Closed on Sundays

When I headed out to my boulangerie today, I was horrified to discover that it was closed. Apparently in France, most stores and other establishments are closed on Sunday. Even the libraries are closed. Overcome by intense vertigo, I staggered helplessly trying to come to grips with the reality of the situation. I recovered enough to stumble down the street where, two blocks away, I found another pastry shop that, miraculously, didn't know that it was Sunday. I did not buy a pain au chocolate, instead, in my delirium, pointed to some kind of twirly thing with chocolate and pistachios. I brought it back to the apartment to eat with our homemade coffee. It was pretty good. I am happy to report that I have now fully recovered.

At sunrise, I spent a few minutes finally photographing the apartment. The wide angle lens makes it look really big.  The reality is that it is only 450 square feet.  It really has begun to feel like home. We're lucky to have found such a comfy spot.

Because everything is closed today, we did not follow the order of the "walks" in the Frommer's book. The next walk on the list is one that involves a lot of browsing in antique stores, which would be closed. Instead, we skipped to "Walk 8” which is a walk through Pere Lachaise Cemetery. The dead do not take weekends off. We spent a couple of very pleasant hours there, strolling up and down the walkways. There lots of famous people buried there, but we hunted down just a few: Chopin, Rossini, Oscar Wilde, Balzac etc. It was a cool but sunny day today.

Directly from Pere Lachaise we went to the Eiffel Tower area to do “Walk 17” which is basically around the Ecole Militaire and the Eiffel Tower. First, we had lunch crepes on Rue Cler, which is a favorite spot of guidebook writer Rick Steves. It's okay, but he overrates it a bit. The crepes there WERE great. Diane had a simple crepe filled with melted cheese. I had the Big Kahuna crepe filled with cheese, ham and a fried egg. Awesome. This gave us energy to walk around the Eiffel Tower. It's always cool walking up to that structure. It is so big. What's not cool are the huge crowds which accumulate underneath it. It's a sea of humanity.

We returned to the apartment by midafternoon. We watched T.V. a little bit to get updated on world affairs. There is a lot of today news about plastic explosives and there was a bombing in Istanbul. It really doesn't affect anything but it is upsetting. I had walked through that main square on October 24. The square is a long way away from the tourist district where we spent all of our time.

On CNN World Sports we even saw highlights (lowlights?) of the Giants vs. Rangers game.

Tonight we're foraging the fridge for food. We've got a bit of bread, a bit of salad, a bit of cheese and other bits of things to eat. We have sufficient provisions to make it through the night. Tomorrow is All Saints Day though, which is a National Holiday (tonight is Hallows Eve) so we may be foraging for restaurant food. Such suffering.