The “plan” was to have included an early out-the-door to sightsee before noon, but we scrapped the plan as the morning wore on and concluded that the best plan is no plan at all. Ten o’clock seemed early enough to shove off, so we headed for the Metro station around the corner on Rue de la Convention around 10:15 and took three different Metro lines and 30 minutes to arrive in the vicinity of the famous Mouffetard open-air market in the city’s 5th district.
Forget the Tower, forget the Louvre and the Champs Elysees and everything else. The market is the high point of the Paris visit to date for Lennie, who is known by family and friends – and most especially by Doug – to be an excellent cook. Owning an apartment within walking distance of the market will be her life’s goal from now on, and Doug has been put on notice. We took a coffee break at a marketplace café, where Lennie plotted the most likely scenario to achieve her goal. We noted that the Europe-wide lottery had no winner in last night’s drawing and that the jackpot now totals 60 million euros – enough certainly to buy and furnish an apartment building or two in the vicinity. When it happens, it will be open house for the aforementioned friends and family.
After much observing at the marketplace, we took yet another Metro ride over to the stylish and historic St.-Germain neighborhood, where we headed straight for Les Deux Magots café – “an expensive place for literary-intellectual pilgrims,” according to the guide book. We doubt journal writers fit the description, but we found the quiche and wine to our liking anyway. Doug normally is quite reluctant to use French to communicate, as he speaks none, but he hesitated not a whit in chasing down our waiter to change Lennie's order of "two glasses" of wine to a bottle -- delivered in decipherable French, apparently, as we did get our bottle of wine. Yes, we defintely are on vacation if we're polishing off bottles of wine for lunch. BTW, according to the guide book, the café (founded in 1881) “was named after the wooden statues of two Chinese dignitaries (magots) sitting atop boxes of money attached to a column in the café.” Hemingway used it as a hang-out.
After a short side trip to locate the Hotel Lutetia, where Doug stayed during Matra Transit’s unproductive wine-and-dine tour for then-Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi in 1991, we headed back – on the Metro, of course – for an early shopping stop to pick up groceries on Rue du Commerce a few blocks from home.
Today’s pedometer reading was a relatively modest 5.86 miles. We’ll do better tomorrow when we take in the Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame.
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