Again, I apologize for being severely overdue. This trip has been more seeing doing seeing than sitting resting sitting. But, I happen to be sitting and resting in my hotel room in the Dordogne Valley right now, so I figured I’d take advantage of this time to give a brief update. I left off with last Wednesday night.

Thursday, July 28

Vacations are supposed to be relaxing. Words like “stress,” “hurry” and “argg!” (linked to stressful hurrying) should be replaced with words like “peaceful,” “relaxing” and “at ease.” Ha. I thought our pre-Eiffel Tower tour was going to leave me with a stress-induced hernia.

Problem #1. Rain.
My mom had diligently studied weather.com prior to departing our hotel. Zero percent chance of rain. Sunshine. I believe that’s what it predicted. As we sat down on a bench under the tower to chow down on a freshly fried pile of pomme frites, we felt a drop. Then another. Then…tons. It began to pour. My mom and I ran to the restrooms, since we figured we would need to go prior to our 7:30 tour (after noticing no downwards pipes, we attempted to be logical and figured plumbing was impossible all the way up there).

Which leads to Problem #2: Restrooms. Apparently in France, if a bathroom is being cleaned, people can’t use it simultaneously. The line of women in the pouring rain began to pile up, and up, and…well, if you’d stacked each woman waiting to use the restroom into a vertical line, they’d probably be able to reach the middle tier of the Tower. My mom and I had 10 minutes to spare until we would miss our tour and, in a panic over the fact that we wouldn’t–so we thought–be able to go to the bathroom on top of the tower, we grabbed Alexandra (our interpreter) and sprinted to the closest porta potty. Well, this line was also long, and apparently the porta potties in France are far more advanced than ours in the States because they clean themselves automatically. This, of course, takes about two minutes in between each porta potty user. Desperate, frantic, panicking–words that shouldn’t be used on vacation–we asked Alexandra to kindly ask the ladies in the front of the line if we could cut because we had a tour in five minutes. They agreed, so mom, Alexandra and I hopped in…and so did one of them. What? This wasn’t part of the agreement. There was a stranger in the bathroom, and she had the gall to stand there and watch me as I…yeah.

Me: “Mom, I can’t pee. This is too stressful.”
Mom: “It’s ok, let’s just focus. You can do this. Take your time. But not really. ”
Me: “There’s a complete stranger watching me. I don’t think I can.”
Mom: “Katie, you have to. Come on.”
Me: “It’s too much pressure being put on me. Oh my God, help! I’m freaking out.”
Mom: “You have to go. Go. GO. GO!!!”
ME: “Ahhhhh IIII can’t!!!!!”

There was a very nice restroom on every level of the Eiffel Tower.