Yes, we have now umbrellas.<\/p>\n
Of course,\u00a0it was a nicer day today, sunny and reasonably warm. I gather Toronto may still be a little cool.<\/p>\n
I have decided on a new plan, one activity\/per day, not counting the gym or dining, of course. Or visiting wine shops.<\/p>\n
I hadn’t really intended to take any French classes while we were here,\u00a0thinking that’s it’s a little late in life.\u00a0Once we settled in and began a daily routine, though, I appreciated that while my French is (mostly)\u00a0passable in restaurants, I needed more every day conversational ability, something we certainly don’t have in Toronto.<\/p>\n
Feeling a little anxious, I needed fortification in the form of a\u00a0pain chocolat\u00a0<\/em>before class but was joltingly denied. I had\u00a0forgotten that our boulanger\u00a0is closed\u00a0le mercredi<\/em>. Just as well… especially as I hadn’t been to the gym (and the F-A-T factor is weighing heavily on me right now, so to speak).<\/p>\n Class was even more formidable (in the English, not French, sense of\u00a0formidable<\/em>) than the evaluation but I survived. We have an excellent teacher from Normandy who talks way faster than my 61-year old brain can process.\u00a0There are 7 of us in the classs–two from the Netherlands, one from Mexico, a Kenyan\u00a0dancer from New York and and one or two whose place of origin I didn’t catch. I may have been the oldest in the class, by about 20 years, until an older woman showed up about halfway through. She spoke better than I did, though. In fact, they all did but I will persevere for the next few weeks.<\/p>\n Whatever else, I lasted the 3 hours and am sure I am much improved for it,\u00a0augmenting my relentless self-improvement, despite\u00a0the chuffing I frequently take from the\u00a0Prince about this.<\/p>\n When I got back, Sandy had bought us umbrellas; the outraged cries were becoming overwhelming that we couldn’t accomplish something as simple as this task.<\/p>\n After lunch, we had\u00a0an errand to run in the Place Vend\u00f4me–hard to believe,\u00a0but true–so decided on another walking trip around the 1st arrondissement.<\/p>\n Having run out of the Eyewitness walks as I said, we bought a book of 24 Walking Tours and started one of them, Sandy having usurped this function today, oddly, as schlepping around cities, pointing out minutiae and taking touristy-type photos are\u00a0invariably my domain. (One of the few remaining, I can safely say, apart from food and wine, hence, the natural\u00a0tilt of these notes.)<\/p>\n Turns out that the book we bought was authored by the guy who wrote the (or one of the) Da Vinci code guides about which I was carping yesterday. What’s worse is that\u00a0he dots each tour (at least the ones he can, from what we can tell) with ridiculous Da Vinci Code references, no doubt to sell more of his specialized tour guides!!!!!!<\/p>\n Anyway, while we started the tour, by the time we got through the Louvre, we became completely furious and forgot it. Maybe another day, another area, one that has nothing to do with that utterly\u00a0vacuous\u00a0book.<\/p>\n For consolation, we\u00a0headed back to the 1st \u00a0for dinner at Le Cochon \u00e0 l’Oreille (“In a Pig’s Ear?” I thought, but no literal translation apparently), 15, rue Montmartre. Good choice, turned out, simple food, well-prepared in a pretty place with old M\u00e9tro benches and tiles of Les Halles about a 100 years ago on the wall.<\/p>\n I should add here, lest there\u00a0is any doubt, that the places where we are dining are typically ones with\u00a0 menus written on blackboards in that inimitable French script, serving basic, down-to-earth cuisine, low-end wine (most of which we would never see in Canada) and featuring lots of convivial French people having dinner out. There are not the same places that Joanne Kates is describing; ours are more fun, more traditional and less expensive. My point the other day, however, was that you don’t need to spend a lot of money (even with the awful exchange rate, 1 Euro = CDN $1.50- CDN $1.60) to enjoy a nice lunch or dinner here.\u00a0 If you want upscale places, there are plenty of those around.<\/p>\n\n\t\t