Incidents in the City

Let's see, I know I haven't written for a couple of weeks. I have been transforming our fantasies about a living space into visits to shops and drawings of spaces.
In the meantime, I have been hit by and French madam and cheated by a taxi driver.
Since we have been all over the city looking at everything from wardrobes to flooring, we have stopped to have meals and taken a taxi or two. After all, the French business day can be abbreviated by the bank's 2 hour lunch break, the "Gone Fishing" sign on the door that says they will be back in 5 minutes, read 2 hour lunch break, or the shop that used to be there but is now whitewashed windows.
We stopped at a restaurant at the actual lunch time, which is odd for us, as we are still adjusting to the French eating pattern. So, the place was hopping. It was also the first day of the Nouveau Beaujolais so the waiters were all dressed as peasants with straw hats and red neckerchiefs. While waiting to be seated, I saw a tiny gray bun with several very nice tortoise pins in it when I felt a quick snap on my leg. A gruff "pardohn" and she pushed past me. I was in awe. In all my life I have never been hit by a woman with a cane. It's the sort of thing you see in movies, but, uh, wow, did that just happen?
No one, no where has anything on the elderly French matron. She is entitled and she takes no flack. If you are in her way, you WILL move. I have seen them stare down taxi drivers as they cross against the light, it makes you wonder why they just didn't use them to fend off the advancing troops!
Then there is the taxi driver who picked us up, drove us around our whole neighborhood right back past the pickup point in order to take us across the city. This guy actually thought we would not notice as he drove us past our gym, our apartment, our boulangerie, and back to where we got in his cab. Okay, "You lying cheat" is not part of my vocabulary yet, so all we could say was "Let me out, now" and "What is your number?" He seemed genuinely surprised that we knew where we were going.
Of course, when we told the story to our friend Frederic, he had a similar story about New York. Ah, the big city, gotta love it.
Of course, in both cases, I was angry for about an hour and now I am laughing at the absurdity of it every time it occurs to me.