Un Día Decepcionante

Day after day of disappointments. I woke up at about 9 and after a nice shower went t find breakfast. Several streets down I bought a baguette for €1.90. Delicious! :-) I then returned to my room which has an outside balcony - the previous night I hung the remains of my foie gras terrine (thoroughly wrapped up) by some sort of hook thing outside, thinking that it would keep fine in the cold Parisian night. And it did! So I continued eating it with my baguette. Also in my room happened to be staying a nice Asian man from Clifornia, I told him about Wadja and he described several places for me to visit, then I was off to visit Notre Dame first!

It was beautiful and cozy with, one supposed, recorded medieval coral music playing. Once I had my time there, I went to find the Pompidou! With this, I learned a new French word: Fermé. Closed. No luck. So then I went to find a subway stop to go to Place Des Vosges, but of course... my Metro week pass was gone! Stolen or lost, who knows which. :-( So I decided I was close enough to visit the Louvre for a while to warm up and be dry for a while... oh yes, did I mention? Today it has been very cold. And very windy. And raining constantly. Absolutely miserable weather to walk about all day in. But I did, it sucked but now it's done and I had interesting adventures.

For example, what of the Louvre? On Tuesdays of course when I go there, Fermé. JUST Tuesdays. I suppose I should have looked ahead of time, but who would guess such a thing? It would make sense that Tuesday at 11am that any normal museum would be open. Alas, perhaps the most renowned museum in the world, the Louvre, is not open.

So, wet to the bone, freezing and in pain (my legs have transcended sore, they are now extremely painful and at times not very mobile... I look like I just went for a 5 day horse-ride) I cfound a cheap nutella crepe and took a short nap in a cold but not windy or wet or noisy cathedral - St. James I believe. It was pleasantly dark and quiet, but after a while I realized that I was to wet to reall warm myself up sufficiently to feel fully refreshed from a nap. So (at the time this was written in my notebook) I'm here in a pleasant little café drinking a lovely cup of café au lait and contemplating what I can do with so many places closed, no metro pass, and feeling quite terrible. Apparantly I'm quite close to the Plase Des Vosges, so I should at least try to see if that's open. After that may look at Place de la Bastille and... according to Mr. Niceguy from the train, I should see Vieille du Temple for all the vendors and according to my Californian roommate, I should see Rue des Rosiers. So in interest of maximum warmth or rather minimized aggregate cldness, I will go to the Bastille, then to Place de Vosges (and perhaps the Jewish temple that my map says is nearby). Then I will see Rue des Rosiers, then Vieille du Temple. Afterwards, perhaps the Musee Picasso. L'house est 15:20. By the way, I have amazed myself how reasonable well I can get by with what French I know and my pronunciation skills. It's a lot of fun using a new word or phrase and being understood :-).

(Written later) My French keeps improving, but I also sem to have luck finding peopel who speak either English or Spanish. Also, I feel much better after th coffee and a bathroom break - even warmed up! I got pictures of the Bastille and found the Place de Vosges, but it was just a plaza with nice shops. All the Jewish temples around there apparantly are instead schools, but at least they are Jewish schools. The two streets I was instructed to visit did not seem anything special to me, and of course everything is fermé.
I entertained myself by walking around and looking at all the shops - very amazing food shops - and there was this one place that sold glasses, in the corner of the store, visible oiutside through the glass window, but hidden and not really visible at all inside, was ana amzing colection of Middle-Eastern style guitar-like things. I was very curious and fascinated and took a picture of them from outside. The owner of the place seemed very displeased at me taking a picture, but I have no idea why and noone was in the shop and I couldn't understand anything he was saying... so oh well. Anyways, I found a shop that I was interested in and walked inside - an olive shop with all kinds of oils, including truffle oil! Well, I told myself, I must try this. The nice man working there even gave me samples of everything - a very nice man who speaks French, Spanish and English, so I decided to talk to him in Spanish since I could use the review. I tried a truffle cream on toast which was very nice and black and white truffle oil. As the truffle flavor stayed in my mouth it just kept growing and growing and was so musky and interesting! Then the power in the store went out. Their solution was several olive oil lamps :-). No problem, I told them, everything I want to see is closed, so I've got plenty of time for them to sort it out. The man was nothing but friendly and polite and generous even. He gave me extra handous about good uses for truffle oil and wines to pair with them - I bought a small big of black truffle olive oil. I'm very keen to use it, but I suppose it will have to wait until I have a proper kitchen to use it in. Alas, now (at the time I wrote this) I am seated in a little open-door lobby to a perfme store. There are large Gucci signs everywhere and some grumpy bouncers I suppose I am on my way to the Arc D'triumph and take nice pictures of the obelisk and large avenue towards the Louvre. Then I suppose I'll go back to the hostel and get a good night's rest before I try to visit Le Palais de Versailles tomorrow. Then I can try to revisit the places I couldn't make today on Thursday before my train to Madrid. I will not go to the Eiffel Tower, that will have to wait for Bethany.

(now back at the hostel) While wet (trenchfoot, anyone?), tired (more pain than sleepiness) and alone, the Obelisk was interesting but the area itself was empty, nasty and boring - just tons of traffic and large stone structures. The walk 'home' was about 2 miles. Half uphill. My legs hate me a lot. Now that I'm back... I give up. I went next door ro the italian place and got a pizza to go. The bartender was Portuguese and speaks Spanish and English! He seemed very happy to speak to a person not in French and told me about the nightlife of Porto being pretty awesome, so we'll see how that goes when I visit Caroline :-). So we chatted for a while until the pizza was ready (I got an onion, bacon (or at least their version of it) and an EGG in the middle! I guess you were right dad... but it was... good! It served as kind of a sauce for the crust, very tasty!) and now I'm discussing the trip to the Palace of Versailles in Spanish with some Argentinian and Columbian people staying at the hostel. I have found many people to be extremely friendly around here, friendly and polite - French and abroad alike. They usually like it when you at least attempt to speak their language as well :-).
I'm tired and worn out and about ready to relax for a while - not to mention I miss everyone dearly. I've had a difficult time finding ways to charge up my electrical appliances, like my iPod and my camera... so sometimes I don't have the iPod with me during the day. Today was one of those days. I spent a lot of the day imagining what my friends would like of what I've seen, and I really wish that someone were here to share it with me. Particularly Bethany, of course :-) We'll get to see Paris together soon enough my dear!

Hasta Luego.