This and That

 Summer in the city.

When I think of Paris I think of sidewalk cafes, the Louvre, flower markets, the Eiffel Tower, food and wine. What I don't see in my mind when I think about this beautiful city is - sunburn. It was blessedly cool and cloudy our first five days here, we even got a little rain. But then the temperatures started rising and the clouds went away and walking the sidewalks of Paris felt like we were walking on the surface of the sun. We stayed in museums the first few days of heat (and let me tell you, the Louvre gets pretty warm inside, that was no respite from the heat, only the sun), and we walked on the shady side of the streets whenever possible, but when the sun was directly overhead then that wasn't even an option, and I ended up with a slight sunburn. Nothing too obvious or too painful, but I needed to buy a sunhat as soon as possible. (Note to self: Always, always pack a sunhat!) I ended up buying a sunhat for 10 Euros at a huge farmers market. It's cute and it fits and it does the job, however, I can now add it to the collection of sunhats from around the world that I have back at home, because I didn't think I would need a sunhat wherever we were going and/or forgot to pack one. I keep a small corkscrew in my suitcase because you never know when you might need to open a bottle of wine, I think that's where I'm going to put the new sunhat I bought, that way I'll always have one when I travel. Sheesh.

A waiter saves Don from making a horrible choice.

We were at a little cafe and trying to decipher the menu (it's nice when they don't have a menu in English, it means that we've gotten far enough away from the main tourist areas to have a typical French meal in a cafe and it won't cost an arm and a leg) and we were trying to figure out what Andouillette was. Don thought it might be a form of andouille sausage. When Don asked the waiter about it the man looked at Don and said, "That is not for you!" Don looked at the man with a question on his face and the waiter then said, "It is for big men (here he held his arms in front of his belly to show a really fat man). "It is from the stomach, the insides." We ordered steak instead and then looked up Andouillette on google. Here is a brief description from Wikipedia: True andouillette is rarely seen outside France and has a strong, distinctive odour related to its intestinal origins and components. Although sometimes repellant to the uninitiated, this aspect of andouillette is prized by its devotees.

Here is a (probably more accurate) description from the column Grubworm:

"Mrs GW put down her fork, worrying that I might have poisoned us with bad meat. I, having partaken of a number of stomach related dishes recognised the clearly faecal hint of intestine. (emphasis mine) Never one to shy in the face of a culinary challenge, I swallowed hard, tried not to breath in and carried manfully on through the taut bag of innards.
Some intestine I’ve eaten has had me rhapsodising (I’m look at you Chilli Cool). But this? This was bad. I had to admit defeat two thirds of the way through. It was really really bad. It wasn’t off, it didn’t make us sick, in fact I felt fine, apart from sections of my nose and tongue that seemed to have died in protest at what they encountered."

So, thank you Mr. Waiter, you saved us from making a horrible mistake.

Paris - Saturday day 10

It was hot so we decided to just relax and enjoy ourselves. We needed to go to the grocery store to restock some essentials (no more coffee! how did this happen?) and pick up supplies for a picnic. There are so many beautiful gardens in Paris and we decided to do what so many of the Parisians do on the weekend - eat our lunch in the park and enjoy the scenery. After cutting a very long baguette in half and then loading it up with ham, cheese, lettuce, and butter, and grabbing a bottle of water (sure wish I had saved one of those little screw top bottles of wine that we had got at the Louvre yesterday with lunch, we could have filled one with more wine and taken it with us instead of just the water) and headed out. We took the Metro because we wanted to go to the Luxembourg gardens and at an estimated 40 minute walk decided it was too much in the heat. This is a great place, especially if you have children, the grounds are huge and there are many, many green chairs for you to sit on, use as a small table, a foot rest, etc. and lots of activities:

 Just lounging around, having lunch and enjoying the shade.

 The kids are sailing little boats in the pond. They're not remote controlled, they're just canted a certain way so that they'll sail out and then return and the kids have sticks with hooks on them to grab them from the water.

There were at least two groups of ponies for the kids to ride. It also made walking in parts of the park a little treacherous, you had to watch out for all the dung!

 It was a good size park with tennis courts (and a couple playing a game in the heat!), men playing boules, a playground for the kids, and rows of trees that were all trimmed into rectangular shapes - this was a very popular spot with lots of people on blankets just relaxing.

Later that night we went to the Sunside/Sunset jazz club to hear Adam Ben Ezra, a bassist, he also played piano and the clarinet.

This is a small club and they really pack you in.
After the show we ate a late dinner at Cafe M, a very posh place. It was our first meal at a fancy place and it was really good. It also cost about 3 to 4 times more than what we've been paying for our usual cafe choices, but it was worth it.

Paris - Day whatever - The Louvre

Dear Readers,

The Louvre has kicked my ass. I'm tired. I've seen so much art and stuff that I can't even keep it straight in my mind. I didn't see even a fraction of the things I planned on seeing because the Louvre is a huge labyrinth full of interesting things that distracts you and leads you down corridors to other rooms to other corridors, up and down stairs, through this room and that room, and then you are exhausted and crabby and you still haven't got to see a Goya or a Vermeer and you just give up and wander around and then you see this and you had expressly planned on NOT seeing this because you knew it would be a disappointment:

 Yep. That's her, the Mona Lisa, or "La Jaconde" as it's called at the Louvre. We did not stand in line, it was a ridiculous line, we just took a picture in passing. We looked at lots of other fabulous art, pictures, statues, old stuff from Egypt and Africa. Here is some of it in no particular order:

This was just one tiny part of the Louvre.

 Our view at lunch time. Nice little terrace where you could see the glass pyramid at the center of the museum. There is a whole underground shopping mall underneath that plaza, by the way.

 This crow was very interested in my lunch. I threw a piece of bread to him and he decided to stick around for awhile.

 That's the crazy line to see the Mona Lisa. That's her on the back wall. Behind bullet proof glass.

 This is one of my favorites, representing the four seasons. These are about 400 years old.

 The Louvre is huge. Huge!

 Remodeling ideas.

Lucky guy, he gets to sit down.