Paris

I could have stayed in Spain forever (Barcelona in particular) not least because I could understand some of the language most of the time, and they put more effort into the design of a sidewalk than Winnipeg does into the design of its government buildings. I also just felt comfortable there, for all that ordering food was quite intimidating and we never did manage to get them to give us separate bills.

Now we are in Paris, in a 4-bed hostel room with black and white wallpaper designed to look faded. It may also be designed to look peeling, but I suspect that just came to it naturally. We are sharing the room with an Israeli pastry chef doing a stint in a Parisian patisserie. The room is so small if anyone wants to move around the room everyone else has to too, and there are footprints on the ceiling, and this all just feels about right for Paris. Having a room mostly to ourselves is an absolute luxury after the 16-bed Madrid hostel where someone was always coming inbat 3am and someone else was always getting up at 5 to catch a flight, or even the Barcelona hostel we shared with 4 Ontario girls, two German girls, and one poor man from Missouri who had to listen to us talk about how much we liked the German girl's skirt and which Harry Potter character is the hottest. Last night I dreamed the pastry chef had us secretly moved to another hostel in the night because she didn't like the hours we kept, and we had to share a room with six Australians who didn't understand what we were upset about. In reality she is very nice and gave us a delicious cookie to share yesterday. Today we are visiting the Eiffel tower (admiring it from afar) and some charming cemeteries.