Paris: An Okay City

To the left, a shot of one of the two carousels they have set up in front of the Hotel de Ville right now, next to the ice rink they built for yuletide revelers. B and I went out after it got dark to take pictures of Christmas decorations down on the Rue de Rivoli and discovered its extreme prettiness.

We've had two days of scampering about town; yesterday was a walk around the Marais followed by the afternoon in Montmarte. We found Charles Fourier's grave in the Montmarte Cemetery and took a buttload of pictures. Then we drank a lot of wine, ate bread + cheese, and watched some episodes of Top Chef that I got in a very legal manner.

Today we started slow, owing to afore-mentioned a lot of wine. We checked out the Cluny Museum (unicorns!) and Montparnasse (my favorite cemetery!) before running out of steam, buying food from the incompetent slobs at the Monoprix, and kicking our way through the tourists to get back to the apartment.

So here's the thing that I discovered yesterday: I like Paris now that B's here. I think it's really beautiful and neat. I continue to ignore the people and just pay attention to the streets and the shops and the monuments and the museums, and it's so much fun to do it all with B. Her deal is that she never really cared about France; she managed to dodge European history in school, she doesn't speak a word of French, so for all she cared we might as well be in Poland. That makes it so that neither of us really have any expectations; when things are beautiful and fun, great, and when they're not, screw it. We go back to the apartment and watch more Top Chef.

In short, it's nice that my last few weeks here will be happy ones and that I'll be able to look back at this weird-ass episode of my life with a more balanced set of memories. Yay for me.