7/25/09

Marché Mouffetard

Part of les plages, a thing they're doing here where they have mini "beaches" with different themes along the Seine. But this one's for exercise machines apparently? Weird.

Wait. Is that...?

Heyyyy, it's the Louvre!

I love the Louvre!

What's over there?

It's still the Louvre, and we're excited!

Mild Parisian PDA. (But hardly.)

Little dog + Seine = Paris

From Kat:

Today started off not-so-touristy, and ended up pretty touristy. But it was good that way! We didn't plan on where we wanted to go, so there was no stressing about getting places early, or seeing everything there was to see. It didn't feel predictable to be at Pont Neuf, for instance, because we just ended up there. It wasn't like, "Oh, Pont Neuf, we HAVE to go to Pont Neuf, it's Paris in a nutshell!" (I'll also use this moment to congratulate Mom for putting down the guidebook more than she's been picking it up...how relaxing!)

We started our day around noon, after a leisurely morning at the apartment. We walked over the Seine, past Notre Dame, and over to find Marché Mouffetard, which is this 5-ish block outdoor market on a small, cobblestone street. Per usual, it seems, we circled the market for a bit before actually finding it. (Our pocket maps don't have all the small streets, so we've had trouble finding exact locations of things...) After eating some lunch (sandwiches, coffee) we found our way to the market. It was cute, and had delicious-looking fruit. Didn't buy anything, but it was still fun to look around. We also found ourselves a little library, and Mom was happy to see that they use the Dewey Decimal System here, too. Naturally, we found the section on cats (636.8) to make sure it doesn't change overseas. Phew.

After that, we took the metro back toward our apartment, but instead of transferring like we would need to, we decided to take it to Pont Neuf. We walked around there, then walked along the Seine until we stumbled upon.....The Louvre. How does one stumble upon The Louvre, you might ask? You travel with us! If we'd been trying to find it, we probably would have circled it a few times, so I guess we were lucky. We've both been before, though, so we opted not to join the crowds (especially since it's Saturday), and walked instead through Le Jardin des Tuileries and over to l'Orangerie, which is a museum with a lot of Monet's original water lily paintings, and some other artists of the period like Rodin, Cézanne, etc. There was a Didier Paquignon exhibit called Tu recontreras d'abord les sirènes, that I really loved. I can't find a good link to his work, otherwise I'd put it on here. Google image search, maybe, if you're curious?

Then, a walk back, and a stop at a bar for a caffé frappé (essentially an iced americano) and a Coke. A note about coffee: it's taking me a long time to figure out the names of espresso drinks here. I could just look it up. But I kind of like trying each one to see what it is. Also, they actually call espresso "expresso," which is maybe the one thing that is less classy in France than in the United States.

I've been having easier conversations in French, too, which is so fun. Sure, the conversations are usually about directions or buying food, but it's still flattering to have a French person speak French back to me and not revert to English. I'm definitely not as quick at it as I used to be, but when someone asks me something in French, my first impulse is to speak it back, not translate my English into French. I was so afraid I'd lost a ton of it when I couldn't fit it into my class schedule anymore, but I'm feeling better that it's still there somewhere. I hope I can live here for a while sometime to actually become fluent.

That's all I got for now. Off to go eat dinner at the Parisian hour of 9 pm. (Although...that's not much of a change for me.)