It rained Friday in Paris, a comfortable, cool, gentle, light rain, with no wind, which made it easy and delightful to walk around the city with an umbrella.  It also made for a great day for sleeping in, the clouds veiling the sun and the the rain veiling the sounds of the city.  So we stayed in bed a long time, then got up and drank coffee and watched the Olympics on French TV.  (The big news here is the gold medal won by the French handball team.  I’d never heard of team handball before, but it’s an interesting sport to watch, sort of a combination of basketball and soccer without the feet.  I kept thinking as I was watching what would happen if you had the likes of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant playing handball; I think Les Bleues would not know what hit them.)  In the afternoon we went in search of a book that Will needs for his English class at Newman in Santa Rosa, a search that was difficult and ultimately fruitless, but which took us all through the picturesque quarter across the Seine from Notre Dame, charming in the rain (which cut down considerably on the tourists).  We were also unsuccessful in finding Andrew new shoes (none under 50 euros appeal to him, and that’s a nonstarter as far as Dad is concerned), but nevertheless we had a very relaxing, enjoyable rainy day.

Saturday was wonderful.  The morning arrived sunny, the rain having passed through during the night and left in its place a cool, fresh, clean, clear day that seemed just like autumn, especially because, two months after the summer equinox, the sun is lower now in the sky, casting longer shadows even in midday.  But more even than the weather, Saturday was wonderful because (1) we accomplished something pretty cool in the morning and (2) we had an excellent excursion around Paris — sans enfants! — in the afternoon.

The cool thing we did in the morning involved our television.  Our apartment came with a TV that has a pathetically tiny screen.  It was so small, and the sound coming out of it was so bad, that watching TV had become a chore; you couldn’t seem to get close enough to it to really see anything.  So we had for a week or so been looking for a used TV, mostly on the Paris ‘Craigslist’ site (yes, there is one, it’s here).  Early on Friday morning I had gone on the site and, voila, there was a brand new listing for someone selling a used 19 inch color TV for 25 euros.  I e-mailed the guy, he called me right back, and I arranged to come to his apartment in the 7th arrondissement at 11:00 a.m. to pick it up.

But we had a problem — a transport problem or, rather, a lack-of-transport problem.  It would be possible to carry the TV onto the Metro and transport it that way, but that would be difficult (especially with the stairs and the small turnstyles) and would look stupid also.  But I came up with a solution — I thought that a 19 inch TV would just fit into one of our larger soft-sided suitcases, which had a set of wheels on one end that we could use to roll the TV around rather than carry it.  I also concluded that if push came to shove, we could simply take a taxi back, and avoid the difficulty of carting the TV into and out of the Metro.

So we set off for the 7th, on a glorious, glorious morning, arriving at the apartment (a gorgeous building in an upscale part of Paris, which lessed considerably our concern that we might be dealing with stolen property [also, as Suzie pointed out, the TV came with its instruction manual, which negates the possibility of a theft, unless the theves were very, very good indeed]).  We called the seller and he came down several minutes later with the TV, which, although bigger than I thought it would be, did in fact just barely fit into the bag with the wheels on it.  However, it was immediately evident that the Metro wasn’t going to happen; the TV was just too heavy and too unwieldy in the bag.  But, I had also located ahead of time the nearest taxi stand, which was only 3 blocks away, so we wheeled the bag with the TV in it, me on one side and Suzie on the other, down the Parisian sidewalks, drawing not as many looks as we would have expected.  There were taxis waiting at the taxi stand (even though you hear constantly about the dearth of taxis in Paris), and the trip back to our apartment was quick and cheap — 7.50 euros.  We took the TV up the elevator (which at first we thought might be non-operational yet again), hooked it up to the Livebox, plugged it in, and got it to work.  The picture is great, the sound is great, and we were very satisfied with ourselves for having acquired something that will greatly improve our remaining time here for 32.50 euros.

The boys wanted to go off on their own, so we gave them Metro tickets and sent them on their way (Andrew skateboarding, Will filming).  This left the afternoon — the sunny, cool, bright afternoon — to me and Suzie alone, so we decided to randomly explore an area of Paris that we’d never seen before.  On the Metro at Denfert-Rochereau, off the Metro at Reaumur-Sebastopol, we walked north toward the 10th, through a neighborhood that seemed to be somewhat transitional.  We saw unexpected things:  an oversized arch monument, a pretty church on a hill.

On our way to the latter, we stopped in a small restaurant and had a pleasant, slow lunch (pesto pizza for me, simple but delicious, a salad for Suzie, not the best, too much dressing).  And the entire time, we were speaking in French, or at least we were using French words all the time (a Frenchman overhearing us might have a cause of action against us for our gross violations against his native language).  A very good exercise, enjoyable also, and we were able (remarkably) to communicate quite a bit.

After lunch, we walked southwest, though a very pretty neighborhood.

On our way, we saw something that I’d noticed a number of times before, but never understood. Often when walking around Paris, there would be times when there would be water gushing out of metallic openings on the curb, then running down the gutter.

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I always thought that it was some sort of unintentional overflow, but on Saturday I found its purpose. This is the way the sidewalks get cleaned! The worker sweeps debris over the curb, into the running water, which carries it away who-knows-where.

Now in defense of the Ville de Paris, there seems to be no shortage of water around here, and it should be noted that the label on the outlet on the curb says “Eau Non Potable” (and where does that come from?). But still, it seems a strange way to clean the sidewalks.

As we continued our walk, we saw a couple of other strange things. This, for instance:

Suzie and I couldn’t decide if this box-on-stilts was replacement housing for the residents of the building (my idea) or housing and construction-space for the workers on the project (Suzie’s idea), but in either case I haven’t seen anything like this before.

Then there was this sign — the Milk House!

We ended our trip at another pretty place we’d never seen — the Place d’Estienne d’Ovres, and its green, wooded plaza surrounding the Trinity Church.

That ended our very pleasurable afternoon jaunt. Suzie and I both ended the day very happy, thinking that we have a very good life in Paris. At least on this day.

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Categories: Travel -- France