Day 4-Wed.

It's 10am on Thursday morning, and Scott just left to go around the corner to the bakery for some goodies. It pays to have a husband that loves to eat... he will run these kinds of errands, where I would just do without. He's gotten quite brave. Normally he makes me do all the buying and conversing with the French.

Yesterday was a Perfect Parisian Day. It all started around noon, when we ventured out to the department store, just to look around. Coming up out of the metro, we looked left, and there was the Opera Garnier, the old Opera house. We had only been in the front lobby briefly last year, and had wanted to take the tour, but didn't. At the spur of the moment, we just walked over and went in...

(~Absolutely everything we do here is this way...we are going one direction...and we change mid course...we NEVER do this at home....there we are always on a mission to "get-er-done."~)

The Opera house was so incredible. I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect it to rival Versailles, and rival it did. I could just imagine all the people that have been coming here for hundreds of years. It was magnificent. Do not miss it if you are here. We were lucky enough that the main theatre was open, and we got a peek inside. Often it is closed for rehearsal, and in fact, closed just a few minutes after we got our chance to look.

We moved on to the shopping center...boring...I hate to shop....at least until I get to the flea market on Saturday.

We moved on from there to the booksellers on the Seine, where I bought my son a Tin Tin book, a French book character they are making a movie about in the states. From there we walked to Ile. St. Louis, and finally had the famous Berthillon ice cream. It was really good. I ordered choc and coffee, and Scott had the strawberry. They shape the ice cream into flower petals on your cone...so chic.

We moved across the way to Shakespeare and Co. after walking the length of Notre Dame, and it is quite an interesting book store. Really creepy and creaky and old. Lots of nooks and crannies and quite famous. We left there, and back across the Seine to a park at the end of Notre Dame. We sat on a bench for a long time, and watched a class of students sketching. Some were really good, as we walked past them and ogled the drawings. We wish we were that good. We stopped off for some refreshments and sat about an hour before we moved on.

From there we just started walking, having no idea where we were or where we were going. We ended up in the Marias, and let me tell you, this is where I want to live! I read in our travel book, it's where the Jewish people have settled, and the gay community, and let me tell you... money, money, money. All the shops are nice, it's so clean and there's an interesting mix of people you see. It's also where the young and beautiful crowd lives. I'm not making any judgements here...it's just what I read and observed. It also has very narrow streets with the buildings leaning almost inward towards each other. We just wandered and wove up and down the maze of tiny streets. It was impressive. Very, very old.

On from there to the Champs Elysees to our favorite pizza place. It did not disappoint. I'm afraid we were making noises as we ate, it was so good. The pizza has mushrooms and shrimp on it, and the pasta salad we ordered had zucchini, artichokes, broccoli, tomatoes, onions and a red sauce. We dove into it like we had been on fast for 2 weeks. The pizza is quite different from Little Caesar's :).

We walked back down to the metro, and go home about 10pm...

See...no mishaps, no mistakes, but also I bet this reading isn't nearly as interesting as yesterday... ha ha. I will also say that my limited french has saved us numerous times. My french gets better and better each trip, and it really does help.

I am going to see if I can download some short videos. My pics won't download onto this computer, but maybe my Flip will.

More later.... Scott just walked in with Palmiers, Croissants, and Pain du Choc.

P.S. Even with all the trauma the two days before, no one was rude exactly, they were just as exasperated as we were, trying to explain all the changes. But even if they HAD been rude, Paris is so worth the trouble.

I'm just saying...