The Chocolate Tour

I am supposed to be captioning my photos, but while I wait for them to upload (there are 350+ of them because I have not been proactive about this) and also for my clothes to dry (this load of laundry has been going, on and off, for eight hours... clearly I will at some point have to give up for the night), I may as well do my blogging for the day.

Today was planned to be an uneventful day, although that wasn't really how it worked out.  I started the morning by going for a run, since both my running buddy and I were too wiped out to run last night.  As it turns out, I was still pretty wiped out this morning (perhaps from walking a lot, perhaps from the strength-building exercises I am doing in an effort not to turn into a ball of wimpitude in the absence of lifting) and, while I did a decent-length run, it was not exactly brisk.

The first event of the day was my chocolate tour... people have been telling me what a waste of money this was, and I suppose I can see their point, in that perhaps the value of the tour guide's spiel and the value of the chocolate I tasted did not add up to the 25 euros I paid.  But, it is likely that if I had not gone on the tour I would have eaten no fancy chocolate at all in Paris, because these places are extremely intimidating (even when you're in them with a tour group!) and that would have been sad.  The tour guide was reasonably informative about both chocolate and the Parisian sights we passed (it was by no means geographically comprehensive, but I learned some interesting tidbits), and the amount of chocolate was just right - one small cup of hot chocolate (not at all sweet, but very good) and six pieces (dark chocolate ganache, fennel ganache - my 2nd-favorite, a dark-chocolate wafer with candied nuts and fruits, a choolate-coated orange bit, a chocolate-coated sugar-nut past - my favorite, and another dark ganache from a bean that has a cherry arome) over the course of two hours at three different locations.  It was definitely a lot of chocolate, but I didn't feel sick, as I've heard many people do after longer tours involving more food.  So, I was pleased.

I was planning on coming home immediately after that, but I ended up wandering into the Fragonard perfume museum, where I spent a few minutes looking at old perfume vials.  I did not buy any perfume.  I also did a bit more shopping in the neighborhood, including going into a store the tour guide had mentioned, Uniqlo (a Japanese clothing store), where I ended up buying a sweater for 5 euros (yeah, I know, I do not need any more clothes...).  I also went into Au Printemps, which is far, far more upscale and scarier than Galaries Lafayette.

Back at home, I started my laundry and etcetera.

After my brief siesta, I headed out to the Louvre.  It is open late on Wednesdays on Fridays, when it is also less expensive.  My guidebook says it is less crowded at this time as well; I don't see how this state of affairs can continue after guidebooks start mentioning it, but it wasn't particularly bad, so that must be the case.  There was basically no line to get in, and only mild crowding in some places.  Having already been to the Louvre on my first visit to Paris and having utterly not-enjoyed it, I decided to not worry about seeing the red-letter sights, or about being thorough or comprehensive, and just wander; moreover, I intentionally started in the wing with the least amount of super-famous stuff.  This strategy worked extremely well; in the 3.5 hours I was there before they started kicking people out, I saw (cursorily, of course, a significant fraction of the museum), passed through some part of most of the major sections, and visited both the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo (the two red-letter attractions that I was interested in seeing).  I even got someone to take my picture with Venus, after five or ten minutes standing around and being a sissy because I don't like asking people for things and didn't know the French colloquialism for taking a picture (it turns out to be the literal translation, 'prendre un photo', but I thought it might use "faire" and also am not really comfortable using "pourriez" and don't know any other way to ask nicely) and therefore wanted to find someone who obviously spoke English and who wasn't overly busy.

On my way home from the museum, I stopped (on a populated street) at an ATM.  While I was using it, a man started talking to me.  It seemed, from the tone of his voice (I couldn't understand him, and wasn't really trying to) that he was asking me for something, presumably money or food.  I was not happy with this situation, because while there are a large number of beggars in Paris (about the same number as homeless people in NYC, but they are far more aggressive here) and I have been approached by numerous slightly-less-marginal men for no good reason (that is just what they do here, for fun, apparently), being accosted at the ATM, however nonviolently, is threatening.  However, I was very Parisienne about it.  I did not even look at my interlocuter.  I simply said, in a tone of annoyed resignation, "laisse-moi, s'il-vous-plait" (this means, "leave me, please", with bad grammar because the imperative is familiar, which it should not be but I wasn't exactly planning this exchange, and the please is formal; I have heard this is how you tell someone to alone) and he did.

Now, it is time to becaption my photos.