News reports tell me that Paris is experiencing a surge of bedbugs reported. I'm not quite sure if I want to email our hotel to ask about it—seems like that might start our visit on the wrong foot, somehow. But I did start googling what to do about them. The first two articles I found were these:
Bedbugs and travel: A simple thing to do when you get to your hotel room. (slate.com)
Paris Bed Bugs: Everything You Need to Know | Condé Nast Traveler (cntraveler.com)
Five hours later (the same day) she replied:
To swell your head a little: both my friend M and my sister [Cuñada] have informed me that Paris is experiencing bedbugs, so you're third in the notification list.
You are FIRST in the list of people who've linked to advice how to combat them/not bring them home!
I knew there was a reason I liked you!
So we arrived cautious, but hopeful.
We performed the recommended checks in our hotel room and found none of the identified signs. But during the period of our stay, Marie collected something like seven or eight bites. And these bites were on her breasts and stomach, so they pretty clearly have to have been inflicted during the middle of the night. Fortunately we had read the advice what to do (the articles linked above), so she simply resigned herself to following the protocol.
What puzzled me was that I was never bitten, or not so obviously. I got one or two itchy spots around my ankles that might have been caused by bedbugs (I guess) but might have had any number of other causes as well. As a result, when I got home I more or less followed the protocol from the articles above, but I was pretty casual about it. And I haven't detected bedbugs in my apartment since then, so I conclude that whatever I did was good enough.
Do I just taste worse than Marie? I'm not complaining, but it is a little strange.
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