To walk along Main Street, U.S.A. with all the signs and public address anouncements in English, all the while hearing wisps of German and Italian (and of course Parisian french) from the surrounding crowd - bizarre in the extreme!!
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Later that day, we went to eat at a small family bistro that I had previously visited in the 1970's, La Cremerie Polidor. There were few seats available so the waitress asked if we would mind sharing a table. Since the crowd at the Polidor is usually local families, we thought we were lucky that a single diner was willing to share his table with us. What an opportunity to experience non-tourist Paris!! Well as the saying goes, if we didn't have bad luck, we probably wouldn't have any luck at all. Our dinner companion was a civil servant from Québec City and had nothing good to say about Paris, Parisians or the food. Considering the usual inter-city rivalry, the fact that we live in Montréal probably didn't help.