BFS Day 4 – Meaning from the Mundane (Tammy)

Today we are supposed to blog about something everyday and make it interesting. I’m of the opinion that almost anything can be turned into an adventure. Recently I was talking to my nephew as I drove him to the airport to report to Air Force Boot Camp. I made the remark that this was going to be such a great adventure and he said that the word “adventure” was overused and he didn’t agree. I informed him that wherever I go and whatever I do I try to make it an adventure. I think that he was rolling his eyes at his crazy aunt but I don’t care. Life is what we make it and I love adventures therefore I have lots of them. Whenever my sister and I are together we have so much fun doing mundane things…hence the name of our blog.

My sister, Jerri Ann, and I were in Paris trying to find the American Express Office (a story for another day) and while getting lost on the Tube we stumbled into an Opera House that was designed by Garnier. It was so beautiful and interesting and the architecture was amazing (of course it was being renovated so we didn’t get to see all of it but what we did see was fabulous) . The important part of this story is that while lost we were able to see parts of Paris that we wouldn’t normally see…and we had a good time along the way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that being in Paris is mundane or boring, at least not for me. I’m just saying that no matter where you are your attitude can make or break the experience.

I haven’t scrapped that excursion yet but I have scrapped our adventure at the hotel in Paris. As we got off the train from London, it was cloudy and raining but we were prepared with our trusty rain coats and umbrellas. We kept joking that we didn’t mind the rain because rain or shine we were in Paris! OK so we were in Paris in November but we were still in Paris. We had a hard time finding our hotel because of course neither of us speak French (and it was raining and getting dark) but we did find a great book store where my sister stocked up on children's books for a friend that was teaching her children French. We also looked through some city maps for our hotel.

- Click scrapbook page for a larger image -

We finally made it to our hotel and thankfully the hotel clerk spoke enough English that we could check in. Since my sister had been to Paris before she warned me that a lot of the old buildings don’t have elevators so when we made our reservations we made sure to find one with an elevator. My sister’s knees were giving her trouble and my Fibromyalgia made it hard for me to carry luggage up too many flights of stairs.

We ask the clerk where the elevator was and she showed us this little closet size elevator at the bottom of a winding staircase. After the clerk leaves, my sister and I look at each other with wide eyes because we can’t believe how small the elevator is. It takes us several tries but we finally get most of the luggage (two suitcases stacked and a messenger bag) in the elevator and then my sister barely squeezes in. She pushes the button and this terrible sound accompanies her as she is carried up to the third (?) floor. To help you get a good visual here, you have to know this about my sister, she has these huge beautiful eyes and when the noise started her eyes went bigger than I had ever seen them. I saw in her eyes a combination of fear and disbelief. I think that she was thinking that the stairs didn’t look so bad after all. In the mean time I carry a smaller bag up a winding staircase and beat the elevator to our floor!

We take our luggage to our room and unpack and collapse for a bit. Finally hunger drives us out of our room and we giggle as we both try to fit into the elevator. I’m not kidding! We both fit in sideways, facing each other (we had definitely encroached on each others personal space) and then one of us had to reach around the other one to push the button to go down. We tried not to giggle too loud, we didn’t want to look and sound totally touristy, but it was so hard not to. The clerk was probably shaking her head and muttering “silly Americans!” If I were her I would have had a good laugh watching us.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Years ago when our grandparents went to Europe they came back with all of these great black and white photos, which was all that was available back then. Since the skies were dark and cloudy and we were in Europe I thought that black and white would be the best way to document our trip – a bit of romance (in my mind anyway). Jerri Ann thought I was crazy for taking so many black and white pictures. OK, so maybe she was annoyed that I had to take color and then black and white of almost everything. So, I made this layout to reflect my view of this experience. I wanted the pictures to look like they could have been taken back in the 50’s or 60’s. I’m thinking of an Audrey Hepburn look. I wish that I had owned PhotoShop Elements back then because I could have saved us both some time and my sister some eye rolling.

As I read back over this blog I realize that this sounds more like a Lucy and Ethel episode than an Audrey Hepburn Film. Oh well, we had fun and now have those memories forever in our minds and now in a scrapbook layout.