Paris

Paris at Christmastime. On a Saturday. What a day! Somehow between 7:33 and 19:52 we covered several corners of the city. My favorite thing was visiting the Rodin Museum. They have an sculpture garden outside with immense bronze sculptures. He captured gestures so well, they convey movement. So you walk around them, and look at their faces, and their faces seem to look back at you. Inside, we saw a blind tour group, and they were feeling the sculptures! I wonder what that would be like. You can't touch the planes of paintings or photographs, but how wonderful to have sculpture. By the way, teachers have free admission to this museum. So do people under 18 and the unemployed.

Shortly after the Rodin, the rain commenced and didn't stop. It's disappointing seeing such a beautiful city from under an umbrella. It's also dangerous because the sidewalks are packed full of umbrellas (actually enough that people without one didn't get too damp). Everywhere was really crowded in the afternoon. We went to the Galleries Lafayette, one of the oldest shopping malls in the world, to see the enormous Christmas tree. The French started the shopping mall, and this one has an enormous Art Nouveau glass dome that rests 8 stories above the floor. The Christmas tree went almost all the way to the top! Also, there were hoards of people packed in the store like I've never seen before. Getting off the escalator was rough because people were literally stopped... so you'd bump into the people in front of you, then people behind you would bump into you etc. It would have been like human dominoes if there'd been space to fall.

To recover from this, we stopped in Starbucks. The French attitude is generally against Starbucks, but the populous didn't get that memo because it was packed. Two and a half months without Starbucks... can you imagine the happiness? Unfortunately, they do not sell peppermint mochas (one thing I crave this time of year). But it's just lovely being in a familiar, dependable, comfortable place. That's why Starbucks do so well in the first place! The German girls, Sybille and Lena teased me about this, but then they understood. Last, we ran, yes, ran, to see the Eiffel Tower twinkle (on the hour for 5 minutes after dusk) and get our train back to Valenciennes.