Disparate Memories

The Paris Olympics are bringing up fond memories for me of our visit to Paris. (Sept-Oct 2010)

Gary loved Paris when he was there. Almost no complaints.

Somehow, now that fourteen years have passed, he has worked up a comedy routine on how awful Paris was. 

According to him, the room had bedbugs, he had to sleep in his suit, the food was awful, our hotel had no laundry service, rats were all through the streets, the lies go on.

This is the "hole" that was our hotel room.

A hole with antiques. Perhaps his complaint was that there was only one oil painting and one chandelier in our room.

It's so sad. I have seen that when he forgets something, he'll just gin something up to fill in the space, and it's usually dark. Disheartening when you go on vacation so that you have a lifetime of good memories. 

Comments

[KC]

I mean, both things can be true: a wonderful time *and* no laundry service, a gorgeous room *and* some possible bug bites that made him freak out about bedbugs and sleep in his suit.

(there are definitely occasional rats in Paris, and an abundance of fabulous food and also some not-great food, and in the summer Paris mostly smells kinda awful, although I am not sure whether they've done some sort of cleanup/deodorizing for the Olympics?)

But 1. some of the things may not be true at all or may be exaggerated and also 2. it would be nice if The Narrative were pleasant to listen to instead of probably-inaccurate-and-highly-selective *and* unpleasant. (unless one likes hearing horror stories more than enjoyable travel stories, I suppose)

(we visited Paris around then, too! [... either that or 2009, I can't remember, I didn't blog][okay, looked up the pictures, 2008, wow I am inaccurate] If you saw a red-headed beanpole crouched on the pavement staring intently at a laptop, that was me. I had a contract to complete, so while Spouse was at libraries working on research, I did a mix of getting food for us on our mini-budget, pre-tourism for where we should go that evening, and Hunt The Free Wifi, the last of which resulted in some odd situations. The park behind the Notre Dame was the absolute winner: seats, trees, shade, views, bathrooms, *AND* free wifi! But I didn't find it for at least two days, so: doing QA on my laptop while squatting on the farthest corner of a grimy asphalt square being used as a skate park? Yep. Outside the Louvre on the stairs near the glass triangles, working for hours, looking up bemused to find that one of the huge flat metal vent things had lifted mechanically on a hinge, and now there was a staircase into... somewhere... in front of me? Yep! [a trio of very well-dressed, very-well-kitted-out probably-security people eventually emerged from it, waited until the lid went down, then walked away, but it was still ??? especially since there was a pigeon evidently considering entering at one point?]. I was mildly allergic to the hotel room and the city street smells were truly foul and occasionally chased me towards a more breezy location, and the hotel turned out to not actually have free wireless, but it was a Good Time.)

[theQueen]

KC - I did not see a red-headed bean pole. I love that Louvre story! I bet they thought you were scoping the place out for an art heist.