I want to hold your hand
We spent the evening on the canal that Amelie skips stones into, went to a shop and bought beers and peanut flavored snacks and drank and ate and danced and sat and stood outside a club. They played loud and we were in a rather large company of people.
The evening was thoroughly enjoyable, save for someone stealing Vanessa's purse! Vanessa and her boyfriend Marc were good enough to shepherd me about Paris, speaking English and Spanish with me. They were kind and generous and truly fun people. The Earth would be better for more of them and the kind of person who would steal her purse is indeed a low form of scum.
But even with her purse stolen, the merriment carried on. These are the kinds of people who don't let trifling matters bother them. Credit cards, passports, licenses and the like can all be reordered and canceled as need be. People are harder to come by and people who realize this - as they were and ever will be - are rarer still.
We left the club at three or four or so in the morning and hopped in a cab. Well, Marc and his friend Estefan had to hoof it back to Vanessa and Marc's abode as there was not space in the cab for us all. We sat around their apartment, drank more and talked until the sun was fully risen. We sat on their deck and watched the people in the apartments around us wake up and fell asleep on mattresses laid on the floor of their living room.
And the next night, the night of proper Bastille Day celebrations, they took me under their wing again and we went to a high spot in Paris, not Montemarte (at least, I don't think it was) and we fought for a view of the fireworks in front of the Eiffel tower. The mood was light and happy.
Truly wonderful people can make for a truly wonderful trip. Thank you, Marc and Vanessa!
