What a Faux Pas! Rude Americans Arrive in France
'What Would You Do?' Drops Two 'Ugly Americans' in Paris
For one young Frenchman at the next table, it was just too much. He couldn't bear to look and covered his eyes.
At another table, one woman was not at all amused by Bob and Bonnie's T-shirts marked "Bush '08." She turned out to be German. "It's as if I had a T-shirt that said 'Hitler'!" she complained to a friend. Another young Frenchman remarked, "[Americans are] the center of the world. But they are idiots!"
It was time for the check. And just when it seemed that no one would directly confront the couple, a woman approached Bonnie and leaned in close.
"You're traveling, you're abroad, you're a guest in this country," she scolded. "Behave yourself!" She stormed off, but a few moments later, she was back.
"Go back! Go home!" she shouted at Bob and Bonnie.
It was exactly the kind of reaction we were expecting from those famously feisty French. However, when we caught up with her, we were surprised. Though she refused to be identified, it turned out that she was actually an American tourist.
So where were all of those rude French we had heard about, the ones who love to put tourists in their place? We had one final stop to make in one of Paris' oldest cobblestone neighborhoods. Chez Janou, a bistro so quintessentially French that only locals know about it. Tourists hardly ever venture there. But guess who was coming to lunch? That's right, Bob and Bonnie Jones.
Would the French finally rise up and tell our them to go home? There were plenty of surprise twists still to come in this Paris experiment.
To find out what happens, click HERE to watch the last act of the episode that aired on "What Would You Do?" And for more information on avoiding faux pas when traveling to Paris, check out The Secrets of Paris, a blog by etiquette expert Heather Stimmler-Hall.
About the authors: Chris Whipple is senior producer of "What Would You Do?" and Anna Norman is a production associate.
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