day3-energy burst

pink and glitter
Originally uploaded by uBookworm.

Our cheap hostel was on the third floor of a residential building, strangely located in the midst of a high-end shopping street with Hollywood-movie-premier-style red carpets sprawled on both sides. On the Christmas day, the street was deserted with only one brasserie and a Chinese takeout restaurant open, drenched in the intermittent light rain. There was virtually nobody out on the streets as we walked down from the station. Everything, from the colonial style apartment buildings to the grand Place Macena, was wet and dead. We stepped on the red carpet from which rain and mud surfaced under our weight, and went into the obscure stairwell of the building. To the left, there were mailboxes with French names of residents. As we climbed up, panting, it became noticeable that white marble steps were worn in the middle, and that brass handrail had lost its paint here and there, indicating the long history of the building.

On the third floor, we found the door of the hostel. We also found a notice taped to the door, saying that the owner of the hotel will not be back for four hours. The weather was not favorable for an aimless walk, to say the least, and we had backpacks, which were relatively small for an 18-day trip, but bothersome nonetheless. Plus, four hours would be too long to waste away sitting in a cafe', if there was any open on this deadly silent Christmas day. "What!? So we can't get in until 5!? That's unbelievable!" The exclamation escaped out of my mouse before I could contain it, making me instantly feel like an unappreciative old lady who so easily finds all sorts of things to complain endlessly about in a squeaky, high-pitched voice that drives everybody nuts.

I gave out a sigh and turned my back, not knowing where to go but knowing we couldn't wait for the owner to come back in the dark stairwell when the door sprung open from inside. There was a miniscule woman behind it, with a clipboard in her hand, her eyes busily scanning us, then the paper on the clipboard. Uncontainable energy radiated from all over her body. "You must be XXXX (some unfamiliar French name)?" She was confident who we were. But we were not whoever she thought we were, and Patrick told her his name. She ran her eyes on the list again, presumably found his name on it, and waved her arm to let us in, with so much vigor that I feared she might knock off something from the low shelf just inside of the door.

"I'm going to a Christmas dinner at my mother's. You are lucky, because I was just about to leave." She explained excitedly, as she rolled her big, round eyes. "I don't love to be there, but it's a family ritual--my mother, brothers, all their kids, you know. Always a mess." She added with a mischievous wink, before she started to explain how to use the keys, which ones are the better places to eat, and so on. "Oh, I should be running!" Glancing at her tiny watch on her bony wrist, she said, and fled, leaving a flush of smile to us. She was like a small typhoon in the shape of a human. We had to sit on the bed for a while to recover from the flood of information she gave us and from the sudden exposure to such an amount of sheer vitality.

"Wow. Guess we're lucky." "Yeah, and she's really nice to let us know so much when she was about to leave." We said after a while, and got up to explore the town without the heavy packs on our shoulder.