Woke-up to another rainy, overcast day -- what a difference from Colorado weather! Got a slow start getting out, but eventually made it to the market -- was quite a ways away and took three Metro trains to get there -- wanted to try someplace different. For the next few days, I'm still on the east side of Paris -- the market was on the west side near the Eiffel Tower -- could see the Tower over the treetops as I headed for the market -- made it feel like I really was in Paris!.
This was a "nice-sized" market -- not too big and not too small, but it offered quite a bit of variety -- produce and fruit, three flower stalls, a guy selling entire sets of dishware, umbrellas, clothing, an antiques dealer, linens and cloth, bakery products and a poissonnaire selling fresh squid for those calamari fans out there!
This was a true neighborhood market -- by the time I arrived, many of the vendors were running low on merchandise -- I was looking to buy some more spinach and artichoke ravioli and had to settle for cheese and tomato. Spent some time talking with an Englishwoman, living in France, who had a forty acre apple orchard and was there selling apples and juice. Bought a bottle of apple juice just because she was so interesting. Also picked-up some pommes Dauphine for lunch -- puffed potato cakes -- not great but not bad (hey, they're potatoes, not a lot of flavor!) -- trying to sample local food when I can (and have the nerrve -- there's a bunch of stuff that falls into that category).
Went back to the Hotel de Ville -- wrote a little bit about it yesterday -- mistakenly said Joan d'Arc was put to the stake there -- not true, it was in Rouen -- Christine is keeping me honest! Sent her the inscription (in French) on the historic plaque I relied on -- talked about executions, fire and Saint Jean -- turned out to be refering to a different Saint Jean -- she cut me some slack!
Having problems with my email account at Yahoo again (rapidly coming to detest that company) -- when I first arrived in Paris, they froze my account for "suspicious" activity (my accessing my account in France) -- got it resolved and thought that would be that, only to have them freeze it again today for "suspicious" activity. Yahoo has no customer or technical support -- if they screw you over, they screw you over, end of story! Got lucky the first time getting it to work, hope I can somehow do it again.
Have company arriving this weekend so may cut back on the daily updates for the next week or so -- I expect to be distracted! We'll be spending some time in Belgium so will do my best to put up some photos.
