Fun at a French Laundry

There is a VERY expensive, 3 Michelin starred restaurant around here, The French Laundry. That is NOT what we are talking about, because while I would certainly go there and enjoy a wonderful meal and invite all of you to join me IF I WON BIG IN THE LOTTERY, my current circumstances would not allow $325 per person without any wine even. No, this is a cautionary tale of washing clothes in a laundromat, which occurred in France, but could have happened anywhere.

Our first day in Paris, I woke up before Ted and Maya, and I was ready to go out into the world far earlier than she would be. We were planning to go to a laundromat that we found the night before, so I decided I would go alone, and get that chore out of the way, so we could enjoy the rest of our day. I was trying to get by without paying for foreign data charges on my phone, so I took a book with me to read, and off I went. Laundromats are more complicated than they were the last time I went, at least in France. When we were doing laundry in Brest, poor Jean Marc had to help us (meaning, pay for it) because we did not have any euros, and our credit cards don’t have a tap feature, and their machines did not allow you to insert or swipe your card anywhere. This laundromat in Paris was a little better, it would allow you to insert your card to work the machine, get soap, etc. You worked it by entering the number of the washing machine or dryer that you wanted to use, all at one central control. Very different, all in French, which I do not speak or read.

Because we had been in a similar laundromat with Jean-Marc, I at least had SOME idea of what was going on, so I started putting clothes into the machines. I decided that I had too many darks for one machine, so moved everything out of that into two smaller machines. I went and played with the control panel, and fed it my credit card, and got soap and everything, and started my loads of darks. I was pretty impressed with myself. I emptied the bag of whites into the next machine and got that one started as well. Yay me! Everything is working, so I sat down to read my book. Wait, where’s my book? I know Ted gave it to me when I was leaving the hotel, a book of short stories he had just finished…

Oh, I think he put it in…the…bag…of…whites. Crap. Could I have put it in the machine? So I went over to the machine, and sure enough, there it is, tossing about in its hard-bound glory. I tried to open the washing machine, but it is locked. Which makes sense for a laundromat, a lot of people put their clothes in and then leave to get coffee or something (I was wishing I had had some coffee at this point). So there was nothing I could do. I just had to watch the machine destroy my book. All that was left was a ton of paper pulp, and the cover. My clothes were covered in pulp, as you can see with my poor sweater, above. What a mess. Once the machine finally stopped, I had to take the clothes out, try to get as much pulp off of them as I could, try to clean out the machine as best I could. There was paper pulp everywhere. I decided I needed to use my phone, took a picture and sent it to Ted. He said, “Oh dear, you need coffee.” So he and Maya went to Starbucks (the first one we had seen in France, there didn’t seem to be any in Brittany or the part of Normandy we were in) and brought me some breakfast, while we waited for the laundry to go through another cycle to get as much of the pulp off as we could. Maya was laughing at me, because I had it everywhere, even in my hair.

In the midst of all of this, before I had texted them, I was just trying to clean up as best I could, and a young French woman came in to do her laundry. I asked her if she spoke any English (I asked in French, I am not a total barbarian) and she said a little. I told her what I had done, and she shrugged in a completely disinterested way. I mean, I am not sure what I thought she might have done or said, but perhaps I was hoping for a rueful laugh or at least a smile. Oh well. Then an American couple came in, and they were chatty and sympathetic and we laughed at my stupidness and discussed Las Vegas (where they live, and where I had been for work the week prior to our trip) and San Francsico (where they had come on vacation) and their plans after Paris (she was in England for work, so they took advantage of that, he joined her, then she extended her trip and they came to Paris, and I think next were going to go to Italy). It was nice to hear English, and also to see that when they had trouble with the machine, the young French woman was very helpful, she just didn’t speak much English, so didn’t get too involved in a conversation.

We didn’t bring a lot of clothes with us, and then most of the hotels we were in did not have irons, so we ended up wearing the same couple of items over and over again, hence the need to do our laundry every couple of days. Lesson learned though, next time I will look carefully in my bag before emptying it into the washing machine!