“A day about nothing “

Carol has a word for a particular kind of dilapidated, decrepit or substandard look to a place. The word is “skeevie.” She originally applied it to some of my choices for accommodations on our first overseas trip together. I’d gotten in the habit of procuring accommodations that were thrifty and in walking distance from the town’s train station. Being a solo traveler at that time, the hotel or apartment had only to meet my personal criteria for quality, which amounted to a toilet with a good flush and a bed free of bedbugs. Many of the neighborhoods surrounding a town’s main train station did not, shall we say, keep up with bourgeois standards, but as a solo traveler, I was only there overnight, catching a midmorning train to the next town. In those days, the train was the destination, the city or town was simply the place to catch the next train.

The new Minions flick was released, and though it would be all  in French, my attitude was “You can’t understand them in English, so what difference does it make?”

I tried to up my game when Carol and I began traveling, but I soon turned the hotel finding duties over to her. She would be the first to admit that she’s not been 100%, but at least I was off the hook for any blame. Our current digs here in Tours was a case in point. The Moroccan decor brought back less than stellar memories of her time spent in that country, but which had little impact on me. It had a balcony and a chair with an ottoman. That’s way uptown by my standards.

And so it was that our daytime plan to beat the heat wave that had descended over France was to go to the movies. The new Minions flick was released, and though it would be all in French, my attitude was “You can’t understand them in English, so what difference does it make?”

The walk from Marrakech to the theater was a rabbit warren of deserted side streets, back alleys and dead ends, all of which put Carol in a “skeevie” frame of mind. “If the theater looks like this neighborhood, we’re doing something else.”

Now my idea of French cinema is of some converted warehouse showing grainy black and white social and political screeds by revolutionaries and communists. Fearing that would meet Carol’s definition of skeevie, I wondered what else we could do for the afternoon that had air conditioning.

I needn’t have worried. The theater came with all the trappings of a remodeled Regal or AMC, right down to the overpriced concessions and cheesy business ads preceding the coming attractions. The only difference was a peppering of propagandistic PSA slogans dealing with the environment and public health, which I rather enjoyed.

Even allowing for the incomprehensible Minions, the movie was still hard to follow, and we happily agreed to see it again when we got back to the States.

Outside again, the heat had begun to dissipate sufficient to enjoy a bottle of rosé at the Jean Suares fountain at the center of town. Dinner was at Le Boeuf sur La Place, where both my ribeye and Carol’s salmon were up to snuff. We finished off the evening on our balcony watching some of the pre-Bastille Day fireworks.

In other words, we pretty much did nothing for a whole day and night, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.