A whole year?

Immersion in the language pays off

I'm going to brag on Chloe's behalf because what I'm going to brag about is tenuously relevant to the purpose of this blog. She took the SAT subject test in Spanish (they used to be called SAT II). She needed the score for a college application but hadn't received it yet so she checked the Web site, which said she got an 800, in the 90th percentile. Well, that's great! But 800 out of what? The Web site didn't say, but the ambiguous bar illustrating her score ended at 800. Brilliant analysts that we are, we finally concluded that that means 800/800. Now I, no fan of standardized testing, find myself irrationally wanting the College Board (and isn't that a presumptuous name for a company that makes gazillions of dollars even though it's not affiliated with colleges?) to break the percentiles down further than 10-point spreads, as if it matters. Pretty good for someone who was a non-Spanish speaker just over a year ago and it validates the contention that living a language is the quickest way to learn it.

Random travel notes

• Bidets are perfect for hand-washing clothes. Great for soaking your feet after a long day of sightseeing, too.
• While flipping through channels on the TV in our hotel room in Paris we noticed that they were mostly in English and German. Chloe said they saw the same thing in the south of Spain so we theorized that those must be the free cable channels.
• On our drive from the airport to our hotel in Paris I checked the speedometer: 160 kilometers per hour, just about 100 miles per hour. Cool, but there was no sensation of going fast because we were keeping pace with traffic.
• A charming hotel room quickly turns into hell when there is no air conditioning. Don't let them fool you: a fan is not enough.
• The small hotels we've stayed in have worked out great for us, but now I've confirmed what I've always suspected: I enjoy the anonymity of a larger hotel devoid of intimidating personalities. I'm a failure at travel of the backdoor variety. I'm always afraid I'm going to get yelled at for doing something wrong, like bringing food into the room (expressly forbidden in our Paris hotel). In Rome, the maid scared me (I at first took her to be a disgruntled guest because we'd hear her complaining in the hallway to no one in particular), and here in Paris I can feel the maid's impatient glare through the door. I didn't come to Paris to sleep, but nor did I come to be herded out of my room at the crack of noon.
• At 11:00 PM we watched the Eiffel Tower light up and sparkle. It was still that way at 12:30 AM, the last time I checked.
• I haven't yet seen a hotel hairdryer-on-the-wall that's worth the space it would save in my luggage if I were to leave mine at home.
• A little refrigerator in the hotel room is darn near on my necessity list.
• Next time I will bring a water bottle and not rely on buying bottled water (could easily spend more than $25 a day for one person and there are few places to refill one) or even on buying a bottle of water and refilling it in the hotel, which was my original plan. I get tired of carrying stuff around and I'm much less likely to throw away a water bottle than I am to throw away an empty bottle of water.
• It's true - pop is more expensive than wine, especially in eating establishments. And forget about free refills. It's also true that if chilly beverages are a deal-breaker for you you'd better stay home.
• It doesn't have to be too hot before it is far too hot to lug a backpack around. Just about everyone - men and women - carry different shapes of bags diagonally across their chests. In Rome I bought a purse-kind of thing that wasn't too big and did the same as the Spaniards and the Romans and now the French. It became our lifeline filled with everything we'd need for the day and with the things I wouldn't leave in our rooms: passports, train and plane tickets, money, debit card, water, snacks, maps, Vaseline Lip Therapy, which is like crack to me. But backpacks are great to haul around extra stuff at airports, bus, and train stations, as long as the zippers are locked.
• Those suitcases that convert to backpacks? Yeah, no one uses them. I have several and have never used them as backpacks. Rick Steves said his company doesn't sell one anymore for that reason. But I can't begin to imagine a suitcase without wheels.
• Plan on your luggage getting smashed and being opened by TSA. Better to plan on it than be surprised.
• When suitcase shopping, thicker is not better. There were many places where our largish suitcases fit, but wouldn't have if they had been just an inch thicker. Everything is crowded and your time will be more pleasant if you're not angering every person whose knees you bash every time you walk down the aisle.
• Heed all the warnings about safeguarding your wallet and valuable documents, but you don't need to be psychotic about it - common sense is enough. A guy at the train station in Rome was begging for help to get his suitcases from Left Luggage because his wallet had been stolen and the claim ticket was in it. The place was busy and the people behind the counter were not making his life any easier. They asked where his wallet had been and he patted his now-empty back pocket. Any sympathy they may have had vanished with that admission. He told them, nicely if a little desperately, that if they didn't help him find his luggage quickly  (amid thousands of bags) he would miss his train. They shrugged.
• Before I left I bought fancy-pants laminated folding maps of the major cities we visited. I had fun looking at them in my compulsive zeal before I left, but didn't need them in Europe. The ubiquitous free maps available everywhere and handed out automatically at our hotels (and stores, train, subway, and bus stations) were better, newer, and easier to follow. And I could get several: one for each day because I discovered that helpful people tend to draw all over them when you ask them them directions. That was great, but I get confused easily so I was able to start clean every day.

More Europe trip posts

Beginning here and ending here. Vatican Museums, Bastille Day, and just one rude Parisian. I intend to have the all the trip posts done by the one-year anniversary of the trip.