Bonjour, again! I don’t know if that header is correct or not, but hey, it sounds right, which is how I approached speaking French on the entire trip. God knows what I actually said.

I’m backtracking just un petit to tell you what happened on the last night of our time on the ship/boat, going up the Rhone.

The previous night, as we were leaving the ship/boat to go into Lyon for dinner (I know, we were rebels, just out on the town, unaccompanied, as it were, in the dark, in France,) the man who had been playing piano in the evenings was leaving the ship/boat also.

I had enjoyed his music and wanted to tell him so. In French. And so I did. And he said, “No French. I am Italian.”

Je suis desolee because I do not speak Italian, but I laughed, and he laughed, and then we all went out into the Lyon night.

The next night, our last night on the ship/boat, he was playing in the lounge, which was nearly deserted (see us that night above) as everyone had gone to their rooms to pack and sleep. Not us, the four of us were holding fast to the bar.

Let me backtrack again.

On the first day of our time on the shop/boat, Adam and Corey had purchased the drink package, which gave them unlimited mixed and unmixed beverages for the duration of the trip. Leigh Ann and I had discussed it and decided that while she could fulfill her end of the drink bargain (about three mixed drinks per day to break even), I could not, being the wussy drinker that I am. Sodas, wine, beer, all counted, but I would have to drown myself in soda to make it work. So we opted out.

On the evening of day one we opted back in. As it turns out, I was eager to sample whatever he or she or that guy over there was having, and I could hold my own with the drink package.

Back to the last night. I had fulfilled my end of the drink package that day and so had my co-travelers. The Italian piano player was playing to a nearly empty lounge. We were singing along. I was enjoying it. As a singer in another time, I miss a microphone. And on a previous cruise I had come in second in the ship’s karaoke contest, and just escaped the terror of having to sing in front of the whole boatload of people crossing the Atlantic because the young man who won was a pro and had brought his guitar.

But I digress.

I love to sing. My family knows this. That evening Italian piano player and I (along with everyone else in the lounge) were enjoying a rousing rendition of Sweet Caroline. We were making eye contact. When we finished, he motioned for me to come to the piano. My family pushed me off the stool, and shoved me toward the piano where I embarrassed myself singing Let It Be.

It was made worse by my 71-year-old thyroid-deprived Tallulah Bankhead voice.

When it was over, and the poor people in the lounge were clapping riotously, the sweet Italian piano player turned his face up to me and said, “Piano man.” I wasn’t sure if he meant he wanted to be my piano man or if he wanted us to sing Billy Joel’s song.

Either way was a no, so I smiled sweetly at him and said, “Yes, you are my piano man, but I must go pack.”

Then I turned reluctantly away and joined my co-travelers as we finished our sojourn on the Rhone.

But for a moment, I had a connection with an Italian piano player in France. That so rarely happens.

I blame it on the drink package.

I promise we will get to Paris later this week. Be patient, mon petit chou.

Au revoir.