An Artist, A Cheese Seller, and A Church, and Other Stuff
We finally went to Eglise St. Sulpice -- the church that is the early focal point of The DaVinci Code. From the front door of our apartment building to the front door of the church is about 200 steps. We've been by there at least 50 times with Cassie! (I'd been inside on a previous trip to Paris). In our wandering around the church we came upon the brass line (about 200 feet long) marking the winter equinox that is referred to in the book/movie. One thing off our checklist!
Today we also went to an art exhibit. One of my friends from Viking Office Products days put me in touch with a friend of hers who lives here in Paris. A friend of hers was exhibiting at an art show. I imagine that we were the only Americans at this exhibit which was in a more residential very nice area of Paris, the 12th arrondissment.
My point about being the only Americans -- our apartment is in the 6th arrondissment and you cannot walk down the street without hearing someone speaking English. It is very easy to get by in this area speaking only English if that's what works for you.
We also went to learn a bit about cheese today. I hate to push this too much with superlatives, but it really was a fantastic thing to do. We've been to cheese tastings in LA, but this was at a new level! The city of Paris runs a program called "Meet the Parisians", http://en.parisinfo.com/paris_sightseeing/rub7865.html, and as Maxine put it, they are doing an terrific job recruiting Parisian participants.
There are tons of cheese stores in the city -- within a five minute walk I'd guess we have 10 stores that beat anything we can get to in LA. We went to the store for this class, "La Fromagerie De Paris" ('the cheese store of Paris'), without any particular expectations. It was something to do, a bit of a trek (30 minutes by metro) to get there, ... It turns out that the owner, Eric LeFebvre was the Parisian we would be meeting. He's a winner of the "Meilleur Ouvrier de France" for Cheese (basically this makes him one of the maybe 10(?) best informed cheese people in the country! This was beyond great! We spent about 1 1/2 hours there, learned about cheese, about what it took to win the MOF (he was quite modest and I had to ask him to tell us), went into the store's 'cave', and tasted 5 very different cheeses. If you enjoy cheese even just a little bit, this was a great thing to do; we're planning on going to more of these Meet The Parisians activities, and would heartily recommend them to anyone else...
Other things today:
1. When Eric was handing out the cheese samples I was the only one who could identify that the Roquefort was actually from goat milk rather than cow.
2. There's a Thai festival across from St. Sulpice that we went to briefly.
3. We ran into someone we knew on the Metro last night -- the odds against that are off the charts.
Today we also went to an art exhibit. One of my friends from Viking Office Products days put me in touch with a friend of hers who lives here in Paris. A friend of hers was exhibiting at an art show. I imagine that we were the only Americans at this exhibit which was in a more residential very nice area of Paris, the 12th arrondissment.
My point about being the only Americans -- our apartment is in the 6th arrondissment and you cannot walk down the street without hearing someone speaking English. It is very easy to get by in this area speaking only English if that's what works for you.
We also went to learn a bit about cheese today. I hate to push this too much with superlatives, but it really was a fantastic thing to do. We've been to cheese tastings in LA, but this was at a new level! The city of Paris runs a program called "Meet the Parisians", http://en.parisinfo.com/paris_sightseeing/rub7865.html, and as Maxine put it, they are doing an terrific job recruiting Parisian participants.
There are tons of cheese stores in the city -- within a five minute walk I'd guess we have 10 stores that beat anything we can get to in LA. We went to the store for this class, "La Fromagerie De Paris" ('the cheese store of Paris'), without any particular expectations. It was something to do, a bit of a trek (30 minutes by metro) to get there, ... It turns out that the owner, Eric LeFebvre was the Parisian we would be meeting. He's a winner of the "Meilleur Ouvrier de France" for Cheese (basically this makes him one of the maybe 10(?) best informed cheese people in the country! This was beyond great! We spent about 1 1/2 hours there, learned about cheese, about what it took to win the MOF (he was quite modest and I had to ask him to tell us), went into the store's 'cave', and tasted 5 very different cheeses. If you enjoy cheese even just a little bit, this was a great thing to do; we're planning on going to more of these Meet The Parisians activities, and would heartily recommend them to anyone else...
Other things today:
1. When Eric was handing out the cheese samples I was the only one who could identify that the Roquefort was actually from goat milk rather than cow.
2. There's a Thai festival across from St. Sulpice that we went to briefly.
3. We ran into someone we knew on the Metro last night -- the odds against that are off the charts.
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