Rained pretty much all day -- off and on -- instead of hunkering down in a warm place, I decided to call the rain "atmosphere" and go with the flow! Went shopping -- forgot my mouse for my computer and was starting to get carpel tunnel symptoms -- went to the local equivalent of "Best Buy" here and had a "European experience". Fnac, the store, occupies three stories in a huge shopping mall -- security guards wanding you to get in. The store was undergoing a renovation on the floor with the computer accesories and, instead of consolidating products in one area, they instead put floor to ceiling plastic tarps around the areas where they were working -- meaning you walked down long plastic lined corridors to get from section to section on that floor -- nothing was a straight line -- going a hundred feet involved taking three or four left and/or right turns. Somehow they thought this was efficient!
Wandered around the streets afterwards in a light, drizzly rain -- somehow felt exotic or romantic or European -- something you'd expect in Paris! Ended-up back at the apartment doing a laundry -- not quite so romantic!
But then it was off to the wine tasting class that I had signed-up for on Sunday. Turned-out there were only two of us -- myself and a guy, John, from Australia, so it was more like a private lesson than a class. The person teaching the class was the wine store owner (who also owns four restaurants in the area) and who was passionate about wine like you would expect a good Parisian to be! I "tip my hat" to William at DTFWS -- despite his corny jokes and insistance on rambling-on at times, he apparently knows what he's talking about -- not that these two agreed upon everything.
He talked about the different wine regions and appellations in France, the varietals of grape grown in each region, discussed the different approaches to wine making in France, the US and Australia, and, in general, advanced my knowledge of French wine by light-years. We tasted wine representative of each of the different regions of France -- none of which I especially cared for, but that wasn't the point, it was about de-mystifying wine making in France and identifying each region's strengths.
For example, in France, except in the Alsace region, wine makers don't list the varietals of grapes the wine was made from like they do in the States. So let's say you like Chenin Blanc wine -- in the States you'd look for a bottle with the words Chenin Blanc on the label -- in Europe, you need to know which areas of France grow that type of grape in order to know whether that bottle of wine you're holding in your hands is a Chenin Blanc or something else -- they don't list the type of grape on the label.
Since I've been in Paris, in the interests of cultural enlightenment, I may or may not have been averaging half a dozen bottles of wine a week -- enjoying some ond others not so much -- the class has been an eye-opener as to why and how to be more discriminating in the future. The class was well worth the money-- can't wait to get started applying what I've learned!
Last night, I started reading one of the very few books written about Parisian "ghosts" -- apparently ghosts (and Halloween) are not part of the French psyche/culture and even thought there are strange 'goings-on", no one talks or writes about them. Even though the book I'm reading is supposed to be "ghost" stories, it's more about strange and macabre events that have occured in Paris. My plan for part of tomorrow is to visit an area where hundred's of thousands of bodies were buried in the 1500-1800's -- and where today, people walk every day without realizing what lies beneath their feet -- sounds ghoulish, can't wait!
