To Market, To Market (Third Sunday in Paris)

I figure out how to work my new camera, then take the Metro to Bastille to meet up with Alison, David and Linda to check out the Sunday market. Gene is off to see the chateaux in the Loire Valley. They are leaving tomorrow.

Bastille Market. Last Sunday, I worshiped at The American Church. This week, I worship at the altar of food. The Bastille Market is vast, crowded, fabulous. Indescribable, of course. So much to see and smell. From now on, I'm going to do my weekly grocery shopping here! We wander around for a long time and stock up with: rabbit pate with pistachios, a perfectly ripe Brie, two kinds of bread (a baguette and a soft wheat bread with raisins, crusty on the top with sesame seeds), artichoke hearts swimming in olive oil, two kinds of olives, a wonderful tapenade, a spread made of cabillaud roe and creme fraiche, tomatoes, two chaussons aux pommes, and a kind of melon (charantais) that I was unfamiliar with but which Linda highly recommended, with good reason. We schlep it all back to my apt (taking the scenic route through the Place de Vosges and the Place du Marche de St Catherine) and have lunch on my dining table cum desk. It turns out that I have enough plates, bowls, serving things etc to accommodate all we have bought. Linda discovers that the big cutting board in the kitchen fits over the sink for additional workspace. I also fortunately have a bottle of red wine hanging around. My first guests! It was great fun and the food was fabulous if we do say so ourselves. :)

Later this afternoon: a nap. This evening: organizing things on my desk, throwing out newspapers, the usual Sunday evening details. Reading. Writing. French homework. A lovely warm day today (in the 70s), although it may be the last. Forecast is for much cooler weather and some rain.
Pedometer: 6,718.


Random Thoughts:

Today is the first day of autumn.

The cabillaud roe spread at the market caught my eye because it was bright pink (Linda said it looked like pink frosting, and it did). The little sign on it said "oeufs cabillaud." I couldn't figure out why it was pink, so I asked the seller what was in it. He said "cabillaud et creme fraiche." So I was still puzzled until later it dawned on me that "oeufs cabillaud" meant fish eggs, or roe. I had equated the word "oeufs" only with something that comes out of a chicken. Sometimes it takes a while for the light bulb to come on! I couldn't have picked out two more expensive things at the market (the artichoke hearts were 25 Euros per kilo and the cabillaud spread was 22 euros per kilo), but boy were they good! Fortunately, I bought only a small amount of each but even so, I experienced "sticker shock!"

The newest subway trains are completely open inside from front to back. The sides of the cars are joined by that rubbery stuff that you sometimes see connecting sections of very long buses in the US. It's nice because the crowd can move around more easily. It's funny, however, when the train is going around a curve and you see the cars ahead of you bending around!

Because the bottles are unfamiliar, I occasionally have picked up the wrong thing in the bathroom. The other day, I shampooed my hair with the liquid shower soap, and today I grabbed the shampoo instead of the lotion and started rubbing it into my hands. Well, at least they were clean.

"Black, black, black is the color," not of my true love's hair, but of my Parisian wardrobe.