Down the Rabbit Hole

Green

I hoofed all around the neighborhoods surrounding Park Montsouris the day before we left, taking pictures of ivy-covered buildings and the like. What is it about greenery that makes a person thirst for it...

Voila our building in the 14th, on the rue des Artistes. Our apartment, until tomorrow, is the window just above the red doors with the dead plants that actually look sort of autumn-harvesty if you don't think of them as dead. It's a quiet area for the most part, but with the occasional marauding gang, screaming couples (last night a woman shouted to her perhaps-cheating lover "Elle est la? Elle est la?" at least 423,000 times until someone leaned out a window and boomed "Oeeehhh!" which I assume is the 4 AM polite French way of saying "What the hell?"), and abundant garbage trucks. That said, I do love it here.

It doesn't mean you're lonely if you're alone in your apartment taking pictures of your own food before you eat it, does it? This is poulet roti, poireaux vinaigrettes (cooked, marinated leeks!) and a glass of Cote du Rhone, served chilled like they do in the summer here. At least one's not the hungriest number.

Cynthia and Lincoln, newly reunited, at a neighborhood bar where if you ask how much you owe, the waiter will say "Not very much."

Cynthia and I use this I'll-just-say-hideous-some-might-say-whimsical giant as a landmark, as its gaze follows the direction on the rue Tombe-Issoire that we take to get to our apartment. A brief junket to the World Wide Web offers so many differing historical explanations that I will choose my own like those other people did. The Giant Isore (I pronounce it "eyesore" out of spite) was a 13th-century, 15-foot-tall Portuguese giant who killed pilgrims somewhere around here, maybe the Park Montsouris, who were minding their own business. His surely very large bones might now be in the nearby Catacombs, or perhaps not. No matter which version of the Isore story you adopt, I'm baffled as to why this giant seemed like a logical choice to display so enormously on the side of a kindergarten.

Another restaurant I could have theoretically opened.

We are having trouble imagining what was happening in the board room when this ad for Orangina was conceived. It says "naturellement pulpeuse" which means "naturally pulpy" (a relief when referencing an orange juice product) but also means "naturally voluptuous." We get that hilarious pun. What we don't get is, who is the target audience for the hairy mud-flap deer in the red lingerie? And, how is the deer licking its chops and sucking on a straw at the same time? And why is she sitting on an ice cube? Any insights welcome.

A neighborhood cafe on the rue Daguerre. "Chope" means beer glass or stein. A la sante!

This is what an "apero-dinatoire" (translates as "a drink/aperitif with friends, with enough food that you probably would explode if you ate dinner afterward") looks like if you are the luckiest person ever. Cynthia and I met two charming women in the cafe shown above and one of them invited us over! I tried Martini Blanco and liked it.