Paris, The Early Days

The early days are always dominated by jet-lag.  The older you are the worse it gets.  I'm over the vaguely crummy feeling but still wake up very early, around 4am.  Susanne sleeps a bit longer but gets up dragged down with an ongoing cold she picked up along the way.

On to the real stuff.

Often Susanne & I hear from others how bad the French are & how they would not go back to France.  Yet we receive nothing but kindness from them.  Two examples one morning, happening back-to-back at the Monoprix.

As I was taking my pen out to make notes, the top popped off & rolled under a refrigerated display case.  I knelt down, looked under but couldn't see it.  I reached under with what was left of the pen, swept across...nothing.  An employee asked if I lost something.  When I explained what it was, he took a piece of cardboard & after several sweeps, voila! out came the top.   We 'merci beaucouped' him extensively.

All this time we were looking for the peanut butter; it wasn't with the jams & jellies.  After the required "bonjour"  & an explanation that my French was very bad, we asked a young lady for the peanut butter location in English.  With a blank stare, she asked an African co-worker nearby to help.  We asked our question & with fluent, unaccented English, he took us to an obscure corner where there were several jars of Skippy, smooth or chunky.  I then asked him the French word for peanut butter.  Out came a phrase, incomprehensible to us. He then explained the first two words were "buerre de" (butter of), makes sense.  That last multi-syllable word remained incomprehensible.  With a toothy grin he then said "Come, I'll show you" & took us to another place where he selected a small bag labelled 'cacahuètes', meaning "groundnuts". Makes perfect sense.  Most nuts grow on trees, peanuts grow underground.  More 'merci beaucoupes'.

C'est le Paris we know & love!!!

I also love the way French is so descriptive.  Pommes de terre (potatoes) is literally, apples of the earth.  Chemin de fer (railway) is literally, fire wagon.  Umbrella is parapluie literally, for rain.

OK, I'm boring you.

On to some pics.  We decided to continue our jet lag precautions by eating lightly the second night.  So we sauntered over to a little place we knew, just a bar really...but serves very good omelettes.  First we ordered the inevitable carafe d'eau, plain tap water.

The bottle is frosted, a clever way of implying the water is cold...it isn't.  The more expensive places do the chill.
















                                                                                                                                                            

Here's the table, nicely set considering it's mostly a bar.  Checkered table cloth for atmosphere.  My omelette is in a skillet, keeps it hot longer.  Susanne had the croque madam, the French version of a grilled cheese sandwich, usually served closed but eaten with a fork.  This one is open face on one large slice.  The egg on top makes it a "madam".  Sans egg, it is a croque monsieur.



We ate outside so we could watch the Parisian world go by.  Here is an example of what well-dressed Parisiennes avoid wearing but this lady never got the message.

 

There was a bus stop almost directly across the street.  I zoomed in because a bus stop is the great leveler of humanity...there is almost always a very mixed collection of people waiting, from maman & bebe to skate boarders.   

 






As we were gazing out to the street and the light was fading, this apparition floated across the scene.  It took me awhile to come up with a name for it...I settled on "Steam Punk Pedicab Operated by Fu Manchu".  (This blogging platform continues to give me the fits.  What I type & how it looks in the preview can be very different with no way to correct it sometimes.)

Our dinner plans tonite are for moules et frites & beer.  Diet restrictions are <OFF>!

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of the month = free museum day.  We'll go to the Musée des Arts et Métiers which serves as a repository of scientific instruments & inventions.  It has a Foucault pendulum.  When you understand what it does, it's kinda amazing...to me, anyway.

There is a student cafeteria associated with the university on the same campus.  We're hoping it's open on Sunday...students & faculty have to eat on weekends, too.  It falls into the same category as the Foyer de Madeleine, we did that last year & will again this trip.

     

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