The drive from Amboise to Orly Airport (south of Paris) where we dropped off the car was pretty uneventful. We stopped for gas etc. I only broke one traffic law (I ran a red light - they had a red light in the middle of a round about - who puts red lights in the round about?)
Once we hit Orly it got interesting. Jeeves is programmed to guide you where he thinks roads are. Most of Orly is under construction. Where Jeeves thought there were roads there was construction. Where there were roads Jeeves was convinced we were driving on the runway. He threw his first tantrum of the trip. We had driven a lot without him (in the Dordogne) so we knew it was possible to navigate without the aid of a machine. Shutting him up was a different issue. Damn near had to disconnect the car battery.
I knew the rental car return was at the west terminal. Finding where to return the car was a challange. We drove around Orly (the same loop it seemed) for about 20 minutes. We kept going past row after row of Jersey barrier. We finally noticed a break in one of the barriers that a car went through - so for no particularly good reason I followed. Sure enough behind the unmarked break in the Jersey barrier was the rental car return.
Once the car was checked out we grabbed a cab and were off to Paris. Cab's are expensive in Paris. They are worth every penny cause there's no way I'd drive in this traffic. Our cabbie's version of Jeeves got us to within about a block of the hotel. His version tried to send him down a pedestrian street so he let us off a block or so away from the hotel. No biggie - it was close enough.
After we checked in (as I said the hotel is "quaint", meaning small and we got a suite) we took a long walk down the Seine and found a place John Z recommended for dinner. On the way we were targeted by a con man. The con is they walk in front of you and pretend to find a ring on the ground (they drop it). They ask you if it's yours and when you say no they show you a mark that proves it's pure gold. They then offer to sell it to you at a discount. The ring will of course turn your finger green. Our guy was a bit more aggressive than I've seen in the past and I had to pretty rudely tell him to go away. He wasn't pleased but I was drawing too much attention to him so he left. We found the place John had recommended but was way too early so we walked back to our hotel. We're going to the Louvre tomorrow afternoon so we'll go to dinner there then.
We are staying in an area that's popular with the Rick Steves crowd (Carolyn got the hotel from his book). Rue Cler. It's a very cute neighborhood not far from the Eiffel tower. That said, we saw (and I'm not exaggerating) five people walking around this two square block area of Paris with their Rick Steve's Paris travel guides out trying to find their hotel. It reminded me of our first trip to Europe (we took Trav and Kels). We were in Bacharach Germany in a hotel dining room and every person (including us at the time) had a Rick Steve's guide.
We also saw some of the ugliest Americans (and American behavior) I've seen in all my years a traveling. Some quotes - "They all smoke. It's disgusting. They're all going to get cancer and there'll be a national health crisis" (this is from a women at least 75 pounds overweight and I'm being conservative), "Why don't the restaurants open earlier", and I kid you not "Why don't more of them speak English".
Fran and I have started punctuating our sentences with "eh?" and pretending we're Canadian.
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