I'm Not Good with Goodbyes

I know 3 months is a short time to call a place home but Paris was that; more so than anywhere else we'd been in our crazy adventure. Of course we had copious amounts of the foods we've come to love. Ah, chiboust I will miss you so. And what will our friendly waiter at O'Jilou think when he notices the Americans aren't coming by to butcher his native language anymore? How will I ever get by without my gelato fix at Amorino? It seems cruel to separate me from Fauchon so soon. Sure the departure was largely self imposed but it was time to move on and bring the travel to a close. At least we were leaving on our terms. Next time we go to Paris it would be to live there. But for now, au revoir.

Starbucks will never make it in Europe...

We headed into the Latin Quarter tonight for the beginning of a two week jazz festival. There's a few shows most nights in different venues and a bunch of the small ones are free. Very cool and cultural and Parisian, right?
There were 4 concerts tonight and 3 of them were in a Starbucks. The Latin Quarter isn't all that big, but there are at least 4 of Seattle's best affront to the Old World in place.
Welcome to the Americanification of Europe. Buy Starbucks stock.

Singing The Baguette Blues

We both love the bread in Europe. A warm baguette with lots of super crunchy crust and moist fluffy innards makes any day better.
Most mornings, I run across the street to get a fresh baguette and then fry up some bacon and eggs to complete a perfect brunch. Yes 'brunch'. It's light out until nearly 10pm here, so we're night owls these days.
So the whole daily fresh baguette thing is great and all, but we've discovered that the grass is not always greener. Several times now, we've bitten into (and been bitten back by) squishy, dense or otherwise boring bread. It's horrible. We're not in Milpitas; this is Paris. We have expectations to be met. The bread should -always- be crisp and yummy.
We've boiled down a few theories to these rules:
4) Don't buy on a Monday morning or after a holiday. The oven just doesn't have its heart into the job yet.
3) Skip it on a humid or wet day. It's just not worth the risk.
2) Think twice if the counter girl says "blahblah pas bien blahblah"
1) NEVER EVER buy at the Naturalia grocery. Even if they are the only boulangerie open on Sunday. UGGGG. Healthy bread in any language sucks.

Mary says: the baguettes from the Nature store are like Cold War bread 'da! you veel eat rock!' but today we found a boulangerie that sells the lustiest bread we've had. it's simply glorious.

Paris!

After 2 years, 2 weeks, 2 days and 38 countries, we have finally reached the end of our envisioned trip. We realized long ago that too quick a move back to civilization would likely cause headaches and internal bleeding, so we decided that Paris would be our method to slowly and safely try out 'normal' life again.

We have a cute little apartment in the Marais district just a 10 minute walk from the Louvre and Notre Dame. What's 'little'? How about 350 square feet. That's smaller than our bedroom at the Los Gatos house. And we're very happy to have so much space in this part of town. There are flats half this size for rent.

We've already installed geraniums and fun lights we picked up in Bangkok. For the first time in 2 years, we have a closet, and it's already full. My allocated space has a suit, 3 t shirts and 2 wetsuits...

What now? Well, we've been wandering around town so far. Saw a ballet last night in French :) We're going on a side trip to Spain and Morocco with Mary's mom and brother in a few weeks. And...and... well we'll just have to see. We're STILL on vacation, after all.