A trip to Bourges (Boor-zha)

April Fools Blog April 1st, 2008
Much done today, MC not at the tourist board but E took up the challenge of contacting France Telecom re:the inert telephone and the equally dead internet DSL connection. After some negotiations she successfully established a new telephone number for us as the old one was now dead forever. One or two days was the verdict regarding when the beloved dial tone would miraculously be restored. Good, one down, one to go...what about the internet? Well...the internet will have to wait until the telephone is restored, then we can go to the France Telecom outlet in St. Amand Montrond to get it back in service once again. Why this cannot be accomplished at the end of THIS telephone call is not discussed. Shit. Gads what a screw-up this has been. Kelly keeps apologizing but it's really not her fault, it's the situation itself, 6000 miles from the bank and with so many players involved in getting bills paid in a timely manner as well as putting money in the account, grrrrrr. It's tough. That part accomplished, we thank E profusely and we were off to Bourges to get window glass for the 6 projects.
There are 2 picture frames containing prints, two windows with cracked or missing glass and the Louis 2nd hutch with the awful top crossed torches carving...Kelly pulled out the offending panels and those will be replaced with glass. It'll look a lot LIGHTER and reveal it's use as well as the holder of the wine glasses. Now the fun part...I look up the glass companies in the yellow pages, find 4 and select one, and put it into the Tom Tom GPS, takes about a minute. Then Bonnie, the disembodied voice of the great GPS in the sky takes over and about 45 minutes later we pull up outside of Mirroirs du Berry in Bourges. Terrific performance! Not that I didn't misunderstand her “bear right” and “Hard Right” commands and lead us off into god-knows-where but she kept at it, corrected my mistakes and l'viola!
The young woman at the front desk was very helpful, and no she spoke no English but eventually the message was received, notes dutifully taken as to quantity and size of the glass desired and then she smiled and said “Friday”! No English huh? She just didn't want to do “the struggle” as we were doing.
Oh well, more to come. We will see how well we did Friday.
So “Where to now” I ask. Kelly responds “Downtown Bourges, I just LOVE the place!” So do I so a left turn and follow our noses to the Bourges Cathedral and a few lefts down the medieval cobblestone streets and I park at the newly renovated car park adjacent to downtown Bourges and all it's wonders.