Another gloomy day, grey skies and rain -- realizing now that I had been spoiled the first few days I was here in Paris with such nice weather. Nonetheless, I had given myself an important quest to accomplish or at least set into motion today.
A coffee maker is provided in the apartment -- a nice looking one that requires that you insert a coffee capsule, close a lid, add water and press a button to brew a cup or two of coffee -- sounds simple or so the pictograph instructions would have you believe. Now, I like coffee, and I have a coffee machine at home (new out of the box with instructions), but I personally have never used it -- prefering to go "out" for a cup of coffee in the morning. A close friend of mine, who was visiting one evening, was actually the one who "deflowered" the thing and brewed it's first cups of coffee.
So here I was in Paris yesterday morning, having gotten tired of the two ounces of strong black water that passes for a "cup" of coffee here in the cafes, and decided -- it can't be that hard to work a coffee maker, after all, I have the instructions, right? The owner of the apartment (or someone) had provided a box of coffee capsules that looked llike they would work in the thing so how hard could it be to pop in one of the capsules, add water and relax wirth a full cup (or maybe two) of coffee? Answer: much harder than it should've been.
Prior to inserting the capsule, I closed the coffee maker lid to see how it closed, simple. Then I opened the lid back up and placed in one of the capsules as shown and tried to close the lid -- no dice, wouldn't close, so I tried spinning the capsule around while pressing down on the lid which only succeeded in ejecting the capsule straight at me out onto the countertop -- that strategy was apparently not going to work. Then, looking at the capsule, I realized it had a foil cover over the coffee grounds -- Plan B: take the foil cover off and reinsert the capsule -- unfortunately I couldn't see away to get the foil off so I took a sharp knife and carefuly cut the cover off exposing the grounds. Then, gingerly, so as not to spill the coffee, placed the capsule back into the machine figuring this had to be the solution and tried closing the lid -- next thing I knew there were coffee grounds all over the coffee maker the countertop, everything that was on the counter top and myself -- obviously Plan B wasn't such a good idea either. I cleaned up the mess on/in the coffee maker, the countertop and myself, unplugged the coffee maker, moved it aside and set myself a quest -- FIND a simpler device to use to make coffee. I had decided to find a "French press" -- a relatively simple device that I had used on a previous trip last year (and come to despise with a passion) but that now seemed to be my least, worse option.
So off I went this morning in the rain looking for my "solution" -- no French presses in the grocery stores, none in the cafes, people I asked where to get one gave me blank stares (might have been my French pronounciation, who knows). In desperation, I looked up "coffee Meet-Up groups in Paris" on the internet, and amazingly, one was meeting late morning at a cafe not far from the farmers' market from yesterday-- so off I went. Thus, my first expereince with a Meet-Up group in Paris.
Found the cafe, and learned the street numbering is different here -- in the States, you have even address numbers on one side of the street and odd numbers on the other -- here, you have an intersection of two streets, one of which has the shop on it that you are trying to locate -- once you reach that street, if you turn right, all of the addresses are odd numbers -- if you turn left, all of the addresses are even numbers -- so 50 rue de something is not directly across the street from 51 rue de something, it's three blocks in the opposite direction using that intersecting street as a dividing line (your guess as to how it got to be the dividing line is as good as mine).
Long story, short outcome -- I arrived late, only to find that I was the second person to show (the organizer was the first) -- apparently, large numbers of "no-shows" at Meet-Ups are an international constant! We chatted for a while, she's French but speaks English, likes coffee and decided to organize a coffee-drinking group -- she has about one hundred members including people from France and other countries. Fortunately, she gave me some ideas as to where to look for my French press (and a funny look probably as to why I wanted one). About forty five minutes later, a third person showed-up and I made my exit.
Today being Sunday, pretty much all of the "regular" stores are closed so will have to wait until tomorrow to see if I can complete my "quest". Swung by the farmers' market and bought a half flat of strawberries (big ones like they dip in chocolate and oh, so sweet!) that I had noticed yesterday (cost: about three dollars). Headed off to the other market that closed before I could get there yesterday -- turned out that it wasn't a "farmers' market" but an antiques market -- it was fun -- there were a number of items I would've liked, but again, they were too large to ever get back to the States -- some beautiful smaller pieces of furniture and old framed prints! Walked around the market for probably an hour and a half before the rain started coming down harder so called it a day and went back to the apartment where I enjoyed my lunch of strawberries while practicing my French lessons.
Working with Jqnis on uploading more photos -- may have a work-around solution -- have another 50-60 photos that I want to post.
