because I am an English Major: Une Journee Pleine!

I had quite a day today! In the morning, I got up to go to the pharmacy for some band-aids and antibiotic ointment--my feet are really in poor shape, what with the new shoes and all the walking I've been doing. I planned to check the Monoprix first, but I found the Pharmacy before I found the Monoprix, and ended up spending 10 Euro on what would have cost me about $4 in the states. Seriously, 48 band-aids for 4,50? Also, when I went to the counter to ask for an antibiotic, I asked for an ointment like, say Neosporin, for preventing infection. Apparently, you need a prescription in France for antibiotic ointment (either that or the pharmacist's English was really bad), so all I could get was some unfamiliar cream with probably a minute amount of antibiotic agents in it. I also desperately needed cellphone minutes, so I stopped at a Tabac to get 15 Euros worth of minutes to put on my cellphone (which was a bit difficult to actually do, even with Geraldine helping me--you have to call a number and then punch in a series of numbers followed by the pound key, and then punch in the code on the receipt from the tabac, and it's rather hard to follow oral instructions over a bad connection IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE). Then I noticed that the open market was on again, and I decided to stroll around and maybe get some fruit. I decided that I could definitely go for a pear, and started to look around for the ripest and the best priced. I passed a pretty serious butcher's shop, with lapins entiers (whole rabbits, sans skin of course), whole birds, some of which I did not recognize, and the largest sausages I have ever seen. This time there were a lot more clothes at the market, as well as some ethnic stands--Middle-Eastern food, what looked like Japanese food, and some Italian specialties. Still looking for pears, I had seen some ripe ones somewhere at the end of a fruit table, but was entirely unable to locate them again. The market is actually rather confusing, I found, or at least maze-like, and since one fruit stand looks much like another I had to try to navigate based on the poissoneries (there were two, I think...) and the fromagers (there were more than last time). The bakery was also different, and while I considered buying some Madeleines (though I did not, since Geraldine told me that there was a very good bakery on Rue de Chezy that made Madeleines fresh one day a week, and I plan to go on that day and get a marvelous fresh Madeleine, which will be my first in Paris) the woman behind the case of bread passed me a sample of some delicious Pain de Citron (like a lemon pound-cake--it tasted very Italian, or at least like something that reminded me of my Grandmother... anyway it was wonderful). Back to my search for pears, I ended up at a fruit table where an attractive Frenchman behind the table handed me a Mirabelle plum to try. It was perfect, of course, but I was looking for pears. So I asked him if he had any pears ("poire" is the word for pear in French, but I'm pretty sure I was pronouncing it terribly), and he grabs one and cuts off a slice for me to try. It was a bit grainy and I actually didn't like it that much--either it isn't pear season yet or it was a type of pear I don't like--and I asked him if he had any Anjou pears. He didn't seem to know what I was talking about. But aren't Anjou pears from France? Up to this point, I thought they were, and "d'Anjou" is not that hard to pronounce, so I'm sure I was saying it properly... Oh well, he had only "Williams" pears, and I certainly did not want one. So I figured I might buy an apple. I asked him if he had any and, AGAIN, he whips out the knife and offers me a slice. Unfortunately, the apples weren't that great either (the season really hasn't started and they were green apples anyway), so I awkwardly walked away. He didn't seem to mind, though, so I guess free sampled are common here, too.

After deciding I didn't want to buy anything at the market, I had to find my way OUT of the market, which was actually a bit of a task given how similar the fruit tables looked. I eventually got out at the proper side with the help of a poissonerie (hooray for raw fish!), and headed back towards Inkermann, the street I'd taken to get there, and when I located it (I realized why I'd missed it last time--the name changes do Rue d'Orleans about two-thirds of the way to Rue Charles de Gaulle... no wonder) I decided to go past to keep looking for the Monoprix, which I hadn't been able to find before and which, according to Geraldine, made its bread fresh and had a good fromager. I found it at the far end of Rue de Chezy (although somehow on my way back I ended up on Inkermann and didn't get to see the Chezy boulangerie), went down to the bakery to buy a mini-croissant and a mini raisin pastry for ,40 Euro each (the raisin pastry was better than the croissant, but neither of them were warm, which means I probably will not buy them there again), then found the large cheese department. I had already bought my cheese for class, but there were a few more I wanted to look at, and although I didn't really plan to buy anything, when I asked the fellow working there whether or not they had Robechon (I might be spelling that wrong), he asked me if I wanted to sample it. Well, of course I did. It wasn't good enough to buy, so I browsed a bit more and saw Morbier, an AOC (government protected) cheese I'd read about with a telltale line of (tasteless) ash running through the middle. I tried that as well, but still didn't feel like buying it. Then I wandered to la sectionne de chevre and picked out Neufchatel Fermier (a farmer's goat cheese made with raw goat's milk and molded into a heart--I mean, it was heart-shaped, how could I resist?), a small piece of Pelardon (a raw goat's-milk cheese), and a small piece of Saint-Marcellin (fromage du lait cru--a raw cow's milk cheese). All of these are AOC cheeses, and I plan to try as many as I can before I leave here. Bring on the cholesterol. Did I say cholesterol? I meant delicious. And the cheese-fellow even threw in an adorable tiny little pot of confiture des figues (fig jam) to have with the cheese. It's all about the free stuff today, I suppose.

So after this big adventure in the morning, I did a bit of reading for my French culture class, and then decided to visit the Jardins de Tiuleries. I took my usual walk to Pont de Neuilly (it's already a common thing for me, which is bizarre, since I'm in Paris and it's only been a week, but I like that I'm becoming comfortable with my surroundings), got off the 1 at Concorde, which goes out to the breathtaking Place de Concorde, a massive square with French government buildings, museums, the Eiffel tower in the distance, and the Egyptian obelisk that Napoleon absolutely did not steal--it was given as a gift, our Awesome Guide from La Musee de Carnavalet assured us. From there it's just a short walk to the main entrance to the Tuileries Gardens, but the main entrance was rather a lot to take. It was uncomfortably warm (the sun had come out very strongly since the more overcast morning), crawling with tourists (as if I'm not a tourist myself...), painfully bright (the main entranceway is this vast paved area covered with light-colored sand and lined with white decorative Urns and Pedestals, all reflecting the sunglight), and tainted by some American rap music that a vendor was playing too loudly. I almost regretted coming, to be honest, but I turned off to the right, away from the crowd, and found an interesting abstract sculpture by some stairs. I took some pictures, then saw a man in a suit go up the stairs, so I knew it wasn't blocked up, so I decided to follow him. Up the stairs, there was a paved and sanded sidewalk shaded by a line of trees--turning a lovely golden color--on either side, and at the edge of the walkway, which was up above ground-level, I could see the street below and, just beyond it, the Seine. There was also a very distressed-looking lion statue that caught my attention--I might have expected to see a tin man somewhere nearby...

In any case, I followed the walkway around the gardens all the way to the entrance across from the Musee d'Orsay and went in that way, walking around the center in the outskirts of the garden, encountering Parisians on their lunch-breaks, Parisians taking naps, Parisians reading Agatha Christie novels (really, I saw a guy reading an Agatha Christie novel--I can only hope he was American!), and an interesting jungle-like area, the focal point of which seemed to be an artificial fallen tree. Tres bizarre! I found a place to sit by a little pond, and saw a Parisian duck taking a nap (public napping seems widely accepted here in Paris... they arrest you for that in the US... unless of course you're a duck.), then moved on to a pool with a fountain-spout in the center, where I sat down to write. I had rather a lot to say about the scenery and about Paris, and I lost myself for a bit in my little black notebook. Then I just sat back trying to soak in as much as Paris in September as I possible could--it really is incredibly beautiful. The gardens have everything from marble statues to manicured grass (the workers I found at the edges of the garden were quite a contrast to the Parisians and tourists at their leisure) and beautiful flowers. The ground was littered with crinkly brown leaves that scuttled around in the breeze, which was welcome in the hot sun but less welcome in the shade by the pool, where the wind carried some of the fountain-splash over in my direction. When I finally got up to look around in the center of the gardens, I was briefly accosted by a man who clearly knew I was not French but insisted that I looked French, said that he liked my style, and also said he was "interested in attractive girls who look French but are not" because "French girls are boring." Oh? This is news to me. Also, he explained to me the concept of Proust's Madeleine (the Madeleine cookie as a symbol of youth and the past and of pleasant days gone by) and attempted to get my cellphone number (which I pretended I did not have) or my "hotmail." He said that although it was "very scary," one must take risks while in Paris. I thought not. I told him that if he found me again while I was here I would maybe give him my e-mail address. I think that if he actually found me again I would call the police. But hey, he didn't persist, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Also, he taught me something about Proust. For me, that's major brownie points.

After this encounter, I did some more wandering, took a zillion pictures of the Greco-Roman-style statues around the center of the gardens, and sat down at an identical pool on the opposite side of the garden. In this pool, there were little toy sailboats, and two little boys playing with them, pushing the boats away from the edges of the pool with sticks. They were so involved in their play that they didn't notice my taking pictures, and then one of them left and came back to take some pictures of his own, snapping digital photos of his sailboat with a camera much better than my own! In my subsequent wanderings, I somehow ended up all the way at the Jardins de Carrousel, where a lot of young men and women were lounging on the grass (the grass wasn't roped off like in the Tuileries gardens), and where I found an enormous arch at the entrance, an immense statue of either Victory of Justice, some old Frenchmen playing bocce, and a little maze of bushes with statues sprinkled among the footpaths. Mind you, this is the extreme other end of the garden rather far from the metro station. At this point, my feet were not happy with me. But I found my way to the metro and got off and Pont de Neuilly, by which time I was absolutely ravenous. I had resisted buying an overpriced piece of bread from Paul, the chain boulangerie (not a real boulangerie, really) that had a stand in the park, and had also resisted the ridiculously overpriced restaurant in the gardens (8 Euro for a bowl of ice cream? I think not.), so I stopped for some lovely-looking tomatoes at the little grocery on Rue de Chateau (there are fresh fruit and vegetables sold absolutely everywherearound here), a demi-baguette at the correct boulangerie (the one Geraldine recommended--half a baguette is ,45 euro!)--some of which I ate on the walk home, in the way of the eating-while-walking Parisians, and made a lovely tomato and mozzarella sandwich with fresh basil from the Bijassons basil plant. Tres Deliceuse! Also, the Bijassons went out for dinner tonight, so I was on my own about dinner--une petite salad mixte avec chevre, followed by a tasting of my new cheeses, accompanied by grapes and a white peach. My feet and I have had quite a day, and I'm almost glad to stay in and do my reading for class.

And of course, here are some pictures from my travels:

So, I noticed that I can see an American flag from my breakfast table chez Bijassons...