Our last two weeks alone in Paris (up to July 30) :
• Interviewed the manager/director of the cinéma Archipel. Very well-prepared and eloquent woman who gave us an informative interview, patching up gaps in our familiarity with the scene.
• Indulged in a personal Potterfest. Watched 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 at home and went to the fancypants MK2 Bibliothèque to see Harry Potter et le Prince du Sang-Mélé. Majorly impressive. Also picked up Season three of Dynastie, which Margaret’s been hunting for months.
Then, as we wanted to do it together, spend like two full days lying around the house listening to HP7 in audiobook form. Tried listening to the Snapecast emanating from some hive of nerdwhackers via iTunes, but it was too unsettling.
• Got lost strolling through the Bois de Boulogne (couple of miles of forest preserved along the west side of the city) and explored Neuilly-sur-Seine all the way across the river again to la Défense. Waded in the little modern pool and talked for ages. Perused the shapely skyscrapers and popped into Auchan to get fixings for dinner.
• Had a couple of friendly run-ins with our upstairs neighbor, M. Bouchard, who is a retired architect and would-be music conductor. He’s lived in Paris all his life and is always happy to educate us on the structural technicalities of the different historic quartiers. We learned that the little mini-court section of our building which has been full of noisy construction workers this whole time was intended to give fresh air to bathroom and kitchen windows and be a suitable place for shaking rugs, sheets, etc. (as shaking above other people’s living room or bedroom windows has, logically, been forbidden for 150 years or so). Yeah, turns out our building is pre-Haussman, which is to say it was built around 1840 or 1850. You can apparently distinguish it by the wooden shutters, something which more or less ceased with the massive citywide facelift which the prefect Baron Hausmann executed under orders of Emperor Napoleon III.
• Interview with the directrice of the Grand Action, a cinéma showing only American and Italian classics from the 50s, 60s, 70s. Rivaled our last for PR erudition and was terribly terribly kind to us. Shot some really good things.
• Lots of walking around the Latin Quarter. One evening got caught in a downpour and waited it out in three different bookstores.
• Interview with the longtime proprietor of the Studio 28, perhaps the oldest independent cinema in Paris and the only remaining one in Montmartre. Outdid even the last for showmanship and preparation. These French entrepreneurs are certainly good at their extemporaneous.
• Returned to use the free admission we’d been gifted on La Rumeur (The Children’s Hour) at the Grand Action. Audrey was powerful, but Shirley was powerful-er.
• I may have mentioned the budgetingbudgetingbudgeting. Decided to leave Vienna a week earlier and stay in NYC for a couple of extra days so that we can spend more time in Dallas and possibly camp one night in Southern Utah before reclaiming our Provo nest. This way we’ll have a chance to do some unpacking and laundry before school, whereas my previous plan would’ve had me attending my first class at BYU
unhitching our trailer.
• The Summer Budget and Fall Budget
(oh, the exciting photos he posts!)
• The Save My GPA Budget
I finally sat down and figured out how to calculate grades in order to know what I need to earn in each class. Didn’t worry about it before, when I had 3.8. Now that’s it’s 3.55, though, I’m compelled to scramble if I’m to graduate with a 3.7ish. I hate you, American Heritage, HEPE, and Jiu-Jitsu class which broke my foot and hurniated 3 discs in my back.
• The Health Budget
Empowerment! We decided to learn how to count calories consumed and burned and make the required adjustments to feel… not gross. Things were great all last year, but then Thanksgiving, engagement stress, Christmas, birthday, wedding, honeymoon, planning stress, and european bakeries all happened. Margaret hasn’t been hit too badly, but would still like to feel better. I, on the other hand, nearly re-am the walrus I was before my mission – and that just won’t do.
We’ve become aware of the Common Denominator Phenomenon, a universal law even when one individual is feeling particularly energetic or ambitious, unless his/her partner feels the same way at the same time, it will require not only the original momentum (s)he barely summoned (s)himself, but twice that in order to get the both on their feet. As a result, groups tend to perform at the lowest common denominator (LCD), slowing down for the Sunday driver, easing up on the weak link, etc. WELL, we’ve identified the trend and are setting out to reverse it, dragging each other to go jogging, read scriptures, do homework, or whathaveyou even and especially when one half of the team protests – the idea being that marriage is intended to challenge and refine two lifestyles into one operating at the Highest Common Denominator (HCD). [ For those concerned, I have registered these newfangled terms with the Pan-Occidental Cooperative Association for Newfangled Layman's Terms and Wordforgery, more commonly known as the POCANLTW. ]
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• Spend a Sunday afternoon exploring most of the 1st Arrondissement on foot, going through the Marais neighborhood for a second-to-last Hebrew meal at l’As du Falafel (“The Ace of Falafels”… Lenny Kravitz recommends it). Discovered the romantic qualities of strolling along the borders of the Seine river at night, smooching under the peer pressure of passing tour boats and gazing at the lights’ watery reflections. Went all around the Île St. Louis, Île de la Cité and Notre-Dame, and up up up.
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• Decided upon a favorite place to stand and stare and the end of the day : the Pont Royal, with its views of practically everything and the sunset filtering through the dome of the Grand Palais.
• With only a few days left before my godmother, Leila, and her ward friend/ward-friend, (Sister) Gail (Christensen), arrived, we resolved to walk the most of it. Revisited the pathways along the edge of the Seine virtually every night, hitting up the Latin Quarter for some sort of provision and then picnicking on some bench or bridge or other. Our candle-lit evening of champagne flutes and Crazy 8s (using the Hansi playing cards we found in Strasbourg) would’ve been super cozy, if the candles hadn’t attracted 1 out of every ten passersby – ‹‹C’est quoi, une séance de spiritisme?›› One space-invading drunkversation later, we witnessed a pack of cops lose their arrest when he bolted along the quai and up the stairs 4 or 5 at a time. French cops may be leaner than US cops, but they’re still no match for a young black dude under pressure.
• Perhaps the best date night was seeing Pixar’s new Là-Haut (Up) in 3D at the MK2 Bibliothèque, then exploring our way clear to the Pont Neuf, where we huddled up in one of the public nooks to watch Dynasty on our laptop while eating a pizza we’d acquired on the way. Tried to put out more candles, but it was too windy.
• The end of July brought the beginning of what the history books will call l’Époque des Vielles Dames. Picked them up at Charles de Gaulle and taxi-ed them back to the Étap in St.Ouen. Showed them our little flat and then hustled to catch the last Bateau-Mouche for a late-night river cruise. Shepherded the poor ladies along faster than they could manage and still got to the boat just as the whistle blew. So sad. Sat outside a sandwich joint on the Champs-Élysées instead. As the métro had gone to bed for the night, put them in another taxi and walked home, ourselves.
- Ch. 2 : Montmartre, Eiffel, Croisière
- Ch. 3 : Sent to Louvre, Sainte Chapelle, QL café
- Ch. 4 : Driving Champs-Élysées, Lyon
- Ch. 5 : Genève, Yvoire, Montreux
- Ch. 6 : Neuch, Bern
- Ch. 7 : Fribourg, Gruyères, Lauterbrunnen
- Ch. 8 : Trummelbach falls, Lucerne, Zürich
- Ch. 9 : Lake drive, Liechtenstein, Garmisch, München
- Ch. 10 : Hohenschwangau & Neuschwanstein
- Ch. 11 : the drop-off
Berchtesgaden, Salzburg, Linz, Vienna, Brno, Slovakatastrophe (jibberish sandwich)
