Paris (rhymes with pee)

Parisiens! Attention, s'il vous plaît! (Because I seriously doubt this applies to many women): All the pretty hedges and parterres (in the Parvis--also rhymes--de Notre Dame, for instance, or even the Jardins de Tuileries) would really be so much more pleasant on close approach, to sit beside or even stand near, did they not REEK. As would the Métro platforms, for that matter, although the problem is not quite so ubiquitous there, and I understand that there are those inviting little gutters behind the benches (although there was no gutter La Nuit Blanche, for instance, just some random corner that apparently was irresistable. Even though I was walking past at the moment). Merci.

Moving on . . . one week today. Wow. It seems like no time; then again, every small venture still requires so much time, such effort, because I'm still so very new. The amount of time that can be expended just circling upon emerging, say, from a strange Métro station into a strange neighborhood, emphatically if it lacks a street map before emerging, trying to get one's bearings (I hadn't mentioned that on La Nuit Blanche, thus deposited, once I'd given up and started walking, I tried to use Jupiter for a directional guide. I'd noticed it off to the southeast, more or less, i.e. , back over the river, when I was near the Pont d'Alma. Which was only vaguely helpful in the end, of course, because the river had sort of bent between Alma and--Oberkampf. Boulevard de Sebastopol). And this is anywhere: I was just as disoriented reaching a street from the Taipei metro.

This morning's illustration found me walking happily from the Métro stairs right into the Place Monge street market, which I'd intended. Fish, I thought (and there was everything, including mussels). I'm pretty well-stocked with cheese at the moment (though not for long!), but what variety the cheese vendors had (help me out here: why are there goat cheeses covered in ashes (aux cendres)? I can no doubt Google it, but one of you might know). Tomatoes of every size, shape, and color (black!). So I decided I'd definitely come back through on my way back from the Arènes de Lutèce and buy some; that's why I'd brought my backpack. BUT--finding the amphitheater proved not that simple. Lots of what I'll claim under oath was ambling through yet another neighborhood--several neighborhoods, finally resorting to getting back on the Métro to save time, once I'd wandered far enough afield.

I got there. (Hypothesis for your consideration: the very best people to ask for directions are sort of late-middle-aged women. Not exclusively, mind you, but it always seems to work out well.) Asked a lovely pair of ladies at Place Jussieu, who not only gave excellent, simple directions and corrected my French, but showed up at the amphitheater, too, shortly after I'd arrived : ) ; said I'd had "une bonne idée."

And immediately upon entering (one way; I had to go out and around to another street and come in another way to be actually down in the arena) the gates, there was another beautiful garden! Just a little pocket garden, but exquisite, with amazing little perfume quizzes on placards around it ("Juste après le krache de Wall Street, le célèbre parfumeur français Jean Patou cherche un moyen de redonner espoir à ses clientes américaines ruinées . . . Quel est le nom de ce célèbrissime parfum . . . dont la grande originalité est de marier la rose et le jasmin . . . ? (Indice: c'est aussi un prénom féminin américain en trois lettres synonyme de plaisir)")

There was a small Tai Chi class in progress on one level, young boys kicking a soccer ball around in the sand of the arena, and just before I left, a youngish Chinese man arrived to begin practicing boules (I have no idea; I never do. This is a compliment, really, because you invariably look younger than your true age. Thirtyish? to thirty-five?) I tried not to stare, though not too hard, but I was right by him on a bench, studying the Métro map yet again by then. He tossed the tiny reddish-orange ball and began heaving the large steel ones in its direction, and who could look away?

And then to become persona non grata, apparently, once I reached Jussieu again. Or invisible, or--something, when not one of THREE different tickets would let me through the turnstile, and there was no one in the information/ticket booth, and the automated ticket machine rejected two different credit cards. Grrr, as dozens of students (Université Pierre et Marie Curie of the Sorbonne) poured down the stairs and on through. I eventually, yet again, gave up, and walked back to Place Monge--where the vendors were packing up for the day.

I'll go back.