Ukulele Ike said:
Hear, hear, Uke, both as to the general philosophy of your post and this bit in particular. I agree, and the price is right, too.
Good point about learning stuff. Another thing you may learn, psychomonkey, is that they just don’t put a lot of ice in a mixed drink in France. After awhile, we came to like it that way, as our drinks did not dilute as quickly. But if you want a scotch and soda with more than one little sad cube in it, you’d better ask for it at the outset.
[hijack - I remember at one hotel in Beaune, we wanted some ice in our room for some pastis. There was no ice machine, so we took our ice bucket to the hotel’s bar. The bartender smilingly put two cubes in the bucket and asked “okay?” We smiled back and asked for more. He added one more and asked “okay?” This went on until we had 10 or 15 cubes!]