Paris and surroundings

We arrived

We arrived at the airport yesterday evening a little late, around 9:30. Bus to Paris and metro. At 11:30 we were in our apartment. Really nice and comfortable.

This morning groceries and settling into the house. A fifth of the money we had calculated for a month of groceries is already gone. Here everything is definitely more expensive.

The metro is a stone's throw from here.

We went crazy all day trying to find a power adapter with the French plug...in the end we did it!!! For now that's all from Paris.

Supermarket

We just got back from the supermarket. I really love going grocery shopping. It's one of those things that tourists don't do and that only "resident" Parisians really do. Plus it feels so "young couple living together" wandering around the various rayons looking for frozen foods, cold cuts, dairy products, meat, pasta... (don't be fooled! the French absolutely love pasta and you find the same brands and the same sizes as back home; the quality, moreover, is not inferior as was believed a few years ago). The products you find at the supermarket give you a sense of the situation of a people, or even just of a city. Here everything is in single-serving portions, or already ready for the microwave, this means that people are often alone and don't want to waste time cooking for themselves; this is because in Paris everyone runs. Always. Even at the table.

It's incredible the quantity of things you can find to make in the microwave in a matter of minutes: from couscous (to please the friends of color tied to tradition), to Cantonese rice (you have no idea how many Chinese there are here!). Okay, you'll say, back home too you find a lot of things to make in the microwave. Yes, but here you find twice as many, and all very exotic things. Personally I don't find it a negative thing, quite the opposite. In this way people are brought closer, even if in a very rough way, to other flavors and cultures. Maybe things back home would go a little better if in supermarkets you could find something typical, I don't know, Albanian, Tunisian or, I don't know, Dominican. Even food is a form of knowledge, and we know that knowledge defeats prejudice and ignorance.

Maybe that's why here, one way or another, everyone seems (and I stress seems) to live so well together??? Who knows... But it's not only at the supermarket that you can have a gastronomic encounter with other peoples: around town there are restaurants of every nationality: Thai, Greek, Lebanese... And in fact tonight I'm going to treat myself to my favorite culinary diversion: SUSHI!!! I'm already drooling... I promise that tomorrow you'll also see some photos and the review of this little restaurant we found through the internet (there's no escaping it, huh!) and that many recommend. We'll see.

Bercy

We like walking down the street and being mistaken for French and not tourists. We have our iPod in the metro, we don't have guidebooks, we're very relaxed on the street. We take the metro without checking all the stops and lines, we don't have bulky backpacks but only a bag with the bare essentials. We come home at whatever time we want and go out at whatever time we want. We like being here. Too much. Today we went to the Cinémathèque Française. A bit of a disappointment. From the country of the Nouvelle Vague I honestly expected a bit more. There are only things dating back to the early years of cinema, the Lumière brothers, Méliès and the first films. Nothing from the cinema of the '60s. Okay, you invented cinema, but you're the homeland of Breathless...

A real shame.

Then we went to the Mitterand National Library and wandered around Bercy. Then we went to the Latin Quarter again and this time we made it all the way to the Pantheon.

And tonight? Either we finally go to that pub/clinic, or we go see The Simpsons, or we go on the Seine. We'll only find out by living.