The Ugly
So, my friends, now you know what I have to contend with any time I want to leave the lovely hotel that looks like it belongs in some part of the former communist block. Unlike Orsay, there is no going out for a quick jaunt (yes, I really like that word- deal) about town, no popping out for a croissant every time my tummy starts rumbling. No, if I'm going down (and thus eventually coming back up) Hobbit Hill, whatever the reason, I'd better be COMMITTED. And being that there is only a cafeteria with limited hours here and we aren't technically allowed food in our room, there is much planning involved if one does not want to eventually resort to eating the fishies in the aquarium, A Fish Called Wanda style.
This brings me to today, circa 4:45 in the afternoon. AH and I, having had our fill of a perfect Paris sunset over the Seine, decide we're ready to head back. Still full from my divine goat cheese salad but unwilling to resign myself to a 9:00 rumbly tumbly, I suggest that we jump off a stop before Lozere, find a little boulangerie and bring home a loaf of bread for a little nuit snack. So AH and I get off at Palaiseau-Villebonne to go in search of carbohydrates. However, we're not in Paris anymore; we're back in the suburbs. It would be like jumping out of a car in a residential neighborhood in Hilliard or Dublin and expecting to find a cafe: you'd probably find something eventually, but you'd better be wandering in the right direction and you'd better have on comfortable shoes. And so, by the time we even find a boulangerie we are both exhausted and I have gone from"peckish" to "mind-numbingly ravenous." Croissants are no longer enough. We need to sit down and be fed.
And here is where the real problem begins. AH and I wander down a little further, only to find that none of the restaurants are open until 7. It is 6:15. My hands are numb. AH suggests that we take in the sights until they open. Again, Imagine Hilliard. Hilliard with lovely little stone houses and narrow cobblestone streets, but basically residences and pharmacies. There are no sights. My sense of humor has gone with last of the goat cheese from my stomach. And to top it all off, I am wearing a dress with tights underneath, tights that aren't quite long enough to cover my legs all the way to the top. This means that there are now angry welts forming on the tops of my thighs that threaten to burst open with every step that I take. And so this is The Ugly: me, waddling down the streets of a French suburb like a pregnant John Wayne, snarling English swear words and scaring the locals. AH even tries to cheer me by pointing out the cute children playing in the park. I tell him that unless the children are edible, I don't care.
We sit on a bench and wait it out, and eventually descend upon some lasagna and ravioli at a mediocre Italian restaurant (hey, it's open and it's not Asian, which is about all there was in Orsay). And so the grumpiness that comes with biological need vanishes. But a bigger grumpiness remains, and that is being constantly at the whim of external forces. Something so simple as feeding myself involves AH and I wandering around lost, unable to ask directions, hoping that we blindly stumble across a food-serving establishment, and that when we finally do that it will be open and that we don't need a reservation. And now I am planning my upcoming week based around the times of day that the cafeteria is open.
I miss having a kitchen. I miss the weekly Giant Eagle trips that meant that feeding myself was never going to be a fraught or complicated question. I miss drawers. I've been living out of a suitcase since December 14th with no concrete end in sight. I miss belonging somewhere.
But for now, I have a roof over my head and adventures in a new country, and I have AH. Most of all, I have him. And if I have him, I know I cannot be without a home. And when facing boredom, hunger and the Hobbit Hill, that's a great thing to know.
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