La Passage Moliere

Saturday, March 15. Still taking it easy. Walked around neighborhood. Not cold at all today.

There's a great movie theatre right around the corner from my apartment, on the north side of the Place Beaubourg (or more correctly, the Place Georges Pompidou). Can't believe I didn't find it in the fall. But now I've learned how to track these things down on the internet.

My building is also just a few steps away from the Passage Moliere (how fitting is that?), off of rue Saint Martin. There's a restaurant there that Camille had recommended but it appears to be closed for "travaux." No indication as to when it will reopen.

Also in the Passage Moliere is the Maison de la Poesie. They have regular readings staged and performed here, often by well-known actors. Right now there's a jazz-poetry festival going on, but in February, there was a 2-week run of a performance of Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol. I'd have given anything to have heard that in French! It's hard to imagine it in translation:

Yet each man kills the the thing he loves

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword.

Gives me the shivers. Looked up some museums on the internet. There are a few things I definitely want to make it to this time. Went to the market. Had a lemon tart from the patisserie on the first floor of this building - it was to die for!

This apartment is au troisieme etage, that is to say, on the fourth floor. There are 60 steps up to my apartment (as compared to 63 in other building), but much easier to climb because they are not as steep. The ceilings here are lower so 60 steps here is nothing like the 63 steps there. Unfortunately, not as much of an aerobic workout!

Janet McCeeVee called - it was great to hear from her. Working on some French grammar and starting to read L'Ecole des Femmes.

French iGoogle. The "page d'accueil" has options for just about anything you might want to put on your opening page: the weather, television program line-up, film info, recipes, les sorties de la semaine, Eiffel Tower web cam (!), verb conjugasion (apparently even the French need this), the joke of the day, an interesting factoid of the day, sports, and on and on. That's just for starters. You choose the ones you want, and then you can organize where each one appears on the page.