feldmanlarry

It’s hard to understand how people travelled before the existence of GPS systems on phones. In the past, I would have taken more public transportation and spent more time planning my route than today. It’s so much easier to walk aimlessly, knowing that directions back are just a couple of clicks away. Sometimes it doesn’t work well such as Apple Maps for some reason wanting me to go the wrong way then walk through KFC a couple of times, and then return to where I started.

In 2003, Margaret, Keith, and I spent a week in Paris and one of our highlights was going to the ice cream maker that some call the best in the world. The chocolate is especially well known which Margaret and Keith wisely had. I chose some other flavor just to be different. Today I finally got my chocolate ice cream from Bethillion on Ile St-Louis near Notre Dame Cathedral and just 5 minutes from my apartment.

Another item from the 2003 trip that I needed to wrap up was to walk all the way through the Place de la Concorde. I have a history of terrible things happening near where I am when travelling. In 2003, the municipal workers were on strike so the Metro was closed. We had to walk a long ways and ran into a massive demonstration going on at the Place de la Concorde. My plan was to walk through the square to get to our apartment. When we got through to the other side, the exit was barricaded by the police to keep the demonstrators in so we had to go all the way back. When we got back to the apartment, I turned on the TV and they showed water cannons being used against the demonstrators right where we were. We just missed being water cannoned by a few minutes. This time, in 2015, it was calm fortunately.

The Borough Council of Indiana, PA had a massive fight over whether to allow restaurants to serve on the street. The idea that having people eating and drinking in the street would be controversial in Paris is absurd. Perhaps my favorite part of the day was eating at a restaurant recommended by the owner of my apartment called Le Pave. Here is a picture of my bifsteak with pommes de terre frites (steak with fries) with some people walking on the street.

My last main activity of the day was seeing a trashy romantic comedy in French. The movie was called “A trois, on y va”, which means something like “here we go with three of us”. It sounds much better in French. Basically, the story line was that a husband and wife were both having a secret affair with the same woman. At one point, the wife is in an upstairs window motioning the woman to go away before he would catch her. At the same time, the husband is in the downstairs window also motioning to the woman to go away. The husband and wife couldn’t see each other. Just to save you from running to see it, the husband ends up with the woman and the wife goes away. She didn’t like her husband that much and she was okay with letting the woman go.

It was a dumb film but it was something I had wanted to do in Paris. The language was a little beyond my knowledge. I can speak quite well with people that I meet in a normal conversation. Sometimes I have to get them to repeat something or speak a little slower but in the movie I couldn’t understand when they spoke quickly with puns and slang. I could understand the big ideas especially since there were none. So now I know my limit.