Tour de France

Last day in Paris, and it's the Tour de France. On the Champs-Elysees it was a zoo - people climbing trees to get a view of the race, standing on benches or on their own ladders they brought with them. They shut down the boulevard where the racers do a final few hours of laps around Paris. They good news is that you see can see them pass over a dozen times - which they do at high speeds. We got there towards the end when the pace had picked up and a group had broken loose from the peleton. But it's a zoo, as you can tell from my not particularly good photo of the race.

On other subjects, it's always slightly baffling when something lives up to the hype. How much Berthillon ice cream I can eat in a day, I'm not sure. But when it's this hot, it's hard to stop. You wait in line with hoards of tourists, wondering how on earth it could be worth an ice cream cone this expensive. But it's so darn good - pamplemousse (grapefruit) or fraise des bois (wild strawberry). Good gracious. Enough said.

Last night, we visited Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary art museum. There's a very hip and popular restaurant there which was a suprise to us, that was open very late. It also has a great view.

We've picked our way through several English language bookstores on the Left Bank, buying up these wonderful Penguin paperbacks - they're super thin, part of a set released in England but not in the States. Why these things don't exist for all travelers, I have no idea. It's exactly the right amount of reading. One or two is all I can fit in my bag anyway, aside from the 35 pounds of travel brochures.

I'm also working on my postcard collection - old postcards - as if I don't have enough paper. Here's what Italo Calvino has to say about it:

"Here's what Paris is: it is a giant reference work, a city which you can consult like an encyclopedia: whatever page you open gives you a complete list of information that is richer than that offered by any other city... In Paris you can always hope to find what you thought you had lost, your own past or someone else's. So yet another way to see this city: like a huge lost property office... now we are entering into the limitless Paris adored by collectors, this city which invites you to make collections of everything, because it accumulates and classifies and redistributes, where you can search as in an archaeological excavation. The collector's experience can still be an existential adventure, a search for the self through objects, an exploration of the world which is at the same time a realization of the self."

For the morning, wandered the Sunday market at rue Moffetard, picking up goodies here and there. I don't think there's anything more intimidating than ordering cheese at a french cheese counter, with 5 local Parisiens waiting in line behind you. Somehow we managed, and ended up with something very tasty. It's pretty wonderful to have all the shops you need on the same block - butcher, produce, wine, cheese, bread - each is a different spot. And they're always happy to tell you how to serve the wine, or about what quality meat you're ordering. Of course you stop for an espresso along the way too.

And the fruits of our labor, a picnic by the Seine, as it was getting dark. Fresh melon, colloummiers cheese and something else from Corisca, jambon, a Cotes du Rhone, baguettes and these insanely great raisin and walnut rolls they have all over France. It's like I didn't even have a deadline looming over my head...

On to Bretagne!