End Of First Day In Paris

Just after posting my first 4 Paris blogs, I headed over to Philippe's place. Elena had gone earlier and was already there. I decided to walk. I walked down Batignolles to Mirmeselle or something like that. I walked down that under the awnings as much as possible because it had started to rain. That is the street that runs right by Carla Bruni's house. I passed Carla's house, crossed the Champs d'Elysée and went between the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais. I want to see the Petit Palais because it has Goya etchings. Goya made 3 series of etchings. Bull fighters, one on the atrocities of war, and a third one that I can't remember. I'll find out later. Anyway, I crossed the Winston Churchill bridge and slid past the Invalides. I went past the École Militaire and got my first really good look of the Eiffel Tower across the Champ de Mars. Then I headed a little further south west and got to Philippe's place.

Our plan was to meet Malika who was at the Picnic where we played Maya. She took us to a place that specializes in the food of some region that I can't remember because I don't have the internet at home. Anyway, we had a yummy meal. Mine was a most interesting dish. It was a sausage topped with a sort of yellow potato/mozzerrella goo. It was like mozzerella mashed potatoes, sort of combining the best features of both. It was simultenously soft and stretchy. Its flavor was light but good and it complemented the sausage which had a very strong and nice flavor.

After that we wandered around the new Frence National Library--4 towers surrounding a deep well containing a small forest. It seemed to me that the ground was deeper than the Seine, so I asked, but everyone thought my question was crazy. We saw a swimming pool on the river but it is apparently closed because there is a leak with the river. I joked to Elena that the French don't have much luck with swimming pools. The "Olympic" swimming pool in Montpellier is not usable in competitions because it is actually not Olympic sized--the designers forgot to take the tiles into account so it a few millimeters too short.

It was a nice night and we got home at about 12:30. We had a bit of a problem. We got to the Metro station just at midnight. I mentioned in a previous post that our Orange card--1 week Metro pass--doesn't start until the next day. Well, since it was just after midnight, we naturally thought (hoped) that it would start working and we could use it to get home. After several attempts, it became apparent that it wasn't going to work--that they don't use midnight as the time to switch over, but rather the opening of the Metro the next morning. The bastards! So we paid another €3. Thankfully, there was a machine there that takes paper money so I could use a €20 note.