So we woke up hot and sweaty, a little bit grouchy, but headed out for a day of chores. We had a nice breakfast at a café down the street, petit dejeuner plus an omelet. Then we tackled our chores, get our phone activated, get our train tickets to Brittany, and get some plug adaptors for our electronics. We brought some two-pronged adapters but hadn’t realized the French have a recessed receptacle for their plugs. Got all the chores done within about an hour and a few blocks of the flat. Skillz. So we had time to chill in Luxemburg Gardens. This is a palace/garden built by Marie de Medici in 1615. She was recently widowed by Henry IVth and was homesick for her crib in Florence so she built these fabulous castle. Life’s a bitch. But as luck would have it her son Louis the thirteenth, exiled her to Germany a few years later. Harsh! Hmm, children and their parents, some things never change.
The gardens looked great, so we looked for a place for some sandwiches. April turned down two promising shops, then found a tiny bakery that she thought looked good. We bought a tuna baguette to split and some drinks. I thought the tuna looked a little old, but the chicken salad looked older. Had a pleasant time in the gardens. Little kids doing the sailboat thing. Lots of loungers and picnics, Overall very chill.
Headed back to the flat for the late afternoon sleep. And my stomach started rumbling. Not a good sign. Sure enough after a few hours I had the shits again! Sigh. WTF. This always happens to me. It happened heading to India, bad pork pate on the plane, it happened in England, greenish prosciutto. And now here again. And we weren’t sure if it was the smelly fish, the Lebanese shwarma, or the tuna sandwich. April was getting tired of me getting food poisoning on all our trips, so that brought out her worst nursing behavior and we all know she isn’t good to start with. We tried Japanese food for dinner, as I wasn’t sure if it was food poisoning or just my regular upset stomach. Just had udon noodles/soup. Had to hit the toilet in the middle of dinner. Got back to the flat and it turned into full-fledged food poisoning. By my scale I mean 10+ times. A regular day is 3-5 times, not unusual shits is 5-10 times/day, 10+ is food poisoning.
Now April also had a bubbly stomach, but she was still claiming it was the fish or the Shwarma. Little did she know!
One more note: the Seine at night is awesome. We walked to the Pont des Arts bridge, minutes from the flat. It was filled with 100s of young kids chilling with wine/cheese snacks/etc. You could hardly walk across this pedestrian only bridge it was so crowded. Plus there were lots of drummers, guitarists, etc playing. Really cool scene. Of course we fit right in and were thinking we were very hip until I had a shart and had to run back tight-assed to the flat for another bout with the diarrhee! Ha-ha.
Then we had the night from hell. I had the shits, it was even hotter in the flat. We couldn’t be in the same bed as they’re too small with this heat; it would have been like two sweating whales (or should I say one sweating whale and one svelte dolphin, but you get the picture). I was up in the cell for about an hour whimpering and moaning, really pouring it on to see if I could get April to respond; she finally relents and says “want to sleep down here on the couch?” Finally! So she heads up to the loft, last about 10 minutes, gets too hot and claustrophobic and hauls the futon down to main level. We fall asleep somewhere between 3-5:00AM. Some asshole starts playing music at 5:00AM. Seriously.
I wake up with all my bones aching. Perhaps I got the swine flu? We’re both aging years every sleepless night.
So we woke up and rushed to a hotel with AC just a block from the flat! Checked into a dark, quiet room with AC at 10:00 AM. Skills! Paul Flessner would have been proud of us. He’s the master of going crazy in the heat.
Finally we’re nice and cool. Let the recovery begin. Eth and Maddy were arriving on Monday and we convinced ourselves they need the space in the flat.
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