May 13, 2009 - Getting Lost

I know we all hate getting lost....at least us men. But getting lost in Paris is a different thing.....or is it? It's been one week now, and we've crawled over most of our neighborhood. We've found the local shops for bread, meat, vegetables, dairy, and wine. The locals even know us and as much as we want to learn how to speak French, they want to speak English....so it is a learning experience for all of us. Ever go into a butcher's shop and try to figure out how to ask for bacon? Good thing we asked for stewing veal [in french of course]...because it seems that the French stew their veal with bacon also...except it's not called bacon but we all knew what we wanted. The butcher even told me how long to cook the veal [like I really needed his help....but appreciated the assistance]. Today, I bought some chopped meat, not exactly how you ask for it in France.

It got a little confusing. I was also buying lamb chops. The butcher wanted to cut off some of the length of the long bone. He wanted to know if I wanted the bones but I was also asking for chop meat....we almost got chopped bones. But we learned how to ask for chopped meat, and how to ask for slices of meat as well as chops of meat [a la lamb].

My point is, we know our neighborhood even though it's only been a week, so taking little zigs and zags should not present a problem. Today was one of those days where the French don't go to work....or at least the people in our local food shops. CLOSED. So we just made a right turn and walked south, away from the Seine. We made it to the pool that I will be swimming in later this week....at least I know we can find it again but then we made the turn onto Rue Mouffetarde.

Rue Mouffetarde is a street that the locals know. Many small markets. Wine, cheese, meat, fish, vegetables, flowers, hardware, clothes, and, of course, the myriad restaurants. Katherine had been reading up on this area so she knew some of the places we should walk by. I stopped at the first Asian market I saw and bought a samosa....hot and tangy and lovely. We meandered through more markets and I saw another Asian market. Bought two egg rolls except they weren't but what they were, were lovely, fresh, crisp shrimp and pork rolls.

Katherine found a hardware store [bricolage, en francais] and bought a bread basket and for me, a spatter screen...which I used later that evening to prepare the dinner. And then we made a turn to go home.....and got lost.

We got lost in an area of our neighborhood that we didn't even know existed. No tourists, lots of local shops, and lots of local restaurants. We passed a Chinese restaurant, packed with people for lunch. It's on our list for tomorrow. I don't want to cook tomorrow and their cooking looked just fine....or at least the people in the restaurant thought so.

It took us a while to make our back home. Somehow, it didn't make a difference that we were lost in our own neighborhood. We expect to get lost here often.......