Today was the Louvre

Unfortunately Penny had to wake me up this morning. It was 9 am and I was still sound asleep. So much for getting early starts. I think we got out of the house around 10:30 and had cafe au lait and croissants/brioche/pain aux raisins at the neighborhood boulangerie/patisserie: Miss Manon. Fernando was shocked to be billed 20 euros, especially since we had paid 15 euros for our dinner of falafels the night before. So I think he will be satisfied with coffee and croissants at home from now on.

Then we started walking down the Rue Saint Antoine to the Louvre, passing shops where I wasn't able to stop, except for one Spanish store Zara. Here's the gmap pedometer map of where we went, where the walk was 5.13 miles, not counting the Louvre.

When we got to the Louvre there was a long line towards the pyramid with a guard holding a sign saying that from that point it was a 1 hour wait. He was also asking people if they spoke French and if so he told them they could go to a different entrance. So we followed the French speakers to the Carousel du Louvre, which is a shopping center connected to the Louvre where there really wasn't a line at all. But first we needed to find a bathroom, les toilettes, but couldn't find one anywhere. Finally a woman showed us to a swanky pay toilet with colored toilet paper for 1 euro. Kind of steep but we were desperate. (Later we found there were free toilettes inside the Louvre.)

We spent a couple of hours in the Italian and French section of the Louvre - saw the Mona Lisa and works by David, Ingres and Delacroix. And we saw lots and lots of people, old and young. I think we took plenty of photos so you can see some of what we saw. By then it must have been 2:30 so we decided to eat in the mall's food court. Penny and I split a dish of roast lamb, carrots and ratatouille (Fernando had his own). It would be nice if American malls had equally good fast food.

Then we came back out of the Louvre, walked over towards Rue Montorgueil and tested out one of the automatic toilettes in the street. It was quite satisfactory except for the hand dryer and the amount of time one had to wait for the toilette to disinfect itself between users.

We visited the cookware store E. Dehillerin and almost bought that big stock pot that Camila needed. Then we went into the food store G. DeTout but didn't buy anything except a few chocolate bars. I'd like to buy some Kushti tea because the tins are so pretty but it is rather expensive.

We had the best time on rue Montorgueil, going into the produce markets where we bought strawberrries, a cucumber, heart-shaped red potatoes, and purple artichokes. Fernando picked up some boudin noir (blood sausage) and head cheese at a boucherie and finally we picked up two kinds of cheese at a fromagerie. This was our dinner. It was about 2 miles from there home and we still had to pick up some wine and bread for dinner and milk for breakfast so we stopped at our neighborhood monoprix, which is a supermarket just a block away.

Tomorrow we might pick up a roast chicken for dinner -- or maybe we should make an omelet with these huge champignons we bought the first day. Then we'll boil our artichokes and undoubtedly find even more food that we can't resist. I better check when the markets are. Maybe Penny and I can run out tomorrow morning to the Bastille market...