That’s how I feel. Today, it felt like heaven. After a leisurely morning at the apartment and running local errands, I headed out into the world around 1p. I didn’t find the Velib station in Montreuil; so, I took the Metro to Strasbourg/St. Dennis. I was going to visit B’s nephew Gwen at his Atelier, but I realized I wasn’t dressed nicely enough for that report back. Instead I went shopping. The Kookai outlet never lets me down.
I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but my plan was to get a pastry somewhere. I didn’t see any place to get one; so, I got a Velib and rode to my favorite crepery in St. Michel. It dripped with butter and nutella and was an astounding success. I wanted to go back and immediately get another one, but I have been practicing self-restraint lately. I didn’t.
From there, I walked back across the Seine to the Paris Plage on the right bank.
The installments are about the same as last year, but I am always amused by the exercise machines. What Americans make a chore, the French to make fun. Food also falls into this category.
Can you think of others?
The day had gone by quickly, and I needed to get back to the apartment to check my email to see where I was meeting J, G and Muriel for dinner. So, I grabbed another bicycle and rode it as far to the east as I felt comfortable and then jumped on the metro for the last few stops.
Muriel lives in a converted clothing factory which means loft-style big windows, big open spaces, temporary-style wall-dividers. It’s in central Paris, a beautiful ornate building that even has a fancy French restaurant on the ground floor although the neighborhood is extremely diverse. She says there’s a mosque across the street (which is narrow). I’ve house-sat for her multiple times, and I love being there. We met there.
She just came back from a month of vacation with her Brazilian boyfriend and his family in Brazil. So, she made us caperanas (sp? mine and G’s were virgin) and served us snacks of Brazil nuts and shavings of that sugar stuff I don’t know the name of. None of them had ever had a Brazil nut before, and these are very-worldly Pariens. Eventually, we moved down to a nearby Syrian/Lebanese restaurant. For both dinner and dessert, we ordered the combination option. Everyone got a chance to try just about everything on the menu. Meanwhile, we sat on the sidewalk, had good conversation and watched all the different kinds of people pass by as the light faded on the historic buildings.
The apartment in Montreuil is in a new 9-story building one block from the Metro. It appears to have one car parking space per unit, but I didn’t count the parking spaces – the garage has 2 levels. M and JP don’t rent out their parking space, it never occurred to them to do so, they keep it for their occasional rental cars. I would guess they rent a car 4 to 6 times per year for a few days to take the whole family, including children, seniors or sick people, on vacation somewhere else – often to the home of another family member. About half of the parking spaces appear to be empty whenever I am down there. I suggested to JP they could reduce the number of parking spaces necessary in the building and instead provide rental cars in the building that everyone shares. He had difficulty understanding this concept until I compared it to the electric carshare cars being discussed for Paris which didn’t seem to interest him particularly. This family never uses cars in the carshare style – they would just take a taxi. In fact, I think they take a lot of taxis. Since the parking garage is underground and already built, it doesn’t have other potential uses. There is a video store on the ground floor, but I bet they don’t have much need to store their massive collection of videos (for example).
When I was here last year at the end of August, all the beautiful people were on vacation. That is, all of Paris was on vacation. Now, that isn’t the case. The beautiful people are here, although they aren’t wearing particularly beautiful clothes. And for the record, I haven’t encountered a rude French person in years; as you know, I spend a lot of time here.
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