All right, so we got into Paris at about 9:00 am having left Cincinnati about an hour late.

We caught a cab right in front of the terminal and for 50 € (about $60) we were dropped off at our hotel. I noted to the driver that there seemed to be a lack of traffic. He told me that it was a national holiday - Ascension - so all the banks, all the offices, most of the shops, and almost all of the restaurants were closed.

Well. At least there wasn't much traffic.

It turns out that May is what ex-pats from the US call the French Ramadan. There are so many of these holidays that there is no week during the month which employees come in for five straight days.

Add to that, like Thanksgiving in the US, that no one shows up on Friday after a Thursday holiday nor on Monday before a Tuesday holiday; and, that the French unions often choose May as the preferred month for strikes, thus making three-day workweek a two- or even one-day work week. If you're only working on, say, Monday because: Tuesday is a strike day, Wednesday is a half day precedent to the Thursday holiday; Friday you weren't going to work anyway so you just call in sick or take a vacation day on Monday so you have, in effect a nine-day holiday (two weekends and the five days between them) for the price of one sick or vacation day.

And the French wonder why their economy is in the toilette.

Here's a photo of the hotel taken by the very beautiful and talented Erin McLean:

Erin should be a fashion photographer for the way she made this place look so très élégant .

The best part about the hotel was that it was right across the street from a place named "Bugsy's" which billed itself as "The Original Chicago Speakeasy."

I think this was not true. For one thing, it is in France. It is way, way in France. Here's the building on the other corner:

After I took this photo of the Ministry of the Interior, the guy behind the counter of our hotel told me I shouldn't take photos of the Ministry of the Interior because last week? Another guy took a picture? And some guys came into the hotel and went to his room to examine his camera.

This is somewhat more serious than breaching the border between coach and business class, but I had already taken the shot so I decided to risk a term in the Bastille if not a visit from M Guillotine.

I spent a good deal of time at Bugsy's.

As you can see I am, as usual, surrounded by dozens of adoring fans as I have my afternoon café .

Microsoft Sidebar. I am typing this while flying on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Salt Lake City, thence to Cody, Wyoming for a speech.

For some reason, Mr. Gates, et. al. have decided that not only am I writing about visiting France, but I am, in fact, writing in French. The spell checker has begun to underline almost every word. When I went to see what it was doing the window which came up was titled : Spelling & Grammar: French (France).

(At this point it is appropriate to sing the theme to "Twilight Zone" by going "Doo-doo-doo-doo" in that stupid falsetto that men do.)

I am a pretty good geek when it comes to tweaking Windows and I have no idea how I switched Word to French, and I have no idea how to switch it back...

Now I do.

Searching through the help menus tells me that there is a feature in Microsoft Word entitled "Automatic Language Detection." Apparently, if you type enough words in a language other than the one you started with, Word thinks you must have fallen on your head, traveled into a different dimension, become an idiot savant, and started typing in a whole different language.

Here was the problem: When I typed the word café, Word must have decided I was being Oh, So, Continental so it did me a favor and switched me to French (France).

What it doesn't do, is tell me how to turn this wonderful feature off.

I had to figure that out for myself.

Under the FORMAT menu there is a command for "Reveal Formatting." Upon clicking that, a box appears on the right side of the screen which shows the font (Times New Roman; 11pt) and Language which said "French (France)."

After five minutes of tinkering I finally got the program to ignore its desire to tell me in which language I was working, and moved everything back to "English (US)" which is only one of the seventeen English choices including English (UK) and English (Trinidad & Tobago).

At the bottom of that menu of languages is a box which says "Detect Language Automatically." I unchecked that box; said a few very, very bad words (under my breath so as not to end up - again - risking finishing the trip in plastic handcuffs) and told the program to reformat the whole thing in English (US). If I weren't so concerned about battery power, I might reformat a section in English (Trinidad & Tobago) just to see what happens.

Ah, what the heck.

English (US): Hey, man. Want some excellent ganja?

English (Trinidad & Tobago): Hey, man. Want some excellent ganja?

The only difference is, the spelling checker recognized "ganja" in English (US) but not in English (T&B). Spell check offered me "goanna," "kanji" and "banjo" as alternative choices.

"Hey, man. Want some excellent banjo?" Doesn't sound quite right. Even in Trinidadian - or Tobagoan.

Ok, that was a stupid waste of time. I do believe we have now reached an accommodation, Word, and I.

And now I've used up the battery so I have to finish this later.

LATER

I have, since that mini-adventure typing in French, been to Cody, Wyoming and back.

Delta Airlines is using more and more commuter airlines to fill in its schedule. As an example there used to be eight or 10 daily trips between Reagan National and Atlanta per day. There are STILL the same number of flights; but about four of them are now flown by Atlantic Southeast Airlines in a regional jet, instead of a real jet, flown by real pilots, on a real airline.

In a previous chapter I showed an actual photo of Skippy the Flight Attendant on the flight from DCA to Cincinnati.

On the flight from DCA to Atlanta (precedent to flying to Salt Lake City, thence to Cody) we were on a ASA Canadair Regional Jet (at six in the morning) on which the flight attendant thought that Washington Reagan airport was called "Washington Regional" airport - which she said about a dozen times while describing the rule which states that when flying out of Washington Reagan (or Washington Regional, in our case) all passengers must remain seated for the first 30 minutes of the flight.

After 30 minutes had elapsed the flight attendant came through with the beverage cart. "Coffee, please, with cream and Equal," I requested.

"We don't have any coffee this morning. The coffee makers are not working."

Hmmmm. Not a good sign.

A little later the flight attendant came on the PA system which an announcement you just don't want to hear. I wrote it down:

"The lavatory is not working on this airplane. If you have to use it ... [long pause] ... please don't flush."

When is train travel coming back?

BACK TO PARIS

You want to know the truth about Paris? Nothing much of interest happened.

We went to the Rodin Museum to see if the statue of The Thinker had been returned from Germany where it hade been sent to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the "Friendship Agreement" between the two countries.

It had and here's a photo to prove it:

One amusing thing about the Rodin Museum. Here is an example of one of the cards under one of the works in the place:

The amusing point of this is every sign in the place says the same thing: August Rodin (pronounced, as you know, "Roe-DAH") 1840-1917. This is the ... what? Roe-DAH Museum and every work that I saw in the place was by Roe-DAH so having Roe-DAH's name on every single card was, superflu as we like to say in French.

Oh, here's a tip : Even after you've suggested MOST STRONGLY to Microsoft Word that you would prefer it turn off the very excellent feature which detects the language in which you are working, it STILL does it after you type a word like, superflu which is French for "redundant"

[Now the damned program has switched to (I swear this is true) English (Zimbabwe). Which word, do you suppose, is Zimbabwean?]

Where was I? Oh yes, the Rodin Redundancy. In retrospect it wasn't that funny, was it.

Here's one which WAS funny:

As you know one of the less-kind knick-names for the French is: "Frogs." As you also know a delicacy in some French restaurants is "frogs' legs" which is the origin of all those "tastes like chicken" jokes.

Here is a photo of a poster for a movie which was plastered all over Paris:

The name of the movie, obviously, is "The Secretary." The line under the title reads (according to the locals) "Assume the Position."

Every time we walked past one of these posters (which was about every half block) I said out loud, "I'll have that Frog's legs," and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Interestingly, no matter who I was walking with, they didn't seem to think this was as amusing as I did.

One restaurant story: One night we ate at a restaurant called, "L'Entrecôte" which translates, generally to "The Rib Steak."

Here is a photo of the place which is, ironically, located on Ave. Montbeuf.

You will note that there are people between me and the restaurant. These are people who are waiting in line (or, if you are from the New York-New Jersey area ON line). L'Entrecôte does not take reservations.

There is some history to this meal: Back in the day, there were two US versions of this restaurant which were named, "Le Steak." One was in Manhattan and one was in Georgetown, so this was a romantic return to those days of youth and optimism - blah, blah, blah.

The romantic part of this visit was that I didn't complain AT ALL about waiting in line.

Much.

When you get a seat you are not offered a menu because there is only one thing ON the menu: Steak. All you are asked is how you would like it: Rare, Medium, etc.

A salad is brought followed by a plate with Le Steak and French fries - which were never called "French fries" in France. They're called pommes frites. The only place they were ever called "French fries" was in the US where they were temporarily renamed, at least in the Longworth House Office Building Cafeteria "Freedom Fries."

It all comes with a wonderful sauce which, whether you are doing Atkins or not, you have to take your pommes frites, sop up some sauce, and eat them swearing to yourself that you will resume the Carb Watch first thing in the AM.

The two US versions of "L'Entrecôte" went out of business because the anti-meat movement was gathering steam here and the restaurants began offereing, in addition to steak, chicken and fish. That made them just another two restaurants. Which didn't last long.

So, I walked around a good bit, went to the wedding I had traveled five thousand miles for, and came home.

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