Merci beaucoup...

Bonjour!  Greetings from Paris!  My French is very limited.  My Spanish is pretty limited too, but at least I know some nouns and a few verbs.  Despite that I keep on trying to speak Spanish when some one speaks to me in French.  Bonjour, au revoir, miel si'l vous plait, and Merci beaucoup are about all I know and it seems to be enough thus far.  When I was here in the '80s very, very few French people spoke English and they could be quite rude about it.  This time around just about everyone speaks English and are happy to do so.  I'm told its a mix of English being the official language of business, the younger generations are learning English in school and are happy to talk to foreigners and they need our tourist dollars.  I'll take what ever I can get so long as I can communicate!


I haven't seen a yarn shop in Paris, though I did see one when we took a trip to the Burgundy area and went to the city of Dijon.  But I did see this great painting at the Musee O'rsay, note the cat playing with a ball of yarn on the bottom right, proof this woman was probably a knitter.

Musee O'rsay was originally a train station.  One of the best things about Paris, besides that there is art almost everywhere you look, is it's age.  This building is huge and the glass and iron ceiling is really beautiful, but when they began making larger and longer trains it was to small, so it was eventually turned into a museum.  


Just about every building here has had two or more functions before their final, or final for our era, use as a museum.  The Louvre is the perfect example, it was a fort, than a palace, it fell out fashion when Versailles was built, now a museum.

The O'rsay has two of these beautiful clocks, and that Ferris wheel is in the Jardin Des Tuileries by the Louvre.

And in the distance here you can just make out the Sacre'-Coeur.

This is the entrance to the Musee De L'Orangerie, you guessed it, this site was originally an orange grove.  Sadly I wasn't allowed to photograph the infinity shaped rooms of Monet's Water Lilies.  Its a relatively small museum and the Water Lilies is the main draw.  Its been open to the public since 1927!  The Cluny Museum was built on the ruins of the Lutecia's Roman Baths and was originally a mansion, it opened as a museum in 1844!  Again, I love the ages.


These pics are just my ramblings through the many neighborhoods I've walked through...

I love their "Curb Your Dog" signs, though not many people do, at least in our area!

Mmmmm chocolates, yummy pastries and desserts, everywhere!

After my visit to the Opera Garnier I went into the department store Au Printemps where they were selling a rainbow of toilet paper!  Remember pink and yellow TP from the '70s?  Leave it to the French to take it one step further.  They also had matching toilet scrubbers etc!

On my stroll to the Marais neighborhood, to see the Pablo Picasso museum (which I sorry to say was closed for renovations) I passed through Paris' pet store area.  Don't want to be bothered with caring for a real pet, get one of these life sized replicas.

Love Birds

Bunnies and Guinea Pigs getting along just fine.

Sadly the owner of this pet store would not let me take photos, he sold reptiles!  Boas in glass cases next to turtles and lizards, it was cool.

But this little guy was by far the cutest thing I saw all day.  This is my little dog Toffee's French Cousin Toffee' Fee'.

And this is the ceiling in the downstairs foyer at the Opera Garnier.  Garnier was the master of self promotion and he worked his name and his image in the art work at least 5 times, if you can read Latin this is Charles Garnier's name and dates when he built the Opera. 


And yesterday I waited in the very long line, over 2 hours because they only had one lift operating, and went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, no photos to share.  I've always wanted to do it, so I did!  With that out of my system I have no reason to ever go back to the ET!