Food Stores, Oranges, Small World, Etc.
First off, food... It really is an obsession here. (OK, we're feeding into that obsession by some of the things we're doing while we're here, but it is very accessible...). Specialty food choices are everywhere. Bakeries, chocolate & pastry shops, coffee shops, cheese stores -- everywhere! But, there also happens to be one particular area where a lot of the very good stores have ended up locating, called Place Madelaine. I went there the other day to check out the following stores:
* La Maison de Miel -- sells only honey and honey products
* La Maison de la Truffe -- same for truffles
* La Boutique Maille -- same for mustard
and, if you want a more general purpose 'grocery' store, Madelaine has two choices:
* Fauchon and Hediard -- both are to grocery stores as Beverly Hills is to Detroit
Second topic for this particular blog, transportation. We continue to marvel at the usefulness of our "Carte Orange" (see, I wasn't going to talk about food when I mentioned Oranges in the subject of this blog). For roughly $70/month we can travel anywhere within Paris, on either the subway (Metro) or the very extensive bus system. When we left LA it was costing about $60 to fill up my car with a tank of gas, so this seems like a bargain. We'd recommend either the weekly or monthly Carte Orange to anyone coming to the city. The alternative at the other end of the system, buying a single trip ticket for $1.70 (needing to spend $3.40 for a roundtrip) makes you think twice before you go somewhere. With the Carte Orange, you can hop on the Metro and go cross town to check out another chocolate store...
Third topic, small world instances. We went to Rosh Hashanah services Friday night. The rabbi came over to welcome us as visitors. We mentioned that we were from LA and he asked where in LA -- it turned out that he'd lived in Studio City (the next town over from us) for a while when he was studying. In another small world instance, we've twice run into people we knew from other circumstances. In one case, on the Metro we bumped into someone we knew. In the other, we were at a cafe and ran into someone we knew.
* La Maison de Miel -- sells only honey and honey products
* La Maison de la Truffe -- same for truffles
* La Boutique Maille -- same for mustard
and, if you want a more general purpose 'grocery' store, Madelaine has two choices:
* Fauchon and Hediard -- both are to grocery stores as Beverly Hills is to Detroit
Second topic for this particular blog, transportation. We continue to marvel at the usefulness of our "Carte Orange" (see, I wasn't going to talk about food when I mentioned Oranges in the subject of this blog). For roughly $70/month we can travel anywhere within Paris, on either the subway (Metro) or the very extensive bus system. When we left LA it was costing about $60 to fill up my car with a tank of gas, so this seems like a bargain. We'd recommend either the weekly or monthly Carte Orange to anyone coming to the city. The alternative at the other end of the system, buying a single trip ticket for $1.70 (needing to spend $3.40 for a roundtrip) makes you think twice before you go somewhere. With the Carte Orange, you can hop on the Metro and go cross town to check out another chocolate store...
Third topic, small world instances. We went to Rosh Hashanah services Friday night. The rabbi came over to welcome us as visitors. We mentioned that we were from LA and he asked where in LA -- it turned out that he'd lived in Studio City (the next town over from us) for a while when he was studying. In another small world instance, we've twice run into people we knew from other circumstances. In one case, on the Metro we bumped into someone we knew. In the other, we were at a cafe and ran into someone we knew.
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