A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
As I recently mentioned I had a trip planned to Paris and would be renting an apartment. All was going well on my way over to Paris. The flight was emply, I had a row to myself and the metro strike was over.
I should have known something was about to go wrong. I reach the apartment. The building looked good, but I was staying on Ile St. Louis so this was to be expected. I found someone to carry my luggage up three flights of stairs and then the bomb fell.
I could not open my lock box and retrieve the key. I tried and tried but nothing happened. My first thought was this is an European lock box I just do not know how to manuever it.
I knocked on a neighbours door and given I can speak French was able to explain my dilemna. She tried to assist me and her thought was the code is definatley wrong. So she let my use her moblile and I called the woman. The woman suggested I try again as the lock can be sticky. So tried again I did.
When I called her back she said she would call her cleaning person. In the meantime my new friend had brewed some tea and offered me some cake.
Then the disastorous call. The landlady is spereated from her husband and he changed the locks. WHAT!!!
She said she would pay for my hotel. Fortunatly it is the end of November and I found a hotel on the island. All worked out except one night they could not accomodate me and I would have to stay at the sister hotel.
Given that they were going to take the ladies credit card number over the phone I could put up with this minor inconvenience. My hotel was lovely even if they charged 11 euros for a pot of tea, croissant and half a baguette.
I will have to call my secondary school French teacher and thank her for the French lessons.
I met a lovely girl Azadeh who helped me out and that night I returned to her apartment with a cake to thank her and spent a few hours with her and her boyfriend. So if the lock had not been changed I would not have had the pleasure of meeting some kind people.
