I`m in Paris 1

Please forgive typos. This is a parisian keyborard.

I am staying with a friend of my mom`s, in a bequtiful little studio apartment which, to my dismay, is up five winding steep flights of stairs. Paul turns out to be extremely nice and does not actually expect me to speak French (I even wore him out over dinner asking how to say stuff in French), and in fact the OTHER prospective crash space is the one which I will not use - it sounded like I would have reqlly been inconveniencing that person, and also Paul's studio is available for longer than I expected - so I will be there the whole time. There is even only one Baba photo in the studio, though there are tons in the rest of the apartment. Only negative: no net access. I am in a hotel lobby.

I had lunch last night in a lovely little restaurant, price fixe: French onion soup, with a rich oniony broth and a lavish crust of melted cheese, canard (duck) a la orange with what I thought would be lentils but it turns out that legumes means potatoes or vegetables, and the house specilty dessert of sweet Chantilly cream, crisp chunks of crumbled meringue, intense raspberry sorbet, and violet ice cream. I usually like floral desserts, but the latter tipped over from floral into cold perfume; I had to leave it, but the rest was great. No dinner; I was jet-lagged and slept 15 hours.

I'm in Paris 2

Forgot to mention that during lunch Paul started going on about how animals shouldn't be kept as pets, but should roam free; halfway through his rant a lady walked in with a mini schnauzer in her handbag, which she proceeded to feed from the table. Every now and then it barked as if to underline one of Paul's points.

Today I set out determinedly to find a Fench cafe to breakfast in, but the one I walked into turned out to be Le Pain Quotidien - a chain we have in LA. Oops. Will try again tomorrow.

Mom and a friend of hers, Judy, went to the Louvre. My favorite things: the Winged Victory of Samothrace, poised as if for take-off atop a flight of stairs and framed in a succession of arches, the gilded jewel-box interior of the Louvre, and a reconstruction of the Assyrian palace of Sargon, with immense stone bulls with wings and human heads. The Mona Lisa, in my philistine opinion, is not one of those works of art which gains a lot from being seen in person rather than in reproduction; that is probably a minority opinion, though, as it was absolutely mobbed.

The Louvre itself is an amazing piece of artchitecture, though the glass pyramid designed by I M Pei, while very nice from inside, is pretty weird from the outside, as if aliens landed for a visit and parked their spaceship.

After that, we went to an amazing pastry shop, where I had a pastry of soft/crisp almond macaron biscuit layered with raspberries and almond cream, and tried mom's chocolate macaron and Judy's pistchio strawberry pastry. Great stuff, worth the high expense.

It's cold and intermittently rainy, overcast; I packed completely wrong and will need to buy a long-sleeved shirt. A chic, Parisian long-sleeved shirt!

Tomorrow: Versailles!