To love America, you must leave it

We take so many of our conveniences and priviledges for granted over here. When you walk through the outdoor Paris markets and see all of the varieties of items for sell, you will immediately miss Harris Teeter. Seeing rabbit and pigeons in the butcher area was not pleasing to our senses. On the other hand they didn't appear to have damage caused by the excess pigeons.

When we arrived in Paris, we stumbled around a bit. This was the first time we needed our passport and ID. We found a bank and exchanged money. Found several people who gave us several different directions to which train to take. But, we finally got our tickets, boarded the train and headed for our hotel.

On the train, Greta began talking with a gentleman who spoke very little English. They had a good time discussing the difficulty of learning English grammer. It's so different from French, Spanish, Italian - the Romance languages. And they spoke primarily in French. His was good. Greta's was, well, had a Southern USA twain to it, if you will. Nonetheless, they conversed well and got a good laugh.

It was raining when we got up onto the street from the subway train. We didn't know which way to go. Greta dodged the downpour by sliding into a chair in this outdoor cafe. We were just about to get a taste of what it means to "pull your luggage across Europe."

We flagged down a taxi to take us to our hotel - which was only a mile or so away. The next adventure came when we got inside. Greta learned what s-m-a-l-l really means!

PHOTO: Greta and Joel plan their strategies to get to the hotel. Joel wanted to go inside the little cafe, have a beer and find out directions. Greta wanted to get a taxi, get to the hotel and take a nap. We had already gone up and down several sets of underground steps carrying our luggage - and we were truly outside our comfort zone - and would be for the next 10 days. We needed to regroup - and did.