and I had to share it, it was so cute.
BRISTOL -- When Maureen Green and her daughter, Colleen Czarnecki, made their first trip to Europe two weeks ago, the city residents never imagined they’d share breakfast in Paris with movie star Tom Cruise.
"Our second morning [in Paris] we left our hotel and went out to find breakfast," Czarnecki recalled. "There are tons of cafés there, so we just picked one. ..We were pretty much the only people eating in there. Then the employees started changing the tables and everything, and they asked us to move to another table, by the window."
Green and Czarnecki moved and wondered what all the fuss was about.
"So now I’m facing the door," Czarnecki said. "Four adults and two children walked in, and [the staff] started moving the tables around. And I thought, ‘There must be a group coming in.’ I looked out the door, and I saw all these cameras going off. I looked again, and there was Tom Cruise, standing right by the window. And I said, ‘Mom, look, there’s Tom Cruise!’"
Czarnecki scrambled to find her camera and snap a picture before he left. But mother and daughter were both surprised when Cruise walked to their table and spoke to them.
"He thought we were French at first," Green said. "He said ‘bonjour,’ and I said ‘bonjour,’ and when he asked where we were from I said ‘les Etats-Unis.’"
"He seemed pretty happy that we were Americans, and that he could talk to us," Czarnecki said. "So he shook our hands, and asked us where we were from. We asked if we could take a picture with him and he said yes. ..he was really nice. Very down-to-earth."
Cruise was in Paris in late April to promote his new movie, "Mission: Impossible III," and, according to press reports, to shop for baby clothes. His fiancee, Katie Holmes, and their then week-old daughter, Suri, stayed home in Los Angeles
While Cruise and his entourage were in the café, the staff would not allow any new customers in. So Green and Czarnecki were the only other customers in the café.
"The whole time we were eating, people were just looking in the window and using their camera phones, trying to get a picture [of Cruise]," Czarnecki said.
"We didn’t talk to him anymore after that," Green said. "We kept looking over, but we didn’t want to bother him while he was eating with his kids."
"He was extremely nice and very friendly," Czarnecki said.
