Post by LHR02 on Jun 25, 2005 11:21:32 GMT -5
Hello all:
So yesterday I managed to sleep all of one hour during the day. I then had to get ready in a groggy stupor. Good news is I managed to effectively do so and got to Place St. Michel on time. As usual it was filled with people just milling about. That's something the Parisians seem very adept at doing. Just finding a relatively open space and chilling. How many times do we do that in North America? I would hazard almost never -- particularly in highly urbanized areas.
Anywayz, Laila and I found each other without incident. I should mention though that our "hello" hugs were quite tempered by the amount we were both sweating. We then headed off to find a place to eat. Right beside St. Michel is a little series of alley ways (filled with very un-hygenic restaurants) that people often mistakingly assume is the Latin Quarter. Not so my friends, not so . . . The Latin Quarter refers to the entire are of the 5th and the 6th. Basically that's the are where the universities where (and a lot of schools are still there) and since Latin was the language spoken by the locals it acquired that name. Problem is since tourists assume that those alley-ways are the Latin Quarter they choose to eat there. Big mistake. It's an easy way to get sick. Knowing this, Laila and I instead headed to this small Crepe place I used to visit often when I was last here. Of course the humming of multiple fans helped to lure us in.
I had a ham and cheese crepe but managed to talk so much my cheese got cold and sort of coagulated. Still good though. After a while we decided to wander back out into the blistering heat. Destination? Amorino (http://www.amorino.fr) Seriously, I happen to think that the best gelato in the world is at this place. I happily discovered it last time I was here, it was very new back then, and was oh so looking forward to returning. To get there we walked through the 6th. It was full of people out and about - many of them shopping. It appears that as luck would have it yesterday was the beginning of the semi-annual sales in Paris. So the fashionistas were out in droves.
The ice cream place was packed. No surprise given how gelato can really hit the spot on a hot day. We took our gelato and headed up towards the Seine. We ended up hitting the Pont des Arts. Basically it's a wooden, pedestrian, foot bridge that connects the Left Bank (at the Institut de France) with the Right Bank (at the Louvre). It's a seriously popular place with the locales and one where the art of milling about is practiced. Parisians tend to like to have picnics there. They bring their fruit, drinks, cheeses, and the obligatory wine and hunker down for a meal. And don't think that the groups are small. Nope. Yesterday, in fact, there was one group of about a dozen people celebrating something. They were even having champagne in portable little flutes. Laila and I just took a seat on the floor of the bridge though and chilled. Often you get a cold breeze coming in from the river and that's what we were hoping to catch. Indeed, we did get a bit of breeze but not nearly enough as I had hoped.
Either way I had a seriously good time with Laila. Funny how it has been about a year and a half since I saw her last and we just fell right back into step. It's a good thing too 'cause I'll be visiting Denmark (and her) after my time here is done.
Eventually I came back to the Cite. I slept relatively well last night. Although I was awoken by hail at one point in the evening. Today I will go buy a fan (priority number one) and probably explore the Cite Universitaire a bit before heading out and meeting some of my fellow classmates in front of Notre Dame.
Signing out for now,
A Canadian in Paris
posted Saturday, 25 June 2005
So yesterday I managed to sleep all of one hour during the day. I then had to get ready in a groggy stupor. Good news is I managed to effectively do so and got to Place St. Michel on time. As usual it was filled with people just milling about. That's something the Parisians seem very adept at doing. Just finding a relatively open space and chilling. How many times do we do that in North America? I would hazard almost never -- particularly in highly urbanized areas.
Anywayz, Laila and I found each other without incident. I should mention though that our "hello" hugs were quite tempered by the amount we were both sweating. We then headed off to find a place to eat. Right beside St. Michel is a little series of alley ways (filled with very un-hygenic restaurants) that people often mistakingly assume is the Latin Quarter. Not so my friends, not so . . . The Latin Quarter refers to the entire are of the 5th and the 6th. Basically that's the are where the universities where (and a lot of schools are still there) and since Latin was the language spoken by the locals it acquired that name. Problem is since tourists assume that those alley-ways are the Latin Quarter they choose to eat there. Big mistake. It's an easy way to get sick. Knowing this, Laila and I instead headed to this small Crepe place I used to visit often when I was last here. Of course the humming of multiple fans helped to lure us in.
I had a ham and cheese crepe but managed to talk so much my cheese got cold and sort of coagulated. Still good though. After a while we decided to wander back out into the blistering heat. Destination? Amorino (http://www.amorino.fr) Seriously, I happen to think that the best gelato in the world is at this place. I happily discovered it last time I was here, it was very new back then, and was oh so looking forward to returning. To get there we walked through the 6th. It was full of people out and about - many of them shopping. It appears that as luck would have it yesterday was the beginning of the semi-annual sales in Paris. So the fashionistas were out in droves.
The ice cream place was packed. No surprise given how gelato can really hit the spot on a hot day. We took our gelato and headed up towards the Seine. We ended up hitting the Pont des Arts. Basically it's a wooden, pedestrian, foot bridge that connects the Left Bank (at the Institut de France) with the Right Bank (at the Louvre). It's a seriously popular place with the locales and one where the art of milling about is practiced. Parisians tend to like to have picnics there. They bring their fruit, drinks, cheeses, and the obligatory wine and hunker down for a meal. And don't think that the groups are small. Nope. Yesterday, in fact, there was one group of about a dozen people celebrating something. They were even having champagne in portable little flutes. Laila and I just took a seat on the floor of the bridge though and chilled. Often you get a cold breeze coming in from the river and that's what we were hoping to catch. Indeed, we did get a bit of breeze but not nearly enough as I had hoped.
Either way I had a seriously good time with Laila. Funny how it has been about a year and a half since I saw her last and we just fell right back into step. It's a good thing too 'cause I'll be visiting Denmark (and her) after my time here is done.
Eventually I came back to the Cite. I slept relatively well last night. Although I was awoken by hail at one point in the evening. Today I will go buy a fan (priority number one) and probably explore the Cite Universitaire a bit before heading out and meeting some of my fellow classmates in front of Notre Dame.
Signing out for now,
A Canadian in Paris
posted Saturday, 25 June 2005