Gardens, groceries,and Galeries by Jenni

I could get used to walking around the corner and picking up fresh pain au chocolat and croissants for breakfast. In fact, I have gotten used to it. Today I added two orange brioche buns and some fresh watermelon and cherries from the fruit market across the street. 

Louis, the agent for the apartment, came by to finish the explanations that we wouldn't have remembered at 7:30 yesterday morning, anyway, including the demonstration of how to reset the modem when the internet goes wonky. He chose to show that to Emma. I think David and I are officially old and doddering now.

Emma wanted to see the Jardin du Luxembourg, so off we went. Travel with teenagers: let the wookee win whenever possible. It was really no great sacrifice to wander around the gorgeous garden and watch Emma enjoy it all.

I think she got better pictures than I did. We'll have to wait for her vlog before we know for sure.

After lunch at a cafe near the Sorbonne, we set out for Galeries Lafayette, which took us back to the Batobus, a very civilized way to get around town.

Those of you who watched Friends will remember when Rachel got a job at Saks and Phoebe said "It's like the mother ship is calling you home". That was Emma. She was home. We wandered around the high-end floors for a while, gawked at the ceiling and balconies, which I could not photograph every well

 (trust me, it's MUCH more impressive than that) and managed to find three items to purchase. I'm sure we have lots of shopping ahead of us.

Back  in "our" neighborhood late in the afternoon, we stopped at a store to pick up some wine and some snacks to keep at the apartment. We discovered that we'd wandered into the French version of Whole Foods - Bio c' Bon (in French, "organic" is "biologique", amusingly enough). We'll see how the two bottles of inexpensive wine taste. David's already enjoyed some of the cured smoked ham and "pain complet" (we think that means "whole wheat").

We had dinner near the Seine, arriving just as the restaurant opened at 7:00 PM. Europeans must think we Amreicans eat at a barbarously early hour. We left the restaurant after dinner and strolled over to the Ile St. Louis for ice cream at Andino's.

Berthillon, the oldest of the fine ice cream shops on Ile St Louis, is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. We'll have to go back. What a shame.

Emma's vlogging plan has been thwarted by the internet here, which seems to throttled down on big uploads. You'll have to make do with me.

So far, Emma has been impressed by the general hunkitude of French men and boys and their taste for fashion. She's also enjoying the palaces. As we walked by the Louvre, she said "This WHOLE THING was their house"? David said "Yup". Emma said "That doesn't seem fair". David said "Yes, that's what the people who started the French Revolution thought, too". Emma has also discovered that American top 40 music rules, even in France. And she doesn't like it any better when her parents stop and read historical markers in France than she does in the US. She may like it less, since we read them out loud in translation, pooling our meager French vocabularies. Oh, well. If you can't embarrass your kid in public, what's the point of being a parent?

Its 9:50 and it's still just about full daylight. Time to sort out plans for tomorrow - maybe Versailles. 

A demain!