Lost in Paris!!!!

It has been a long day! First, on the train we past through part of Belgium- Brussels! (see last picture posted on this entry) Next stop Paris- we arrived safely and collected our bags- and hailed a taxi to find our small hotel. Our hotel is something else- it is tiny tiny and very......well ........simple? is the word I am looking for- It is a great experience though- wonderful adventure! The room Penny and I are sharing has 2 twin beds- and a tiny flat TV mounted on the wall- The bathroom is tiny and the keys are almost like old skeleton keys! The staircase is a spiral that makes you so dizzy going up or down- and you have to turn on the lights in the hall. So after settling in to our surroundings that we will be staying in for the next 3 days- we rested for an hour. After that we decided to take a walk around downtown Paris. It started out well- we had surplus energy and were in high spirits. We went in a few shops- Penny and I both got some shoes!. Don't worry Bernadette they weren't that expensive I promise- you would almost have approved! We went to lunch at a cafe- I posted the picture of the cafe- Penny and I had- Boeuf Bourgingon (which is like beef stew, everybody who knows me understands I love and crave meat) of course we first had cappuccinos, then wine, then our food. The menus were really cool! They were posted in old books so they brought out what looked to be leather bound hardback novels- which had the menus taped inside! I posted a picture of the menus because I thought it was so interesting! After lunch we moved on.....I picked out a fabulous new outfit- you can see the picture of the manikin wearing it- I thought it would fit in great in Oregon. The thing about this marvelous garment- that you can't tell from the picture is it is actually chain mail! The one thing females in OR need is a chain mail 2 piece bikini? or warrior outfit. It is almost as essential as Birkenstock. How cool is that! I definitely needed to obtain this essential piece to expand my severely lacking wardrobe! (kidding of course-) So here it is about 5 o'clock and we decided we should head back.....to the hotel..... the only problem we realized- is that the 2 travel maps we had on us didn't have the location of the street where the hotel was....this turned out to be a slight problem. We had the address of the hotel which was great but no one seemed to know where the street was where it was located. We finally found a kind police officer- who was familiar with the street and he gave us some general directions to locate the "area" in which the hotel might be located. So off we marched....I should add that Penny is fairly fluent in French and so is Jack and Hettie- but we still were very lost. Finally after about 2 hours of going in circles we finally found our street! I have never been so happy!! We went across the street and bought some pastries- I got an eclair- and then went and enjoyed a drink now able to relax! We are in for the night and believe me- we are going to be very very careful so this doesn't happen again.