad I got to see so many famous landmarks and meet so many nice people. But, let me tell you, it’ll be nice to get back to America and have a big glass of vin, oh wait, I mean wine, eat some tacos, have an order of Mucho Grande Supremo Nachos with extra jalapenos and cheese at Marcos Ribeira’s Outhouse, and then make out with the cute busboy. See ya’ll later.