Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Five days in Paris

Things I've learned since arriving in Paris on Friday:
1. The French keyboard is messed up. To type a period, one must use the shift key, but semicolons, colons, and exclamation points are readily available. Qlso; severql letters qre not auite in the plqce zhere one zould expect to find the,: This ,qkes it frustrqting to type e,qils: qnd blogs:
2. Parisians do actually walk around carrying baguettes. Some even carry their baguettes while rollerblading.
3. The public toilets in the middle of the street don't look like they lock, but I think they actually do. Just don't open the door again after you enter, or you'll leave it unlocked for yourself and then lock out the poor French guy who tries to use it after you. I think. Revision: just use the toilets in the closest Brasserie.
4. The eiffel tower has its own post office.
5. If a ladybug lands on your hand, then climbs up your finger and flies away, you will have good weather on Sunday.

Tomorrow, I take off on my soon-to-be-new-bike toward Normandy. After consulting several maps and the internet, I picked Dreux as a first night's stopping point. However, as if the name Dreux weren't dismal sounding enough, its only outstanding feature, according to wikipedia, is that it has a good cricket team. I was starting to feel depressed and terrified. Fortunately, I discovered that Chartres, an actual place that people may have heard of, wasn't too much farther out of my way. Really, I picked it on the basis of its longer wikipedia page and superior tourism website; if those aren't good signs I don't know what is.

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