Cary and Char Plus One!

Hello again!

I having just risen from my nap, it is now 1:15 AM. The trip over didn't do crap for my jet lag, and here we are, having dinner at the crack of midnight. Such is life.

Allow me to start off by saying today's adventures come courtesy of Cary's Birthday. Yes, he's finally 30! Did I mention that we slept through dinner (we got back in around 8:30PM from our travels today) and Cary's now cooking a dinner of Alsatian goodies: kraut, bacon, sausage. It's supposed to be a microwave dinner, and despite his want of a microwave dinner there is no such microwave in the apartment. Hell, we're even stealing someone's internet.

Our apartment is in the 6th arrondisement, near St. Germain des Pres. There are tons of things to do here, restaurants, shopping, etc. This morning we awoke to scraping and hammering sounds coming from somewhere above us. It was already 10AM, so we took it to be a sign from God that we need to wake up. We walked over to Cafe de Flore, legendary for its tourist status as well as historical significance, had excellent coffee and tea, croissants and eggs with bacon, etc. We did some shopping. Okay I lied, *I* did some shopping. Nothing serious. A bag. I know, like I need another one, but it's a cheapie one and once I get my camera charged up we can have a looksie.

We walked along the Seine, marvelled at the Louvre and decide to check it out. People are swarmed about it like flies, my friends, and in my jet lag, I swore that it was closed, yet it wasn't. Wrong day. My bad. So we go to check it out, and kick it around the Louvre. Cary took many illegal pictures (some photography is not allowed, but not on his birthday, apparently). The Mona Lisa continues to draw a crowd, and there were plenty of security guards on hand to make sure you weren't trying to be slick and take a photograph. I spied an undercover guard as well, and that was intriguing to know they employ such guards.

As you walk through the Louvre, it's always a good thing to look left and right, but have you ever looked up? Many of the ceilings are ornately decorated...wait that's an understatement. They are overly uber decorated, and it's hard to tell which painting you really should look at. The Venus de Milo, for instance, had a swarm of people taking pictures of it from the front. So I took pictures of them. The people. I don't know, call me weird.

After the Louvre, both Cary and I started getting pretty tired, and we thought that we should get some food to fill the fridge. Eating out in Paris can be done for cheap, and we've been lucky thus far, but it can add up. We still have a few days here to go and more days in Rome to boot. The Monoprix, sort of an all you can shop for joint a la Target, offers a little lingerie shopping before you head to the grocery section, so it's kinda funny to walk through the store to pick up some olives and get a lacy to-do to go with it.

So onto my French. It comes back to me when I'm relaxed, but when I'm freaked out about asking someone something, I forget it. Cary is really good at saying keep it simple (stupid!) and he sometimes helps me figure it out. For instance, we went to FNAC and other stores like it to get an adapter because Cary's laptop needed to get charged. We had to ask about adapters and such, and after some struggle we got it (at Monoprix/Target). I get butt hurt everytime someone answers me in English, but I figure at the very least I offered to try first. Cary says that the people here aren't as funky as others say (BO counts as funky and it's been cold so funky keeps itself to itself, thank god). As a matter of fact, people have been downright nice, and really helpful. We don't as of yet have plans for tomorrow, but I'm sure we'll figure something out. STeal someone's signal to email you all the adventures.

I'm off to go to bed, tis about 2AM here and we're done with breakfast and going to try and get some sleep in for tomorrow. Oh and charge the batteries on our cams. Apparently in preparation for the trip we didn't pre-charge our cams and they died halfway through the day. Weak. pretty sad if you want to take pictures. We're going to have to find an internet cafe to share the pics, as of today we can't find a stable enough connection here to make it work. Hope you're all doing well. Postcards were bought today and I'm almost done writing them all out. You should receive it by....next month. Ha.

Char/Cary