It's a little after three in the afternoon and it's turned really windy and cold -- just looked out the window a few minutes ago to see a mix of sleet and snow flurries happening outside (this is April in Paris?) Now the sun has come out and blue skies. Thought I was back in Colorado for a minute.
Earlier I got out and took the Metro/walked to the American Embassy -- it's a large building on a small street not shown on any of the tourist maps -- did my normal strategy of wandering the neighborhood until I get to where I need to be -- didn't work this time -- had to stop and ask a security guard for directions at one of the other embassies in the area.
Battle gear wearing French police all over the area near the American Embassy and long lines of people waiting for their "appointment" time to approach the first checkpoint -- you can't even get near the building itself without passing through at least two security checkpoints -- they have a small tent set-up on the street for the first checkpoint -- never got past that -- French nationals working security told me to email or send a letter to accomplish my busniness -- that was it, "next"..... -- they were much nicer than LA but very businesslike. You kow you're not in "Kansas" anymore!
Having accomplished pretty much nothing at the Embassy, I moved on. There's a large formal garden dating to the 1600's -- Jardin des Tuileries -- just a few blocks away and my plan was to tour the Musee de l'Orangerie -- a museum housing a large modern art collection (Monet, Cezanne, Picasso, Renoir, Modigliani, etc...) -- realized that I need to start checking when these places are open -- yep, it's closed on Tuesdays. Ended-up walking through the Garden -- things are just starting to come into bloom so it was just nice and not spectacular -- can see how it would be a romantc place to stroll on a warm, sunny afternoon with someone special -- maybe a place to revisit in a few weeks. Took some photos, but the blog's website is back to it's bugginess today concerning downloading photos -- will try later.
Came back to the apartment to do a load of laundry -- yippee! But I'm lucky, a large percentage of Parisians apparently have to drag their wash to the laundromat every week and my apartment has a washing machine, small but good enough for one or two people.
Have only been here a week but am already realizing Paris is a walking city -- have to admit it was intimidating at first, it seemed so large and crazily spread-out, but the more I explore, the more I start to see how it all comes together. There are places that are too far and you need to take the Metro to reach, but so much of it simply "runs into" each other. I'm in an area they refer to as east Paris but am only a half mile or so (if you know where you're going) from the Bastille or French Quarter areas which are only another mile or so from the Eiffel Tower area and so forth. The realization hit this morning me when I got off the Metro at the Place de la Concorde where there aren't so many tall buildings and you have sightlines -- I could see Eiffel Tower across the Seine and down a ways and in the other direction was the Jardin des Tuileries and I knew from previous walks that the Garden bordered on the Louvre and the Louvre was fairly near Les Halles in one diretion and the Ave des Champs-Elysees in the other and the Champs was only a short way from the Arc de Triomphe, and so on -- it was a real revelation as to how things are connected and made Paris seem more like a whole than simply a bunch of unconnected neighborhoods.
Well, the sun is gone and the clouds are back -- no time like the present to do my daily grocery shopping -- learning that with the relatively high humidity here, "fresh" means about two days before things get brown and fuzzy!
