Day 3:

I woke up about 11-12 hours of sleep feeling much better. Before you start to feel sorry for me, I likely brought the icks on myself. On Day 1, I broke down at bought a Nutella crepe from a street vendor, knowing full well my anit-gluten stomach does not do well with pancakes. The crepe was SO good, but by that night I was SO sick. Therefore, Day 2 was left me feeling less than fabulous. I've been doing really well with the gluten...in London I had fried fish my first night, but I only ate about half the breading. That was pretty much it. Paris has much, much more temptation. I mean, there's a bakery on every block. To combat my poor self control, I'm cooking most meals in the apartment and trying to only cheat once while I'm out touristing. Today it was a croissant. We'll see how it goes. I don't want to spend the week feeling lousy, so I'll cut out gluten all togehter, if need be. More on food later.

This morning I started the day at the Army Museum, which includes the tomb of Napolean. Loved it! The tomb of Napolean....wow. All I can say is they call it a "Napoleanic Complex" for a reason. I guess I never really knew how to feel about Napolean...was he a good guy or a bad guy? No doubt the monarchy was bad, so he was better than them. However, he caused a lot of problems, too. Anyway, I focused on the WWi and WWII rooms, which were excellent. All the placards are in French, but I had an audiotour in English, as well as a Rick Steves walking tour on my ipad. it was interesting to experience this was the French perspective....all hail Charles de Gaulle! And they were pretty defensive about Hitler walking into Paris and taking over. (We tried, we tried!!!) De Gaulle had his own wing with a 25 minute movie that I really wanted to see, but I ran out of time. If I find myself with some free time some day, I may stop by just to catch the de Gaulle wing. Anyway, I ran out of time becuase I was hell bent on touring the Paris Opera house (Palais Garnier), and there was a guided tour in English at 2:30 today. It was fab-u-lous. The Palais Garnier is the setting for the musical/book/movie Phantom of the Opera. I have a bunch of pictures to post. The picure attached to this blog entry are statues representing Comedy and Tragedy. Comedy is on the right. (The ancient Greeks put all plays into one of these two genres.)

Speaking of the Phantom of the Opera, I'll give you a quick Mark story. The man went to a whole lot of theatre with me, and he was very good about it. He said he enjoyed it, which I believe he did. If he didn't, he certainly didn't complain about it. Except for Phantom of the Opera. We took Kelly to it for her high school graduation, and 15 minutes into it, Mark leaned over and asked "are they going to sing the WHOLE THING???" When I confirmed that his worst nightmare was coming true, he rolled his eyes and was asleep within 10 minutes. After that, he never had a good thing to say about Phantom!

Also, my fantasy of catching a ballet and/or opera while in Paris were squashed today. I learned on tour that the shows are at 98% occupancy on average, and they sell out within hours of tickets going on sale. In fact, for big shows, people camp outside the theatre the night before tickets go on sale. I could stand in like 2 hours before the start of a show and try my luck, but I doubt I do that. The next show opens my last night in town, and I can't image I'll have any luck on opening night. Oh well.

After the Garnier, I walked over to the Louvre and went inside just long enought to pick up a map so I can plan my visit there. I'll be honest, I have very little enthusiams for going to any more art museaums, including the Louvre. I'll probably go, but I own't linger. I'd down to 4 days in paris, and there is a lot of other things I'd rather see (churches, open air markets, etc.)

Speaking of churches, I ended my day by going to Mass at a church right by 'my' apartment. It was an old church, but not as old as those in the central city. I"m guessing based on church activities listed in the bulletin, it is a pretty well-off parish. It was packed...so much for Europeans not going to church. Three priests and one deacon celebrated, and a four priest came out for communion. (This was a 6:30pm Mass.) From my experiences in the US, Sunday evening masses are more casual, but this was high Mass with more incense than I have ever seen/smelled. Most interesting, this was the one time I felt I was just with the locals (with the exception of when I was in Metz.) Here's what I'm noticing about the French: the people are natually gorgeous. The women wear much less makeup than Americans, keep their hair simple,have perfect skin, and are stunning. They wear muted colors: black, gray, black, brown, black and more black. It is eye catching to see someone in a red coat. I feel very conspicuous in my orange coat. And both men and women wear scarves, and they make them look more cool than anyone I have ever seen. What I haven't seen a single person wear: a beret! bummer!

That's it for today's activities. not sure what I'll do tomorrow; it depends what time I get rolling. I'm getting very good at being lazy in the morning.

I'm going to do a couple more entries on differnt topics