Princess Di.

I am watching the news about the English inquest about the death of Princess Diana. They were just showing The Ritz at the Place Vendome. Brought back a memory of my trip to The Ritz, yes the same Ritz. I was visiting Travel Chick and we were exploring the Place Vendome and I pointed out The Ritz. The entrance is really quite understated, if you did not know it was there, you might just miss it. We decided to go in and take a look around and I guess it was apparent right off the bat that we did not really belong there. The head bell man approached us right away to ask us to leave - we were not guests of the hotel -well he was polite about it - but that was his request. Then Travel Chick did something that I had only read about - an urban myth I thought - until then. She turned to him and in French asked him if he would "make an exception" for us. We just wanted to look at the lobby, would that be alright? He smiled (who does not smile at Travel Chick) and said "Oui Madame" and a bunch of other stuff in French that I could not catch. So Travel Chick said merci, smiled back and we walked on. I looked at her with pride, she had just done something so totally French, something even Parisian's can't pull off all the time and I asked what he said. She told me we had 10 minutes to look around and not to sit on anything! We giggled and explored and when we left 10 minutes later the head guy smiled at us wished us a good day and thanked us for coming.