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© ymt 2007
I give up
Bonjour Clermont-Ferrand! monday, march 5 (see photos)
When planning any vacation, it's important to consider the people you'll be travelling with. I'm sure that's common knowledge.
What should also be considered are the personalities of your bags. Yes, your bags! We had to experience firsthand an embarassing temper tantrum that one of our suitcases threw in the Paris airport.
And NO, I'm not talking metaphorically about me. But that's not unreasonable to assume...I guess.
So the grouchy bag ran off to Clermont-Ferrand, a possibly charming town nowhere near Nice. It was actually Cylinda's bag. I don't know why she keeps associating with such touchy people and things.
Anyways, it was difficult to be all rah-rah we're in France! when we just wanted the suitcase to stop pouting in Clermont-Ferrand. Both of us really wanted Cylinda to have her clothes. Honestly, she was beginning to smell and we both knew it.
The silver lining in all of this was that I had to explain the lost baggage to the hotel clerk...in French. My first extended conversation to someone other than my French teacher went extremely well. She could speak English (Cylinda later discovered), but was very patient with me and communicated with me entirely in French, as if she understood what I was saying. Amazing! People hardly understand me in English and even less so in Chinese. This, I thought, was a real victory.
I thought wrong.
