They told us before we got there that it would be 'the upper east side' of Paris, with very rich women walking poodles everywhere. We arrived in winter; the preconceived image was correct if you replace poodles with fur coats.
At a café one bitchy old lady with an underbite (she probably scowled her jaw away) came in and sat next to my table by herself, blocked from the waiter's view by a large potted plant. She looked around irritably when no one came to help her, as no one saw her. She got out a plastic packet of crackers that one might get with soup at 7-11, but French, and began snarfing away at them, her breath passing through the wafers' airy parts and making little mouth sounds, chewing and putting wrinkles in her wrinkles. Finally she sighed angrily, making more air-through-cracker noises and yelled, "GARCON!" and the full-grown man a generation her junior came to her service. She then bitchily demanded what types of wine they had, and squinted her eyes critically at the mention of each on the menu. Finally she settled on a white, then got a little finger sandwich, also in plastic wrap, out of her bag when he turned his back. She ate it while glancing disapprovingly around the near-empty café. As I was getting up to leave, she unashamedly blew her nose in a napkin at an unfavorable volume. Twice.
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