Got down to business today. Time is short.
Diane and I did Frommer’s walk #13 which is around the famous Opera Palais Garnier. The walk, of course, also included the usual assortment of spectacular churches. Does this city ever run out of them? 
At the opera, we paid our money to walk around inside. Nice and warm. Apparently it is built on a source of subterranean water which could not be pumped despite a year of trying. They just converted the foundation into an artificial water tank instead. It gave a nice place for the Phantom of the Opera to paddle around.
We parted company after a quick lunch in a cutesy little sandwich restaurant. Diane had a huge carrot soup and I had a big chicken sandwich. Very good.
After lunch, I got down to business hunting down antique bicycle parts to try to “improve” my already cool bike / white elephant. Needless to say, it requires specialty bicycle shops, so I rode a fair distance on the metro. Did not have much luck finding parts.
The most unique shop I encountered was “Geppetto of Bicycles” (technically, the French version of this). It was the typical narrow, cramped shop filled with the usual clutter of cool old bikes hanging from the ceiling, on racks along the walls and in the isle way. The unique thing about the shop was that it was “decorated” with Geppetto knickknacks and even had a small Persian carpet with the name of the store in the center. This is unusual; bike shops seldom have anything on the wall except bike parts. The owner/mechanic is a lithe woman of about 35 years; hands black with grease, coveralls covered with the same. She has a rear motorcycle-sytle kick-stand for sale for 35€, that I want a lot. The only problem is that it is new and black and my bike is old and brown.
The most unique shop I encountered was “Geppetto of Bicycles” (technically, the French version of this). It was the typical narrow, cramped shop filled with the usual clutter of cool old bikes hanging from the ceiling, on racks along the walls and in the isle way. The unique thing about the shop was that it was “decorated” with Geppetto knickknacks and even had a small Persian carpet with the name of the store in the center. This is unusual; bike shops seldom have anything on the wall except bike parts. The owner/mechanic is a lithe woman of about 35 years; hands black with grease, coveralls covered with the same. She has a rear motorcycle-sytle kick-stand for sale for 35€, that I want a lot. The only problem is that it is new and black and my bike is old and brown.
After all this, I went to Bibliothèque Fornay for a couple of hours. It was nice and warm too.
For dinner we had a couple of big hunks of cheese, some nice bread, olives, pears and a half-bottle of Bordeaux.
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