Yes, it is hard to keep up with blog posts… I’ll just list some highlights of the past several days.
I went to Paris for the first time on Friday, and also went in to the city on Sat. and Sunday. On Friday I went to the Hôtel de Ville metro stop and started by going to centre Pompidou, to learn where it was to meet Rim there on Sunday. Then I walked by Nôtre Dame, got a croque monsieur from a street vendor (it was bad, so I decided to try again some other day), and diet coke (I would have reprised the Orangina I got there on the same street years before, but I wanted the caffeine, so it was “coca cola light” time instead. Then I walked across the bridges to the latin quarter, and recognized the streets from the previous trip with Zach — it was fun to see the same newsstand again years later. I walked around La Sorbonne, saw lots of bookstores, a game shop, but couldn’t pick a good cafe. Finally I found a crèpe place and came inside. It wasn’t so great, but I was tired of walking so it was good. I tried to read and work a bit, but it wasn’t very comfy. I left and it was dark and I walked up sort of randomly to the Pantheon and the Saint-Genevieve library, and then down through some cute tiny streets full of restaurants, until I found some metro stop and went home.
Alex’s friend was in town, so I got to practice speaking French with her back at his apartment. Saturday, we were going to help his friend move, but it was the wrong day, so instead I went to Paris again. Back to the Latin Quarter. It was raining though, so I quickly went to a square, Place de la Contrescarpe, which I found online recommended as a good place to find cafes to study. I went into a cafe there, “La Contrescarpe”, but it was sort of fancy. They let me sit and study, but I didn’t find any outlets for the laptop. I did some work after having a cappucino and a croque madame (the monsieur, but with an egg on top, of course).
I got tired of it there and walked to the Jardin du Luxembourg, where I hoped to find a cafe and maybe bump into Cosette. The Luxembourg Garden is this magical place for me, where Marius met Cosette, so I just love seeing it. It is so exciting, maybe my favorite place in Paris, just because of that story. I finally found the next recommended place, “Le Petit Suisse”, which was way better — a tiny cafe with a two-level seating arrangement, and I was able to find a seat with”une prise” — a power outlet. I ordered a cappucino again, and then listened to some Cosette or other and her mom, next to me, ordering some deserts. The mom had an apple pie which looked good, but Cosette had this amazing chocolate thing, so I asked her what it was and told the waiter I wanted one too. I did some work, but I needed to use the restroom… so eventually I left. I did see a restroom tucked away as I left though, so it seems like a perfect place to return to to do work for another afternoon (maybe tomorrow!!) It was raining, dark, cold, so I used the GPS to find the nearest metro with good connections back home, which turned out to be the Odéon stop. I liked the name. I walked though Place de l’Odéan or whatever on the way… there was a big monument-type rounding building.. the Odéon itself, I guess, though I have no idea what it is. It looked mysterious and ancient in the rain, and I felt like I was inside an RPG like Oblivious on Xbox, only the lighting effects were even better than in the video game…. the reflections from the puddles of water, street lamps, a couple pushing their baby carriage through the rain in the narrow sidwalk in front of me, etc etc. I followed them and the crowds to the metro stop — it was easier to follow the gradient of more-people (and the physical gradient down the hill, at the same time) to the metro, than to constantly follow the map and GPS in the rain.
Sunday — I went to Paris and met Alia’s great friend Rim in front of the fountain at Centre Pompidou. It was fantastic to meet her, enfin, after hearing stories about her for so many years! She seems great and I can easily imagine being good friends with her — she’s so sweet. She gave me a nice tour of a bunch of the famous spots around there, we walked through a street market, over to the Louvre, towards the Arch de Triomphe, across the Seine to the Eiffer Tower, and tok a metro to Sacré Coeur, climbed it, got food in Montmartre (a panini, and then some ice cream — pistachio and nutella for me, because I first had pistache ice cream there 13 years ago!), saw some amazing paintings by artists in the street, including a Nicole Kidman/”Satine” portrait, took great photos of Paris from above, went inside the church and heard some incredible chant — very gorgeous music!! — and then walked down and over to the Moulin Rouge. The best part, though, was just getting to hang out with Rim — we spoke just French so I could practice, and it was really easy and fun with 
her. I made plenty of jokes, which was so nice after making that 1 solitary joke in Lyon after 5 months, not to mention my 1-word experience trying to talk to the little kid in Montreal. Rim and I tag-teamed a joke when I was commenting how it was funny that there was a station named “white” on the “blue” metro line, and then she pointed out that we were going from “white” to the red of the “Moulin Rouge”, so we had white, blue, and red — the french flag! Somehow it reminded me of something Alia would have said, either because they’re friends or because they’re both Moroccans, I can’t tell — but it definitely made me feel very comfortable around Rim.
Monday, I ended up sleeping too much due to residual jet lag… but I did run some errands and buy a bunch of groceries to fill up the empty kitchen… I took Alex’s rolling cart thing and walked to the store, got lots of Brazilian orange and mango juice, milk, toilet paper, etc. I went back to the bakery and talked to the nice bakery-girl and got a new kind of bread, a mix between Tradition and Baguette. Eventually I found my way to the big movie theatre MK2 (via the new metro line 14 (purple), which is fast and awesome, automatic — no driver, double doors on the platforms, which feels so much safer, etc etc) to meet up with Alex and see Avatar in 3D. The rest of my night was spent listening to the soundtrack I bought on iTunes and obsessing over how awesome the movie was.
Today, Tuesday, I also had trouble and fell asleep in the afternoon — but then I went jogging back to the park. I got a bit lost on the way home, trying to take a different route and heading north when I thought I was going east. I followed my sense of direction back ok, but I was not quite where I expected, and it was getting dark. It was scary for a little bit when I felt like maybe I was running totally in the wrong direction.. I had a feeling I might end up needing to backtrack and do a 6 mile run… but it turned out it was only 3.3 miles in the end, although I felt like it was 4.5 becuase I was so confused. I ran by the metro to buy 10 more tickets, and then by the bakery on the way home for a demi-baguette for later. Then I showered, made some phone calls back home, and hurried out to meet Doug and Alex and Emanuel and his wife and 2 of their kids for dinner at a pizza place next to the Royal Palace, on Rue de Montpensier. It was an italian pizzeria, on an interesting little road surrounded by walls — a very funny square-within-a-square arangement, so it felt like a crazy videogame, again. I hope videogame designers realize they can get awesome map ideas by just coming to Paris. This place is laid out in a much more interesting way than most RPGs, but the best ones seem to have a lot in common with this. Oblivion is pretty good, for instance, but it seems too logical, maybe, compared with the chaotic twisty alleys of Paris.
Dinner was great — we only spoke French, so again it was good practice. Doug is awesome in French, and makes the same kinds of jokes and wordplay in French that he does in English. I can’t remember the best ones from tonight, but a fun little thing: he commented how Alex lives in places starting with “B-O”, like Boston and Bozeman, but sadly not Paris… then I said I lived in “B” towns like “Bozeman”, “Bend”, and “Bloomington”, and Doug, without missing a beat, said “and now Baris” — pronounced “BAR-EE” like “PAR-EE”, of course.
We scheduled a meeting for next Tuesday evening… lots of work to do before then! I’ll meet him at his apartment — he gave me a ton of crazy security codes I have to use to get through all the gates, etc. into his apartment building. So, now I’ll sleep, and hopefully get lots done tomorrow.
“If I Said I Loved You” really gets me going, but it’s a very slow song… it’s just the beautiful duet that makes me excited there.
