A friend of mine is coming to stay with me for the weekend (yes, in my teensy Parisian apartment).  She is familiar with Paris, so I don't think she'll want to do a lot of standard sightseeing stuff, which is just fine with me.  She is also a big foodie, so my plan for the next two days is to follow her around and eat things.

Hopefully before she arrives there is time for a quick update.

Last night I went to the Jardin du Luxembourg to run with a British girl I met through a meetup.  We didn't do a lot of running because of the heat, but we had a nice conversation.  So, yay, I have someone to hang out with in Paris!  And, I took a bit of a running detour on the way home and still got a half-decent workout in.

Today I covered a lot of ground very cursorily.  I went to the Musee de la Vie Romantique, in George Sand's house, which was not terribly interesting.  However, the neighborhood was nice - lots of shopping but neither super-trendy nor touristy.  I went into the Lafayette department store; clearly all American department stores are a pale imitation of places like this.  Seriously, it was like a Palais du Mode.  Amazingly, normal Parisian people (and some tourists) were shopping there.  Also amazing were the prices - ridiculously high even to my NYC-trained eye.  Seriously, the standard price for a top (delicate, feminine, and clearly not machine-washable) - and this was including a discount of 30-50% for the summer sale season - was 100 euros or more.  There were a few cheaper things; of course they were much less nice.

Then I went and looked at the Palais Garnier, the older of the two opera houses.  I tried to muster some desire to spend 9 euros to see the interior but could not.  Then I walked to the Champs-Elysees, which was frankly not that impressive - like Madison Avenue but with wider sidewalks.  I walked to the Arc de Triomphe and looked at it.  Very big.  I walked back to my apartment by a different route, which took me by many big palaces.  Apparently building palaces is what they did for fun for a few hundred years before television was invented.

So this sounds like I did not have any fun, but I did.  I walked around some interesting areas.  The department stores has an amazing view at its top.  I saw many Parisian people and things.

However, I am just about burnt out on sightseeing, which is not so bad since I have seen most of the red-letter sites.  Next week I think I will start being a little more serious about my writing and a little less serious about sights.  Maybe I will try the Paris Walks book again.