Some days are better than others

I'm a bit adrift today. Had an unnecessarily stressful day at work, coping with people who wanted to get their entries in last minute for my newspaper's Friday entertainment edition. Honestly, we set a deadline for press releases for two weeks before the event but do you think anyone listens? Of course not.

Plus, I had my big assignment of looking up hotels to stay in while we are in Paris next year. All I knew was my wife and our friends want to stay in the "Rue Claire" area. So, off I go on the Web searching for "Rue Claire," diving through countless web sites, online maps, French dictionaries and travel sites. Nothing.

By now, I'm panicking, thinking I'm screwing up the one thing I have to do for our trip. A week ago, my wife took me aside and said, in so many words, that she was doing a large chunk of the vacation planning and that I should refrain from complaining that she'll nitpicking all the fun out of the trip.

By comparison, I just want to go to England and France. I don't care what I do once I get there; I never been there, and walking the historic streets of London and the romance-soaked streets of Paris would be enough. I don't need an itinerary. Just a list of places I want to see, a fistful of euros and good shoes.

My wife, who has been to Europe, gets a charge out of planning. I made the compromise (actually, the whole raison d'etre - see below - for going to France) of learning French. I figured I was doing more than enough, but when I stopped being so defensive, I realized that it wouldn't hurt to pick up a "Let's Go" guide and scout out a hotel.

Thanks to Google, I'm ceaselessly lost in a jabber of Web links that seductively hint at "Rue Claire," but fail to deliver. French addresses appear, but they only add to the chaos. I have no idea how the Paris sets up its addressing system. I know Paris is divided into numerous districts (or arrondissements) but I can't place the address with the district. I have Google giving me multiple spelling of a certain word, I have online maps giving me questioning looks about my destination. I'm muttering to myself, on the verge of yelling. Nothing's working. Planning a trip is supposed to be fun. I'm staring down onto a picture of Paris streets that, from a bird's eye view, resemble a heap of spaghetti noodles intertwined at angles that would make M.C. Escher weep. I a separate window, my poet friend Cori tells me that a serious street map of Paris is mere myth...one is supposed to wander the streets in a romantic daze, and finding where you need to go only comes at the end of some adventure.

In my grumbling, frustrated heart, I knew she was right. When Hitler's victorious armies entered Paris on June 13, 1940, the victory parade was delayed for a week as the Nazis tried to figure out the streets. When the Allies liberated Paris a few years later, some American GIs actually ran into part of Hitler's motorcade, who were still circling around some amoeboid-shaped block while trying to decipher a map.

Well, okay...no, but you get the idea.

For the rest of the day, I was defeated, gripping my Paris travel book in my hand and feeling rotten for letting down our troupe. One thing, I thought, and Paris, too, and I can't get it right.

And then, when I got home and rummaged through an old Rick Steves travel book, I turned immediately to a page on Paris that highlighted the "Rue Cler" part of town! Argh, the hopping Homonym strikes again. Rue Claire doesn't exist, but Rue Cher does.

And boy, does it exist. It's situated a couple blocks south of the Seine and maybe a block form the Eiffel Tower. The section of town is strangely out of the hustle and bustle, but in the middle of everything. Fabulous.

Lesson learned: I should have read the book first before stumbling around online and descending into a grumbling, irrational pile of flesh. Or, to make it simpler and in the language of Internet acronyms: RTFM. Read The F--king Manual.

French Word of the Day

raison d'etre (ray zo deh truh): "reason for being"; justification; rationale.