the first day

I'm sitting in my apartment, looking at a lit-up Eiffel Tower (the view through my living room window), and listening to Miss Congeniality in French. The end of my first day.

I was right. Hunger and a premonition that I should make a trial run to find the metro (meeting at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow) drove me from my apartment. My first adventure was getting out of the darn building. Ten minutes to figure out how to open and lock my front door, another five minutes to discover that I had to push a button to get out of the glass door in the lobby, only to be stumped by the door to the street for another five minutes (it probably took longer, but this is getting embarrassing).

Once on the street, I took a wrong turn and ended up climbing a bunch of stairs to find myself at the foot of Sacre Coeur. I still have a bunch of even more stairs to go to actually enter the basilica, but that's for another day. Retracing my steps, not unlike the u-turns I normally do whenever I have to drive somewhere new, I went in another direction, all the while keeping a lookout for a grocery story where I could pick up something to eat with no talking (throw things in the basket and blindly hand over money). Of course, not a grocery store in sight, but there was a boulangerie that I passed twice before making yet another u-turn and going in (it was the quiche in the display case that changed my mind). Not only did I get a slice of quiche lorraine and piece of gateau au chocolat, but I encountered my first irritated Parisian. Young girl, and I kind of don't blame her for being peeved. She asked me something in French, duh, simply trying to verify my quiche order. I finally figured it out and replied exactly like this, "Ja, yes, si, I mean oui." I'd be irritated too.

It's midnight and the Eiffel Tower just went all sparkly like a Christmas tree on steroids. I'm definitely in Paris.