As I was walking back from the gym, it occurred to me that as much as we romaticize it, Paris is still a working city. People opening shops, taking their kids to school and going to work. I know this isn’t a profound thought but, compared to Toronto, it does have this overlay of beauty that makes it hard to appreciate that there is a quotidien life here. It’s probably heightened, now that we are staying here, maybe because we aren’t engaged in it except\u00a0through observation.<\/p>\n
We ended up going to the Alliance Fran\u00e7aise today for testing. Let me say, it was daunting! I told the evaluatingprofesseur\u00a0<\/em>that I wanted to read Camus’s\u00a0La Chute\u00a0<\/em>in French. She thought Georges Simenon (mystery writer) was probably more my speed, so I am registered in the B1 French oral program, Sandy in another program altogether. Between us, given her greater appreciation of the language coupled with my shamefully forward\u00a0utterances of a language I’ve never studied formally, we’d make close to one whole Francophone. Anyway, we’ll see what a few weeks of classes does for us.<\/p>\n For lunch, we went to Caf\u00e9 Varenne, 36 rue de Varenne, at the corner of rue du Bac, a place where they have inscribed the names of regulars on the wall (W Wells, of IHT and Patricia Wells fame, #6). It’s also apparently a favoured hangout of Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa herself, although she wasn’t there today. It was a very busy place,\u00a0friendly and efficient service, full of French folk enjoying their\u00a0d\u00e9jeuner<\/em>\u00a0but\u00a0really\u00a0mediocre cuisine, except the desserts.(Maybe we ordered badly?) \u00a0Reasonably priced, though, even with a\u00a0cool, lively\u00a0Saint-Amour. It was, however, not mentioned by Pudlo (or Fran\u00e7ois Simon, whose website we have also been checking), so we might have known better.<\/p>\n