I woke up and rolled over.
"Ahh!"
There was a thud. That was my nose hitting the floor.
"Ow," I said.
I blinked. Something was very very wrong here. It took a few moments for it to sink in, like morning mist into my bones. Opening my eyes revealed a hideous 1970s carpet, with a staggering variety of stains.
Ah...
Paris...
"Merde," I mumbled into the carpet.
Hold on, there was still someting wrong here. When we'd gone to bed, all newlywed and honeymoony and full of Chinese food, we'd pushed our two single beds together in the spirit of romance. On rolling over, I shoudl have encountered my new wife's beautiful back, her shoulders, her hair. I should not have encountered gravity and a deeply dodgy French 70s carpet.
I picked myself up. d rolled over to look at me and giggled, Frenchly.
"Morning, Husband," she said. "You alright down there?"
I looked around. Somehow, with the tossing and rolling we'd done in the night, we'd pretty much rowed our beds apart.
"Zut alors!" I said, pretty much exhausting my handy French exclamation-book. "We can't have another night of this," I said, putting on my glasses and having the 70s decor slammed against the back of my brain again.
"Well, go talk to our friend on reception," she said, batting her eyes at me. "Explain that we need a double bed..." She grinned at me and my pulse leapt.
"He's French," she said. "Appeal to his sense of romance...as a man."
I was dressed and out the door in record time.
Mr Grunty though appeared not to have a sense of romance.
"Meh," he said, when I explained that we were on our honeymoon, and so really, we needed a double.
I tried again.
"Poof," he said, with a shrug, turning away from the "Englishman" who was making his morning miserable.
I slunk back to d, having failed in my first task of Manhood as a married man.
We decided to mayeb tackle him together, later in the day, as there was a tower to go and look at (I forget what it's called). When we came out into reception though, Mr Grunty was gone. There appeared to be a Mrs Grunty.
"Go on," I said. "Appeal to her sense of romance...as a woman." I tried to replicate her pinball grin. On reflection, it probably looked a bit creepy and leery.
d went in to bat, there was a brief multi-lingual conversation, that also involved the international opportunity for carnage that is mime. Then they both nodded, and d came back.
"They've got one double room spare," she said. "Our bags will be there when we come back." And she walked ahead of me into the wonders of Paris, presumably entirely secure in her powers as a woman.
We spent the day up one of the world's most bizarre and wonderful engineering constructions, and finding the thing that the French do really, spectacularly well - a little patisserie on the corner of our street. We must have spent half our three days' money in that little shop, having one or two of almost everything. Comedian Dylan Moran sums up the French attitude - "They do serious pleasure. They have chocolate bread. Chocolate BREAD! This is how they START the day...and it only gets better from there!"
He's right. They do. We were happy and in love and full of glorious sugar.
Then we went for dinner. We tried the pink monstrosity we'd spotted the night before, called the Hippopotamus.
"Oooh, I know what I want," said d. "Real French Onion Soup...here in Paris."
What they served was basically dishwater. Grey, and ugly, and full of dehydrated onions, floating like corpses in the murk. d was close to tears, more at the disrespect shown to a great national dish than anything else. We took the remains of our pastry high home. Our bags were indeed in a new room, with a double bed, on the ground floor. We'd almost stopped noticing the cables dangling out of the ceiling by this point.
The room had a...erm...well-used feel to it.
"Oh," said d, realising what it was.
"It's a hooker's room," she explained. I looked around at the less-violent decor, the by-the-hour furniture and bedding.
"Ah," I said.
She giggled. I weighed it up. Grim as the prospect was, it was still better than 1970s Hell.
So far, the honeymoon period was turning into one...erm...educational experience after another.
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