Speak Their Language

Nice, France (2002) - John and I had paid for excursions for each of our cruise destinations. We had paid a lot of money for them and they were nonrefundable. We had joked about partying too hard and accidentally sleeping through one. On our very first day, that's exactly what we did. We had been out until about 5am and needed to be up and ready by 8. We awoke by a knock on the door. John calmly asked our room service guy what time it was... It was noon. We rushed to get ready in a mad attempt to catch our tour group. We soon found that it would be impossible, but decided to hit all of the same spots on our own. In our rush, we forgot to bring a camera, so we decided to buy a disposable. We walk up to the first girl that we see, and John (stooping down pretending to hold a click an invisible camera) says very slowly... We... Are... Looking... for a C-a-m-e-r-a, C-a-m-e-r-a... P-h-o-t-o, C-a-m-e-r-a... The girl starts laughing and says, in perfect english, "yeah, I think they sell cameras in that store over there" We were pretty embarrassed, especially john, and realized that we should ask if they speak English before assuming they didn't. It turns out this destination was an easy one to explore on our own, and of all the places to miss our tour, this was the one. We also argued that we had not received our wakeup call (which I'm sure we just slept through) and got our money back for the excursion. We ended up saving about $100 each.