It is said that traveling is an education. Let me tell you about my lesson number one.
I was 18 ( a very naïve eighteen) and was taking my first trip to Europe. I was traveling with a group of people slightly older than myself.
We drove straight to Lyon after landing in Paris. By the time we had settled in our rooms at the hotel it was evening so we agreed to meet on a terrace for drinks.
In those days terraces were none existent in Montreal, so this was very exciting. I was not much of a drinker as I had just recently reached legal drinking age back home, but I was used to wine and had sampled the usual girl drinks like planter’s punch. We were seated in a circle, and as the waiter started taking orders, I strained to hear what everyone was having. I wanted to appear worldly. I heard the person next to me order “Triple Sec” (brand name for an orange liqueur), and immediately the waiter said to me “ Et pour mademoiselle?” I was about to say “the same as my neighbor”, but then I thought: “ a triple something sounds a bit excessive”. All I could think of was Bill Ballantine, a huge Scottish hero in the Bob Morane series who always ordered “double scotch” and out it came, I blurted “Un Double Sec s’il vous plait”…so much for trying to be debonair…
It was during the same trip that I jammed an elevator between floors by jumping for joy . To this day I always stand very still in elevators, the memory of an angry French woman yelling at us down the elevator shaft still vivid in my ears.