The French Guy

In January of 2010 I spent the first chunk of the vacation fund I had put aside from my divorce settlement on a 19 day trip to Australia and New Zealand.  I went with a tour group that consisted of me and eight others.  They were all between 65 and 73 years old.  And I had a blast with them!

In Australia we went to Sidney, Cairns and Melbourne, then in New Zealand we went to Christchurch, Queenstown and Auckland.  Naturally, there were several flights and bus trips between each.  I made a rule with my group that if anyone got sat next to a hot guy, they had to switch seats with me.  I was going through a five month drought so they were all happily willing to help me out.  (One of the many reason I loved my group.)

So it was, on our flight from Melbourne to Christchurch, that Meredith called to me from her seat in the plane, "Hey Jen, do you mind switching with Vic?  He really likes the window seat."  I looked at the seat next to Vic and sure enough, there was a hot guy sitting there.  So I said, very casually, "Oh, sure, I don't mind at all," and took my place between Meredith and the mysterious hot guy she'd gift wrapped for me.

For the majority of the flight he didn't even seem to notice me.  I tried pretending to look out the window so that he might think I was looking at him, I tried crowding the arm rest so that our arms touched, I even spied at his laptop when it was open to see if there was anything I could ask him about, but the angle was bad and I couldn't see anything.

It wasn't until we started to descend that he finally spoke to me.  He asked if I wanted to look out the window because we were getting closer and could see the beautiful New Zealand mountains and shit.  When he spoke I heard he had an accent so I asked him where he was from.  He was from France!  I gave Meredith a mental high five.

We talked for the remainder of the flight and through customs and then we got separated after baggage claim.  My group gave me a hard time for letting him get away so I wrote the name and address of our hotel on a slip of paper so that if I happened to run into him again, I could not-so-subtly let him know where I was staying.

When we were getting on the shuttle to our hotel, one of the women in my group spotted the French guy at the bus stop.  She said, "Jen, there he is!  Here's your chance!"  I called out his name, walked toward him, gave him the slip of paper and said, "In case you're looking for a place to stay, I think there are still vacancies at our hotel."  And in my room.

We we were given a tour of Christchurch and then had lunch.  As we were walking back to our hotel, someone in my group said, "Jen, is that your boyfriend?"  I looked toward the hotel and there he was, my French guy, walking very slowly and casually in front of my hotel.  I was totally gonna score!

And I did.  That night...and the next day and night, too.  My favorite part (besides the slow, romantic sex with a mysterious French guy) was when he came to pick me up at the hotel the first night.  (I had an excursion right after I ran into him in front of the hotel so we decided to meet up that night.)  Somehow, my whole group ended up in the lobby of the hotel where I was waiting.  Some were playing cards, some were checking email and some had just returned from dinner.  One of the men in my group said, "Bring this guy in here, I want to meet him!"  It was like waiting for my prom date or something.  I saw him walk up so I met him outside, but the front of the hotel was all windowed walls so as we walked away, my whole group smiled and waved at us.  It would've been embarrassing if it wasn't totally adorable.