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her boyfriend, who now only had one arm around her waist.
    "I'm stuck" Diego replied, sounding both amused and annoyed.
    Shaking back her tousled hair, Alexa sat up all the way and saw that, in fact, her boyfriend's elbow was tightly jammed between the two twin beds, rendering any movement impossible.
    "Oh, no," Alexa whispered, unable to stop herself from bursting into giggles. "We can't leave you like that forever, can we?"
    "No," Diego retorted, now looking one hundred percent annoyed. He tried in vain to wrest his arm from the narrow gap, biting down on his full bottom lip. "This isn't funny, Alexa."
    Um, yes it is, Alexa thought, fighting back her laughter. Alexa was a seasoned traveler, and though
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    she couldn't stand roughing it, (any kind of camping was a big no-no) she was quite accustomed to sleeping in all sorts of conditions. She hoped Diego would be able to deal with her cousins' less-than-swank setup once they left the hotel.
    Through various efforts, the two of them finally managed to free a disgruntled Diego from the beds. By then, it was almost two o'clock, and, as far as Alexa was concerned, high time to head out. They dressed -- Alexa in a heather-gray Marni scoop-neck sweater and Chip & Pepper jeans tucked into shearling boots, and Diego in baggy cords and his hooded Princeton sweatshirt, which Alexa, appalled, demanded he trade for one of his zillion striped button-downs. To Alexa's slight distaste, Diego's style tended toward conservative/preppy -- she preferred guys who dressed more scruffy/sexy -- but anything beat loud-and-proud Princeton gear.
    "Otherwise, we might as well walk outside with giant 'tourist' signs stuck on our foreheads," Alexa explained as she and Diego walked into the corridor and locked the door. "Trust me, in Paris, you want to downplay the whole 'ugly American' thing."
    "Ugly American?" Diego echoed as the elevator zipped them down to the lobby. He furrowed his brow, looking confused, but also a little defensive.
    On cue, the elevator doors slid open to reveal three
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    teenage girls in jeans, white sneakers, and dark blue anoraks, all clustered around the front desk. "Can you believe how much bread people eat here?" one of them, whose puffy dark hair was hidden under an Atlanta Braves cap, complained loudly. "Have they even heard of low-carb?" "Here's the Eiffel Tower!" her blonde, pig-tailed friend was squealing, jabbing at a spot on her enormous city map. "My aunt Doreen said it's the only thing worth seeing in Paris!" The third, a chubby redhead, was accosting the dapper concierge: "Please tell me you speak English," she snapped, narrowing her eyes at him.
    "Urn, them, for example," Alexa murmured, taking Diego's arm as they passed the embarrassing trio. Despite the girls' sub-stylish wardrobes, they reminded Alexa of her friends. She could easily picture Portia and Maeve behaving exactly the same way in Paris -- right down to Portia bemoaning how hard it was to stick to Atkins (the French found the idea of diets hilarious), and Maeve assuming no one spoke English (when most everyone in Paris was bilingual). Alexa hadn't been in touch with -- or given much thought to -- the girls since their blowout on Thursday. Now, she felt supremely thankful that she'd never traveled to France with them.
    "Yeah, but we are American," Diego was saying
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    as they cut through the spotless beige lobby. Though Diego's parents were Cuban, he'd been born in Miami, and Alexa knew he considered himself very much American. "I mean, just because you're in a foreign country," he added thoughtfully, "why should you pretend to be something you're not?"
    Alexa rolled her eyes as they stepped out onto the wide, windswept boulevard St-Germain. Leave it to Mr. Princeton to turn everything into a philosophical debate. "Darling," she laughed. "That's one deep thought too many for a springtime Saturday in Paris."
    Their first stop was Café de Flore, where they lunched on chewy baguettes slathered in