Look out Paris, all that Houston driving is going to pay off!!!

We have no furniture for the new house, so we needed to get some so it could be delivered. We wanted to go to IKEA here, but it is 25 minutes outside of paris (weird). Problem is, that there is no bus service or train that goes out there...how to get there. Liz called work and got a rent car, a Renault 4 door diesel standard. Now, I google mapped where IKEA was and where we were and put together a driving direction plan to get there. Now, I have no clue what most of the signs say, nor do I understand that pedestrians just stroll across whenever they want. But, we need to go, so I put on my brave face and got in the car.

My co-pilot Liz with my hand written directions in her hand, we headed off. Can I tell you, I love driving a stick, not only that the diesel engine is quite and fast. So with the family in the car, we entered traffic in the general direction we were supposed to start in. 30 minutes and all the right turns, success.....IKEA found. There are round red and white signs on the road that tell you the speed limit. Now, it is weird to look down and see you are doing 130....then you remember that is 130KMH, not MPH. IKEA was packed, wall to wall, parisians/french people with no code of order. you could be standing in a line of 10 people waiting for something and someone will just walk up and cut everyone off without a care. Now, this redneck just bit his lip and was strangle holding his wife to keep from looking and sounding like the ugly americans buy saying, "Hey we are all in line, can't you see?" No we just stayed in line, bid our due and finally paid our bill.

Now the drive back was a little more eventful as we missed our turn and ended up accidentally being able to find our house and the school (we could so win Amazing Race). We pulled out a map in a paris book and navigated back to our house after a full day at IKEA. So now our airship is still in limbo (not sure when it is coming) and the stuff we bought won't be delivered till Sept 6th (another 10 days in this "little parisian hotel."

So this redneck's observance is this, if you can drive in Houston, you can drive anywhere with the best of them, if you don't have anywhere to go in a hurry, paris is for you and if you don't want to wait, just cut.