Saturday, April 26th, 2014

This is one of the few selfies I have ever taken.

Ellen and I arrived here in Paris a little over two weeks ago, and she went back to Oregon yesterday.  So now I'm on my own for a while.  I put on a scarf this morning to blend in more with the locals.

I went to a French-English conversation group, then I walked over to see the Palais Royale.  A large part of the colonnade (featured in the climactic chase scene in Charade) was walled off with plywood for repairs (I assume), but I took pictures anyway:

Ellen and I learned quickly that it's an old city and requires a lot of maintenance -- so you many not always see everything at its finest.

I then went to the Carnavalet Museum of history, and a large number of the rooms were closed, including those about the Revolution.  I was told that they only knew on a day to day basis which would be open (!).  I wasn't quite as sanguine about that, but it's free, so I guess they can get away with it.

The lovely building I'm in front of is a library, and you can see part of the wonderful garden also.  It had been a rainy day, but things were finally drying off, and I wondered if one could sit in this garden.  So I opened the little gate, sat down on a bench, and ate an orange.  By the time I finished, several other people had come into the garden to sit. 

I've just determined that this spot is on page 40 of the little book "Quiet Corners of Paris".  Nice to know that many of them are still quiet, despite being publicized.

I've been pretty quiet myself social media-wise, but since tomorrow is supposed to be another rainy day, I might stay in for a while and do some catching up.

*Content note:  For all the posts except this one, the date posted is given under the title.  The posts are in chronological order; I put fake dates into the blogger (behind the scenes) in order to have the posts come out oldest-first instead of newest-first.  Yes, that is actually the simplest way to do it.  The only drawback is that "older posts" and "newer posts" at the bottom of the pages will be reversed.